Shea hung her head and made a sound very like a groan. She should have known her mother wouldn’t be swayed from her agenda so easily.
“You were broken, and we didn’t know how to fix you.”
“I wasn’t broken,” Shea snapped. “I was hurting. My friends were dead and the rest of you acted like I carried some foul contagion that might rub off on you if you got too close.”
Lainey inclined her head in agreement. “Despite our knowledge, we tend to be a suspicious lot. Your father and I saw the way things were going. They were never going to forget or let you forget. We thought distance might help, might let you heal.”
Shea was quiet for a long moment, her gaze on the bed where her warlord still fought. All this seemed so pointless now, the events in the past. Did she really care about the why anymore, or was she holding on simply out of habit?
She sighed and rubbed her forehead. Her mother wasn’t one to give up. Might as well give her what she wanted.
She looked up at Lainey, her gaze frank. “Maybe so, but that doesn’t explain why you left me alone out there. In all the time I was at Birdon Leaf, I didn’t get one letter from you, not a single carrier pigeon, zero visits. You might say it was for my own good, but I think it was for yours too.”
Lainey was still for several moments. Finally, she sighed, the sound heavy and weary. “You’re not wrong, but you aren’t right either. Think on this, daughter mine. In all that time, did you ever reach out to us? Indicate in any way you would have welcomed our presence in your life? Your heart was closed to us long before we sent you away.”
Shea sat back and folded her arms over her chest. There was some truth in her mother’s words. In all that time, she’d never made even the smallest effort to reach out, to connect. In the beginning, she’d simply existed, bitter and angry at the world, unwilling and unable to let anyone in.
“Time passes so quickly,” her mother said, her hands clenched in her lap, the only sign of emotion in her mother’s rigid body. “When you become a mother, you will find this to be the case too. You blink and years have passed. All you can do is hope you’ve done your job well enough, that your child becomes better than you.”
Shea stared at her mother.
Lainey gave her a soft smile. “I couldn’t be prouder of you, despite what you might think. You’re the best pathfinder that’s ever come out of the Keep. You found love in the most trying of circumstances and made his people love you, despite their dislike of strangers. They fit you and you them. There isn’t anything more I could have asked for you.”
Shea’s face softened and she looked away, unsure how to respond to that. All this time she’d been convinced she was a failure in her parents’ eyes. She would have to think more on how she felt about this later, when her emotions weren’t so high and intense.
Caden stepped inside the tent, his gaze going straight to Fallon.
“Excuse me, mother,” Shea said, standing and approaching the leader of Fallon’s Anateri.
“How is he?” Caden asked, his voice abrupt.
Shea looked at Fallon’s motionless form, the sight making the knot in her chest draw tighter.
“Still breathing,” Shea admitted in a shaky voice.
Caden nodded but didn’t say anything else.
Shea let the silence deepen, unsure how to comfort the other man or if she even should. They were cordial to each other because of their love for Fallon, but they had never taken the time to get to know one another.
“Thank you for your support with the clan leaders,” Shea offered. If he hadn’t thrown his weight behind hers, she would have had a difficult time exposing Earth’s treachery.
Caden grunted. “It’s what Fallon would have wanted.”
Shea nodded. That was very true.
“There’s a chair if you want to sit,” she offered.
He shook his head. “I’ll stand.”
Shea nodded and turned away, leaving him to his vigil.
His voice stopped her. “He would have been proud of the way you handled yourself.”
Shea gave him a look of surprise, before inclining her head in respect.
The healers worked into the night, Shea and Caden keeping a silent vigil. She didn’t understand much of what they were doing, but Fallon was still alive so she chose to believe they were successful.
At some point during those long hours, her eyelids began to drift down. Once, then twice. Her head sagged forward, the Badlands rising up all around her.
