Shea’s lips twitched. That would have been her fault. She’d surprised the Trateri when she first met them by her resourcefulness a time or two.
Shea looked at Fallon and received a nod saying that what Reece said was true. Her fingers tapped against her thigh. That didn’t mean he wasn’t responsible. She’d only seen the beast call once and wasn’t sure she could identify it if she saw it again. The Trateri who’d searched him could have very well missed it.
“I’ll have my men search him again,” Fallon said coming to the same conclusion Shea had.
“He could have left someone outside the perimeter as well,” Shea said, observing Reece carefully.
He’d recovered from his earlier surprise and was back to his smart-ass self. He made a gesture at his chest, as if to ask, ‘who me.’
She gave him a meaningful glance that said she wasn’t buying it. She knew her cousin, and he was as tricky as the day was long.
“It’s just me, Shea. Our elders thought you would be more inclined to listen to someone related to you.”
“I’ll have my men do a sweep of the surrounding forest,” Fallon told Shea. “See if there are any signs of his companions.”
It was unlikely they would find anything. Pathfinders could be ghosts when they wanted.
“You know something about this,” Shea told Reece, her eyes narrowing. It was there in his eyes, a slight tightness that gave him away. She would have missed it if she hadn’t grown up with him, if she hadn’t spent many a time falling for his tricks.
Reece met her eyes.
“We can always use force to get what we want,” Fallon offered, his voice a lazy threat.
Reece’s eyes flicked to Fallon. “Go ahead. See where that gets you.”
“It doesn’t make sense that the elders sent you to bring us back, to let Fallon into the Highlands,” Shea said, thinking out loud. There was something there, something just outside her reach that would make everything fall into place.
He groaned. “I told you why they wanted you and your barbarian Warlord.”
“There’s been an uptick of beast activity before. Forty years ago, we lost five villages to a surge of beasts and the pathfinders did nothing. This is different. You’re hiding something.”
What was it?
Reece was quiet, watching Shea carefully.
The beast call. Somehow everything came back to the beast call.
“You think another beast call, one not controlled by the pathfinders, has been found.”
It would explain many things, the increased sightings, the way some beasts were being found far from their normal hunting grounds. What it wouldn’t explain was how the golden eagles had been called into an environment so at odds with their territory. Beasts were ruled by instinct. This forest with its tight and twisting spaces would have set off every instinct the eagle had—unless whoever called it had a way of controlling it.
That should be impossible though. There had never been any evidence of a call exerting any control over a beast beyond summoning it, and that only if it wanted to come. Their normal territory was far from here. A call never should have been able to reach them and pull them so far off their normal course.
“You think I had something to do with what’s been happening,” Shea said, coming to a realization. He didn’t just think her previous mission had sent the beasts far from their normal territory. He thought she had deliberately and maliciously been calling them to her.
Reece’s watchful gaze didn’t move from her. So that meant she was right. Her former people thought she’d been, what, summoning beasts in her spare time. For what purpose? The only thing a beast ever brought when it intersected with people was death and destruction. Did they really think her capable of such a thing?
“Where would I even have gotten a beast call?” she asked, hurt tingeing her voice.
His eyes were steady on hers.
There was only one place.
“You think I picked one up in the Badlands.”
Fallon stepped closer to Shea, sensing the hurt behind her flat words. His presence at her back bolstered her, telling her she didn’t face this alone.
“You are the only one who survived. We don’t know what you picked up while you were wandering around that place. Our ancestors left many dangerous things there.”
“You know how I feel about those things.”
His shrug was careless, though his eyes were intense pools of dark. “You were lost there for over a month. The Badlands have a way of twisting people, and we both know that you’re not the same as when you went in.”
She drew back, his words as effective as a slap. She shook her head and walked out of the tent. She didn’t stop walking once she was out, continuing along her path for several minutes.
In some ways, he was absolutely right. The Shea before the Badlands had been very different, softer, and someone who had believed in herself and her dreams. The Shea of now was older, wiser, and knew that life wasn’t going to give her anything. If she wanted something, she needed to keep her head down and work at it, and even then, life had a way of snatching what you wanted right out from under you. Internal scars littered the inside of her mind from the things she’d lost—the things she’d given up.
“What happened in the Badlands?” Fallon asked from behind her once she’d slowed to stare at a blanket of giant mayflowers. They towered above her, their blue flowers nestled under the broad, flat leaf that shielded them from above.
Shea didn’t look at Fallon. She tilted her head up and stared at the maze of branches overhead. Today, the trees felt like giant sentinels that time had frozen, their branches rustling in the wind as the sounds of the forest rose around them.
“Thirty of us went in; only I came out.” The words were said to the world above her.
“You blame yourself.” Fallon’s words were a statement not a question.
“There’s no one else left to blame.”
They were quiet for a long minute.
“It was my idea. No one had ever successfully explored the Badlands. Just an excursion here and there on the edges.” Shea felt the need to explain. “Over a thousand years and we only have the barest glimpse into the world before the cataclysm. I wanted to see. I wanted to explore and make life better for everyone. The Badlands are one of the few untouched places; the chance to make a name for myself was ripe for the picking.”
“Until everyone died.”
Shea made a sound of agreement. “Until everyone died.”
That was the kicker. So many friends. People who followed Shea. People who trusted she knew what she was doing. Their voices still haunted her dreams.
“Why do they blame you for the current turn of events?”
Shea was quiet, not able to put into words the thoughts coursing through her head. “We have stories of what lies at the heart of the Badlands. They’re stories passed along for centuries. I thought they were myth, something made up by our elders to explain the unexplainable.”
Turned out she was wrong. Those stories were just the barest glimpse into what waited there.
“The elders think we penetrated the heart—that we were in danger of waking what slept there.”