Shea gave him a small smile. “Stall him if need be.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” he yelled after her.
“Use some of that charming personality you say you have,” was her retort.
Most of their people had congregated in the center of the camp, drawn by the fires and food, leaving the edges mostly empty. Shea waited until they’d reached one of those isolated sections before making her presence known.
Gawain noticed her and paused, his expression guarded. “Battle Queen,” he said in greeting. He tilted his head. “Oddly, the title suits you.”
Shea didn’t know about that. She didn’t feel particularly queenly, and she was next to useless in real battle, but the title had stuck and seemed to have replaced the old one of Telroi.
Shea wasn’t sure if his statement had been meant to flatter or mock her but ignored it to focus on the reason she’d followed him. “An interesting tidbit came to my attention during my sojourn in the Badlands.”
Gawain seemed unsurprised by her statement. “Oh?”
She nodded. “Evidently, Griffin had been the voice in the ears of many of Fallon’s enemies, inciting them to treason.”
He remained silent. Waiting. Watching.
“I know he got to Charles and Ben. Perhaps even Fallon’s half-brother. Griffin was smart. He went after those whose loyalty to Fallon was already weakened.” She waited as his silence lingered. Smart, but then his father was too. “It strikes me that there is one other who would fit that description.”
Someone who had never wanted to join Fallon in the first place, someone whose jealousy had poisoned the relationship they once had, much as Fallon’s half-brother’s had.
Gawain’s expression was reserved. “Say what you came here to say.”
Shea straightened her shoulders, remaining light on her feet. “You fit what he was looking for. He spoke to you. I’m sure of it. What I’m not sure of, is why you didn’t act.”
Because he could have. He’d had many chances. He could have killed her in the Reaches when it was just the two of them. He could have let Ben finish Fallon rather than stop him, no one would have known the difference.
He hadn’t done any of that. Shea wanted to know why.
Gawain sighed, looking away from her. “He did come to me, promising to make my most tightly held dreams come true if I killed Fallon. Or even you.”
The last part didn’t really surprise her. Shea had gotten the sense that Griffin still felt something for her, but it confused him. He’d wanted her at his side just as much as he wanted her dead.
“Yet you didn’t act. Why?” she asked.
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “He couldn’t have given me what I wanted, not with all the power in the world at his disposal.”
Henry’s love and admiration, Shea realized. That’s what Gawain wanted.
Gawain’s smile was twisted, lacking even the facade of humor. “How pathetic is that? I’m a man, leader of my own clan, and yet I still yearn to make my father proud.”
Shea could understand that. Family had a way of twisting you up inside, making you think up was down and vice versa. They could hurt you worse than any external wound.
“Fallon isn’t responsible for my father’s faults,” Gawain said. “And I will not become that which I hate because of an outsider’s manipulations. Does that answer your question?”
Shea hesitated for a moment. “Yes, it does.”
“Are you going to tell Fallon?” he asked.
The question was a dangerous one with far-reaching implications. If she revealed what she knew, Fallon could very well decide to kill Gawain. That would most likely lead to other deaths in Gawain’s clan, many of whom would take his execution hard and want revenge.
Though Gawain hadn’t acted on Griffin’s request, he hadn’t revealed the plot to Fallon either. By rights, that was treason in and of itself.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Shea said.
Gawain’s actions had saved Fallon’s life. She was so tired of death. He was a good leader and had turned out to be more loyal than others. She saw no reason to destroy that. Fallon needed his remaining clan leaders. At least for now.
