It wasn’t that he didn’t trust in her and her abilities. Of all those he’d known, Shea was probably the best person on the trail he’d ever met. She had an intuitive sense of the world around her, but he knew better than most how unforgiving the wild could be. A single mistake could doom you. It didn’t have to even be a mistake. Nature was the greatest of foes. If it set its mind against you, it was almost impossible to survive.
However, he hadn’t gotten where he was by letting fear guide his hand. Shea needed this. It was in his power to give. He’d find a way to reconcile himself to it. It would just take time.
“Is he ready?” Fallon asked, long after Shea and the others had disappeared.
“Yes.”
Fallon pushed himself away from the edge. “Let’s get this done, then.”
Caden fell into step beside him as they made their way back inside the keep. “You know it’s not the end of the world to get to know your telroi’s father.”
Fallon stalked along in silence, not responding.
Caden didn’t let that deter him. “If she was part of the clans, you would have had to negotiate with her father after having proved your worth.”
“Is there a point to this?” Fallon asked, irritated.
Caden shrugged. “Just saying, look at it as if her father was clan and you needed his blessing.”
“That doesn’t help,” Fallon growled.
Caden was too well trained to let the amusement show on his face, but Fallon saw it nonetheless. It was there around his eyes and the corners of his mouth as they tilted up just slightly.
With a grunt Fallon stalked away, his long legs eating up the ground.
“It’s not like you to care what one man might think,” Caden said, not even breathing hard or appearing to hurry as he kept pace with Fallon.
Except Shea’s father wasn’t just a man. He was part of a powerful group capable of giving Fallon everything he’d been working towards for the better part of his life. Those boomers would give his warriors an overwhelming advantage, make it so nothing and no one could threaten his force.
That, and the fact that Fallon had never had to concern himself with winning over a father. In the clans, he was beloved. Any father would have been overjoyed had he asked for their daughter. If for any reason that had proved a problem, he could have won the right through combat.
That wouldn’t be so easy here. For one, he doubted Shea would be very forgiving if he damaged her father in any way. He knew his telroi. The woman had a heart as vast and loyal and steadfast as the sky. They might be estranged but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t set out to make the person who’d hurt her family pay.
It put Fallon in the uncomfortable position of having to care for someone else’s good opinion. He preferred it when he could just crush his opposition.
He arrived at a small courtyard at the back of the Keep. A garden had been planted in the small beds and an intricate path traveled through the bushes and flower beds. Shea’s people, he had noticed, seemed to be obsessed with growing things. Plants had found a place wherever they could take root. Even on some of the battlements. Fallon wondered if that had something to do with the amount of stone and rock the pathfinders surrounded themselves with.
Shea’s father stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes on a rose bush.
“Good luck,” Caden said in a low voice, remaining behind as Fallon crossed the courtyard.
Gravel crunched under his feet, announcing his presence.
Patrick didn’t turn, remaining fixated on the roses. Fallon didn’t speak. If this was one of his men or even an elder from a village he had conquered, he’d know exactly how to act. But this was Shea’s father, and that changed everything and nothing.
“I hear my daughter is taking some of our students out today with my nephew,” Patrick said, lifting his head but still not turning as Fallon reached his side.
Fallon didn’t feel the need to confirm the obvious.
Patrick’s face creased. “I can see why my daughter likes you.”
Fallon tilted his head, examining the man next to him before directing his attention to the plants, fighting impatience.
The man had said he wanted to hunt. Fallon didn’t see how they were to do that in this small courtyard.
“We should get started,” Patrick said as if reading Fallon’s thoughts. “This is the best time for hunting.”
Patrick disappeared through a door in the Keep, the clear expectation that Fallon would follow.
