He looked up. “She’s right. There are no signs of wounds.”
“Then that means the blame can’t be laid at our feet,” Catherine said, her voice raised above the murmurs that had resumed as soon as Reece confirmed Shea’s pronouncement.
Shea watched Fallon, her face pensive. He looked back at her and arched an eyebrow as if to ask her to elaborate. It was an arrogant expression and once upon a time that look would have made her want to punch him in the throat. Now, it made her lips twitch despite the seriousness of the situation.
She chose to turn to Catherine, addressing the woman’s statement of before. “Not necessarily. If I’m right—”
“And we all know that you are,” Caden muttered.
Shea continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “A sorrow attacked these people.”
“Proof that we shouldn’t be held responsible,” someone said plaintively.
Shea stifled her sigh. There was a reason she had chosen a position that didn’t require much interaction with other human beings except within the scope of a mission. They were being willfully obtuse, missing a point that should have been obvious to even a child. It made her want to shake them.
“Except for the fact that it acted to eliminate Victoria’s guards,” Shea said, struggling to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. They didn’t need that. The room already balanced on a knife’s edge, violence a single, careless word away.
“You don’t see her body here, do you?” Shea gestured at the two on the ground. “No, which means the sorrow acted in her best interests. Something only one person in this whole situation has demonstrated an ability for.”
“We only have your word for that,” Gerald said.
“And mine,” Braden said, his words and expression cold. He gave the speaker an expectant look, daring them to accuse him of lying.
Shea propped her hands on her hip as she watched Gerald, wondering just how stupid he wanted to be today. The Trateri took honor very seriously. Your reputation was only as good as your word. Break it and you were considered little more than the dirt under their feet.
They’d been known to issue a blood challenge against those who questioned their honor, and it wasn’t rare for those to end in death. Something Gerald would no doubt learn if he pushed much harder.
The brief unity they’d attained during the battle seemed to be fading, and Shea didn’t know how to stop it. Worst, Shea doubted the Trateri even wanted to keep that former air of cooperation. Not with two bodies on the floor reminding them of all of the pathfinders’ faults.
“Whatever the case, someone would have had to let the sorrow into the Keep,” Lainey said. “That in itself is unacceptable, and I won’t stand for it on my watch.”
“Perhaps we should remove you as Guildmaster, given the problems that have arisen during your tenure,” Eliza said sharply.
“Don’t be a soft-headed fool,” Whelan said, a snap to his voice. “The last thing we need is you lot trying to remove Halloran. Not when there are beasts at the gates. Get your heads out of your asses and figure out a way to set your differences aside. I don’t think our guests are going to be patient with your shit very much longer.”
Laine’s eyes twinkled and she inclined her head at Whelan.
“Why would anybody release Victoria anyway?” someone said from the back of the room.
“Well, she is Griffin’s mother,” Reece said.
“The attack was very well coordinated. It could have been cover for sending something to free his mother,” Zeph rumbled, his big arms crossed over his chest.
Yes, it was. Shea looked away, her face creased in a frown as she tuned out conversation as those assembled finally started talking with each other instead of over each other.
Very well coordinated, indeed. While the Griffin of before had loved his mother, it wasn’t necessarily an emotion she would subscribe to the Griffin of now. He seemed too calculating to throw away a perfectly good ambush and distraction on something as simple as a rescue.
That thought felt right. The rest of this did not.
What could he want bad enough to risk everything in an attack of this nature?
Shea turned to look at her mother. This all came back to secrets and the sins the pathfinders tried to hide. The tunnels, the mythologicals, the beast call.
Her thoughts crystallized, clarity ringing true. There was one secret, something very few knew about. Partly because you could never fully keep a secret if other people knew. Her knowledge of it was an indicator of how true that was.
Only those at the highest levels should know of it and Griffin had never gotten even close to those heights. Even Shea’s knowledge of it was more accidental than purposeful design, partly because she’d spied on her mother a time or two when she’d been much younger. Being the curious child she was, Shea had followed her when it would have been better to leave well enough alone.
That was the reason she knew what hid in bowels of the keep—the biggest reason their guild had been founded on this spot. The Keep and its defenses were just a plausible excuse. In reality it was what was under the Keep that was the true purpose for their guild.
