Mist's Edge (The Broken Lands #2) - T.A. White Page 0,85

some amazing things, don’t they?”

Shea gave a shrug of agreement. “They do seem to excel at the trades.”

“What about your people? They have anything like this where you come from?”

Shea shrugged noncommittally. She didn’t want to get into another discussion about the Highlands and what it had to offer. One of the reasons it had never been conquered was because most people were convinced there wasn’t anything up there worth conquering. It was hard to go to all that trouble, if there wasn’t going to be a reward worth having at the end of it.

“You do that well,” Darius said, pointing his goblet at her.

“What?”

“Deflect. Pretend to be less than you are.”

She gave him a questioning look, not quite understanding his point.

“When it comes to anything but your abilities with scouting, you downplay what you can do.”

“I don’t do that.” That was ridiculous.

“Oh?” He took another sip of his drink as he studied her. “The beast board. Why haven’t you taken more of an active role? More than scouting, that idea has the greatest potential to effect real change by educating and training our soldiers in the dangers they face every time they step out of camp.”

“That’s Clark’s thing. Him and Charles. They came up with that and they’re doing a great job.”

“They’ve asked for your help several times now.”

“They don’t need it. They’re doing fine as is.”

“That’s your problem. Fine isn’t good enough. You have a unique set of skills that we could take advantage of. I know you know that. Your work trying to prepare Eamon’s men for the mist proves that. You’re good at it too. Surprisingly so.”

Shea didn’t have a response to that, electing to take another sip of her wine.

“You’re a leader who doesn’t want the responsibility of leading,” Darius said after a long pause.

Shea nearly choked on her wine. There were many things that could be laid at her feet. That wasn’t one of them.

“How much of this wine have you had?” she asked Darius.

“Enough to know that I’m right. You’ll see.”

Shea peered at him from the corner of her eye. He didn’t look drunk, but perhaps he hid it better than most.

“Fallon’s changed since he met you,” Darius said after a long silence. “You probably don’t see it, but the rest of us do.”

Shea set her goblet down and leaned back, fixing Darius with a long stare. They were finally getting to the reason he was here.

“What makes you say that?”

“There were plans to invade the Highlands immediately after we conquered the Lowlands.” Darius’s words were a boulder thrown into a still pond.

Shea went still, her heartbeat reverberating in her ears.

“He put that aside.” Darius pointed his goblet at her. “For you. He wouldn’t have done that before.”

“How do you know? I thought you had decided that it was unconquerable because of Bearan’s Fault.”

Bearan’s Fault was a string of cliffs hundreds of miles long. The Highlands sat on the shelf above the Fault and below them was the Lowlands. It was if some giant had ripped the two lands apart and then tried to tape them back together, the resulting pieces not quite lining up again.

Though they weren’t unsurpassable, it would be next to impossible to get an entire army with supplies and horses up them without completely giving up any element of surprise. Such an endeavor would take weeks if not years.

“Not if we went through the Badlands.” He gave her a sly smile. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

She knew much more than that, including a way through the cliffs that would allow Fallon to take his men and horses in half the time and half the danger.

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that you’ve changed him. He’s different now.”

“Let’s say you’re right, and he is. Why are you telling me this?”

He shrugged and poured himself another glass. “Maybe I’m hoping you’ll take pity and not take that exit you made. That you’ll have patience with him. Change takes time. He might seem unreasonable and autocratic, but he has softened with you. More than any other person in this world.”

“And do I just give him a pass in the meantime? Let him walk all over me. Keep me prisoner in the place we call home? How long do I give him to change?” Anger coursed through Shea’s voice. He wasn’t putting this all on her shoulders. She didn’t know a lot about relationships, but she knew they were a partnership, each person responsible for the well-being of the whole. She couldn’t do