Dane shook his head. “I would suggest against that course. They won’t tell you this, but something’s going on. They’re way jumpier than normal.”
“What do you mean?” Shea asked, curious.
Dane frowned and looked away, appearing torn. Shea could sympathize. The pathfinders had given him a home, a place to go after everything had been ripped from him, but Shea and Witt were part of what he’d lost. It put him in a difficult position.
“The rest of the survivors and I stayed outside when we first got here,” Dane told her.
“Why? There seems to be plenty of room inside the Keep,” Fallon said, his eyes sharp.
Dane’s expression was slightly bitter. “Let’s just say our hosts weren’t exactly keen to have us here. I got the feeling that they would have preferred we’d gone the way of the rest of the village.”
Shea winced and shared a look with Witt. Dane was probably not too far off. Worse, it didn’t surprise her. What was more surprising was that the pathfinders had let them inside the curtain wall at all.
“Has that changed?” Fallon asked.
Dane shook his head. “They’ve moved us inside, but still regard us with that same suspicion. We’re kept separated from the rest of the Keep’s occupants and told not to explore. If we had anywhere to go and any way to get there, most of us would have been gone by now.”
“You think it’s dangerous to stay out of doors,” Fallon said, following Dane’s logic.
Dane nodded, his face grim. “Only reason I can think of for why they moved us.”
Fallon and Shea shared a look. He wasn’t happy about this revelation. Neither was she, if she was telling the truth. For this amount of heightened paranoia when the Keep’s walls hadn’t been breached by anything in centuries, it meant something was going on—something beyond what they’d been told. That something was the reason for all the changes, and the reason her warlord and his army had been summoned.
“My Anateri will take the rooms near here,” Fallon said, his words a decree. Dane opened his mouth and then closed it, evidently deciding not to argue. To his people, Fallon said, “Find where you’re staying and then report back.”
Shea stepped into the room as he was handing out orders. She’d never stayed on this side of the Keep. Her room had always been in one of the towers on the other end, where few people would bother her, and she had an impressive view of a mountain glen.
The room was big at least, a wide-open space that seemed empty and unfinished despite the furniture. Someone had attempted to make it a little nicer with a few rugs thrown on the cold stone floor, but after months with the Trateri whose weavings were among the best she’d ever seen, the rugs looked worn and drab. Everything seemed colorless and boring, from the stark gray stone to the heavy wooden furniture.
She hadn’t thought it possible, but she yearned for the airy tents of Fallon’s people with their strange ability to turn a grassy meadow into an oasis of home in just a few short hours.
Shea crossed her arms, holding her elbows as she gazed around with a pensive expression. Her people had lived in this place for several generations and it still felt cold and unwelcoming.
Fallon came up behind her and cupped her shoulders, placing a gentle kiss on the back of her head. Her eyes slid close, and she leaned back against him, enjoying the warmth of him at her back and the solid feel of his frame behind hers.
“What are you thinking?” he asked in a quiet rumble.
“This isn’t home anymore.” There was an ache in her voice and a sense of loss.
His grip tightened and then loosened, his arms coming around to wrap her in a hug as he set his chin on top of her head. “Is that a bad thing or a good thing?”
“I don’t know.” She turned in his arms so that they were pressed front to front. That familiar wicked heat sparked in his gaze, and she felt an answering flush. She ignored it, knowing they didn’t have time to indulge.
“You don’t like the fact that we’ve been separated,” she stated.
His big hands flexed against her back, his whiskey colored eyes watching her intently. “No, it leaves us vulnerable to attack.”
True, but if the pathfinders really wanted to kill them, it wouldn’t matter where the clan members were located. This was their stronghold. They knew all its tricks and hidden passageways. They had weapons at their fingertips that put the boomer to shame. Separate or together, it would make no difference.
“That’s why you instructed Caden to put three to a room,” Shea said slowly.
He grunted, one hand slipping under her shirt to touch skin, his thumb stroking along the bumps of her spine in absent thought.
“If it were possible, I’d have some of the clan leaders stay with the men,” Fallon said with a scowl. He didn’t need to explain why there was little chance of that happening.
The men who made up Fallon’s council had once been the leaders of their clans until Fallon united them under his banner. While they weren’t the ultimate authority they once were, they were still powerful and responsible for the wellbeing of the people they considered theirs.
Unfortunately, the leaders were a fractious bunch, as prone to arguing as working together. If Fallon instructed one or even a few to stay with the majority of the men, they might refuse just on principle, no matter how sound Fallon’s argument.
