“What were the terms?” Thordin rumbled, eyeing the two men as they returned to the relative safety within the camp’s walls.
Phelan was the one to close the gates and lift the bar back into place as Thom answered. “Not good.”
“Not good or not good enough?” Marin asked from her perch, keeping half an eye on the goings-on beyond the walls.
“Both,” Thom said. “Mostly the latter. He wants us to leave and forget we ever lived here. I told him no deal.”
“Doesn’t seem to be attacking yet, though,” Matt observed.
“He gave us half an hour to stew. I’m not sure why he thought we’d change our minds.”
Phelan shook his head slowly. “I doubt that he actually does. I don’t think his ego is quite that impressive.” He frowned briefly. “Or that confident. The threats were designed to scare you.”
Thom stared at him. “And the offer to you, to let you leave unharmed?”
Phelan winced. Was hoping he’d keep that under his hat. No such luck. “I’ve got no idea what it means.”
“He offered to let you bail?” Thordin grasped his shoulder. “Why would he do that?”
“Something that Aoife did,” Phelan growled. “I don’t know what she did and I’m not sure what she had to give to exact that promise from him, but she did it.”
“And you’re going to squander it,” Thordin surmised.
“She knows better than to pull stunts like that,” Phelan said quietly. “I’m the master of my fate. Not her.”
That assumes that anyone’s the master of their own fate. His eyes slid shut for a moment and he sucked in a breath, fingers flexing around the staff in his hand.
Steady. He opened his eyes and looked at Thom. “We can beat him,” he said simply. “He can’t cross the wards.”
Thom nodded. “They just have to hold.”
“They’ll hold,” Kellin said, eyes narrowing dangerously as she headed toward the wall to take up her firing position with the rest. “You said yourself weeks ago that Marin makes wards strong enough to rattle your teeth. I believe it.”
“She’s got a point,” Thordin said. “The wardings are strong. You can feel them even if they’re not supposed to stop you from coming in.”
Phelan glanced toward the gates again, lips thinning. “I wonder.”
“What?”
He smiled wryly at Thom. “If I can leverage my own immunity into immunity for a few more.”
The younger man frowned. “What kind of good would that do?”
Phelan looked him square in the eye. “It could save you and Marin.”
Thom opened his mouth, then closed it again, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
“We need to talk.”
For the second time in the last ten minutes, he took Phelan by the arm and dragged him away.
