Page 2 of The Flame and the Forsaken

“Aye, but at least you’re home, for a spell,” Remy said, glancing around with a poignant grin. “I try not to think about how much I miss Mistgrave... this lake...” He shook his head, then tipped a nod behind her. “Whose idea was this atrocity, anyway?”

“The palatial cabin?” She rolled her eyes. “You’ve seen Goldsea Spires. You know how high the Rutlands aim.”

“And always fall short. They don’t ken the soul of a place. The blood running just under the soil, the heart pumping life to the fish, the elk-kind, the crickets and frogs...” He seemed to have more to say, but his lips pursed in disgust. Unlike the rest of her friends, Remy and his sister, Augustine, were technically from the Easterlands, from a town just north of the Southerlands border on the other side of the line from Mistgrave. But they’d spent enough time with Mariel and the others to adopt a softer affectation of the rough salt-and-sand accent associated with the Southerlands. Like hers, it was a composite of both worlds and, for the work they did, useful for blending in.

“Three months of him away has given me plenty of time to think, but I confess I wasn’t ready for him to come back. He’ll be expecting a wife when he settles, and I know what I signed up for when I agreed to this, but so far...” Mariel groaned. “Ah, I didn’t sneak out here to talk about the useless princeling, so please tell me you have something new about the private auction we can use.”

Remy rolled his neck, revealing the ink she’d given him right at the edge of his collarbone: a black sword piercing a cloud, their group’s insignia. Beneath it was a map and quill, his personal signature. She’d been hesitant when he’d asked her to do it. If he were captured, it was as good as a signed confession he was a member of Obsidian Sky—and a proud one. But Remy feared a cage more than a scaffold. “Augustine learned there’s a dealer organizing the thing, but no name. No location yet either. Alessia is making her tavern run over the next few nights, to see if she can get any drunkards to spill more, but I ken those organizing the event are deliberately keeping the details close to their vests.”

“Hmm.” Too close. Mariel’s own father-in-law was the architect of the whole thing, and he’d mentioned the auction exactly once in her presence. She drummed her fingers against her biceps. “And still no date?”

“Could be next week. Next year. Whoever knows, they’re keeping the details close.”

“Nay, not next year. They won’t wait that long. It’d be like offering infinite spirits to a man lost to the drink and expecting him to pace himself.” As nice as it felt to be close to someone she loved, she challenged fate with every minute she lingered. If anyone saw them, they’d assume she was having an affair, which, while safer than the truth, would only hurt her objective. “If we don’t find out when and where?—”

Remy’s hands shot out and gripped her cheeks. “We won’t let what happened to us happen to others. Now that the heir apparent has returned, you’ll get what we need, and those robber barons will tuck tail and slink back to their keeps and castles, humiliated and penniless. It willchangethe way they do business, forever, and they’ll finally know we’re more than just a nuisance to swat away.” He was quiet for a moment. “And then you can be done with all of this and come home to us.”

Preventing more commoners and gentry from having their land stolen in an illegal, private auction for the nobility was Obsidian Sky’s principal goal, and the plan was to intercept the gold and dump it into the sea, where it would belong to no one. The outlaws had agreed it was the only way to ensure it never fell back into the hands of the powerful. But Mariel couldn’t stop thinking about how that much wealth couldchange everything. It could feed entire villages. They could do so much more for the people than they’d ever done with their midnight heists. The others were afraid to dream big, but they’d lost sight of the very reason they’d formed Obsidian Sky, to quash such powerlessness and keep it from ever returning.

Even Remy wasn’t ready for that conversation. She didn’t have long to get him there, but it was more time than she had available that morning.

Mariel lowered her eyes and nodded. “I should go. The silk stocking will be wanting his breakfast soon.”

He swept in and kissed her—brief, chaste, but near enough to genuine intimacy to remind her how cold her existence had been since the light had gone out in her life... since her mother and father and sister had died, leaving her and Destin to choose whether they’d suffer as their loved ones had or risk everything by fighting back.

Perhaps she could have made a love match, or at least a tolerable marriage, had she opted to sit back and let others continue to run roughshod over them, generation after cursed generation.

But Mariel Ashdown, known as the Flame to her enemies and Shadowstep to her admirers, would spend whatever minutes, hours, days, or years the Guardians had planned for her in fearless rebellion.

No indecisions.

No regrets.

She joined her forehead to Remy’s, exhaled, and nodded.

Erran knewMariel was hiding something from him, and while he shouldn’t care, he damn well did.

As he watched her slip through the hall and down the steps like a vengeful sprite, clearly pleased with her duplicity, he wanted nothing more than to call out to her and watch her expression dissolve when she realized she’d been caught. But then he’d never know where she was headed.

There was no love lost between them. How could there be whenlovehad nothing to do with their cobbled-together, last-minute handfast? The past few months at sea had been... a reprieve from his new reality. From the marriage he had been given no choice in. But hewasher husband, like it or not, and he had a right to know what she was up to—and a responsibility to protect her from herself.

Not that she wanted or needed his help. Behind her painted-on smiles, her loathing was palpable.

Erran supposed that was his curse. He’d loved one fiercely independent woman and had become shackled to another, the second an unhappy consequence of the first.

He cleared the porch and stepped between the tall reeds. Fog coated the tops, obscuring the two paths she could have taken. But he’d learned to track from his grandfather Rehor, and Mariel hadn’t bothered to cover her footprints. If nothing else summed up their farce of a marriage, it was her thinking him too pretty and stupid to be a problem.

He trudged east, dodging dewy stalks. He’d never liked Mistgrave, or any of the lake district, unlike the rest of his family who treated it like a secret stash of splendor. Being so far from the sea unmoored him, made him feel as though the earth was closing in on all sides, his death knell in the form of shrilling crickets and croaking frogs. He already missed his crew and ship, Perseverancia, and yearned for the day when he’d assume command of his father’s fleet and spend his days at sea, beneath the swelter of hot days, falling asleep to the gulls’ cries.

As he rounded the east bank, he heard the voice of a man. Mariel’s drifted on the end of whatever he’d said, followed by her long, drawn sigh. Erran slid his boots to cover the squish and inched closer, until he spotted Mariel’s long, dark waves through the reeds. Her head was tilted up at the man holding her, someone Erran didn’t recognize. Whoever he bloody was, he was looking at Mariel the way Erran had always looked at Yesenia.

A dark clench formed in his belly. It wasn’t jealousy. His father couldn’t have picked a more incompatible pairing for him than the stony-eyed, mercurial Mariel Ashdown. But the trip to Loch Ethereal was a not-so-gentle nudge to push Erran and Mariel to finally consummate their union and bring an heir. His father had eyes everywhere. Her dipping out to meet a lover was more than foolish. It was dangerous.

After brushing Mariel’s hair away from her brow, the man tweaked her ear and dashed off, disappearing between a thicket of bowing trees.

With a distraught look at the sky, Mariel raked her fingers down her cheeks.

Erran eased a hard breath through his nose and marched over. She whipped her head up in alarm, but he wasn’t giving her a chance to speak first. “Have ye lost your mind then, Mariel?”

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