“Are you so eager to claim responsibility for everything that’s gone wrong?” Whelan asked, arching an eyebrow. “Are you so arrogant?”
Shea drew back, his words almost a physical blow. She looked away.
“I didn’t think so.” His face twisted with a macabre amusement.
She rocked back and forth. She didn’t want to believe what was right in front of her eyes. To do so felt like the biggest of betrayals. Not hers. No, it was betrayal by the people she’d trusted most.
If this was true, it meant she’d been exiled for nothing, stripped of her aspirations and goals, sent to the back of beyond for something that was never her fault. She stilled as realization sank deep.
“They called Fallon here, using my crimes against us. Now, you’re telling me it isn’t even true? None of it?” she said, her voice a low thrum of danger.
Whelan was silent. “They’re desperate, honey bee. They’ve faced this problem for almost your mom’s entire reign as guildmaster. And there you were, an army at your beckoning, the answer to our prayers.”
The sound Shea made was ugly. “After they’d thrown me out, made me feel ashamed and discarded. Now they want something from us.”
“Well, you did come out of one of the most dangerous shitholes we know of without any of the people you went in with,” he said. “After you were expressly told not to go there.”
Shea scoffed. “No one told us any such thing.”
He gave her a scathing look. “We didn’t think we had to. Didn’t you get the point after all of the stories that started ‘no one goes here?’”
Shea folded her arms over her chest.
“Your biggest flaw has always been your pride,” Whelan told her, exasperation in his voice. “You should have known better than to take that journey, especially with the paltry number you took. People died.”
“You think I don’t know that,” Shea snapped. “I see their faces in my nightmares. Every single one of them volunteered, and they would have gone with or without me.”
“You can’t punish the dead,” Whelan said, his voice strong. “You’re the only one who survived. Like it or not, you’re the only one they can blame.”
“Maybe the rest of them, but not my parents,” Shea yelled. The sound startled her, the force of her anger surprising.
She’d thought she’d put this behind her. Seeing the list, putting everything together had brought all her feelings to the surface, exposed a wound that had been festering. Now, they wanted Fallon to protect them.
Whelan watched her, his face thoughtful. “Did you ever consider that maybe they were protecting you?”
Shea scoffed. “Is that why they never bothered to contact me all these years?”
He arched one eyebrow. “Did you ever contact them?”
Shea’s mouth snapped shut and she looked away.
He snorted. “You’re not the only one who was afraid. Your parents, strong though they might seem, are still human. You came back broken. You wouldn’t have survived here, not with everyone laying the blame at your feet simply because you were the one who lived. Sending you away to heal was the best choice they could make given the circumstances. It’s a guilt they’ve carried with them all these years.”
Shea folded her arms across her body, feeling the need to protect herself from those words. She didn’t answer him, unable to pull out a response that made sense.
Whelan sighed, understanding without having to be told that she wasn’t willing to discuss this further.
“You wanted to know if the alliance your mother proposed was real.” Whelan’s words were perceptive as he returned to the topic at hand. “It is. This is proof.”
Maybe so, but something was still off.
“Why haven’t they cemented the alliance already?” Shea asked, pushing down the feelings his words had managed to stir up. “We’ve been here for weeks.”
Whelan lifted an eyebrow. “Do you really need to ask?”
Shea narrowed her eyes, her thoughts racing, trying to put together everything she knew about the pathfinders. The surprise when Fallon had confronted them, the lag in meeting with the council, the hostility of some.
“They don’t know, do they?” she said in realization. “They have no idea about the alliance, about what she proposed.”
