Page 22 of The Flame and the Forsaken

Hamish frowned. “Oh, aye?”

Samuel shook his head and turned back toward Erran. “Where does she think you are tonight? If she’s sore about the chambermaids, she won’t much like you in a brothel until dawn.”

His friend’s questions were right. Valid. The ones heshouldbe asking. But it assumed Erran had valid answers. Nothing about Mariel’s behavior made sense. By all accounts from his mother, she’d been perfectly congenial in his absence. Polite. Pliant. Nothing at all like the spitfire who’d slapped him in Mistgrave and humiliated him in his own home in front of everyone. “Couldnae say, Samuel. She went off to be with her brother before the party ended.”

“She always carry a mask when she goes to visit her brother?” Hamish asked.

“Sorry?”

“She had a mask in her hand is all. Saw her from the balcony. Do they play mummers together?”

“Guardians, Hamish, mummers is for children,” Samuel scolded.

Erran sat up straight. Thatwascurious. “You sure that’s what you saw, Ham?”

“Aye, sure as anything.”

“And she was headed north, aye? Toward her brother’s place?”

Hamish squinted one eye, his face pulling up on the same side. “Oy... nay. Nay, she went east actually. Aye, was east, toward the village.”

Mariel wasn’t done keeping secrets then.

Well,hewas done with her keeping them.

“Excuse me, mates.” Erran pushed back from the table. His blood boiled with unknowns. He’d been back hardly a week, and already he’d tarnished his own reputation, with Mariel all too happy to make it even worse. He might not be able to fix the first, but he’d be damned if he let her errant behavior push him out of the admiralty. “It seems I need to go find mywife.”

Mariel nursedthe heavy golden egg between her hands. At her feet, beside the log she was sitting on, was a mug of the old cider Remy had procured from a taverner who was going to throw it out because it was past its expiry. She hadn’t touched hers, but the others were on their second or third rounds. Their glossy eyes and swelling laughter were a sign it hadn’t lost its potency at least.

Even if she’d wanted some, she was too distracted to command her body to lean or her hand to reach for it. What she should have been doing was loosening up and joining them, as she’d always had before she’d signed her marriage contract. Even in Erran’s months away, she’d still felt free, like herself. Old Mariel would not have tensed at the potential snag in their plan, the way she had when Remy had sounded the bird call. She would have relished the small bit of challenge it posed in an otherwise now-rote routine they could all perform in their sleep.

It was always the same. Isolate, subdue, steal, flee. Retreat to camp, eat, drink, enjoy the merriment, distribute the spoils to the people in need. Do it all again when the next opportunity landed in their laps.

Mariel couldn’t make sense of where her own head was at. She’d had far longer than she’d imagined to learn the ways of the Rutlands, without having to share a bed or life with one. At first, she’d been annoyed he was leaving her for so long, forcing her to endure life in his family sphere longer than she’d ever intended. While she hadn’t known about the auction before the marriage, she’d assumed there would besomethinglike it, some big win she could lead the Sky to and then declare her short marriage a victory for the cause. When he’d gone away to sea, a test run of the eastern coast to prove he was ready for more, she’d taken the slight loss on the chin and made the best of it, biding her time and learning the keep and their ways. She’d reminded herself it wasn’t the worst thing for her to have more time to ready herself for what, even then, she’d known would be her toughest act yet.

She hadn’t seen him at all until after he’d returned from Warwicktown, shame shrouding him and his family after he’d begged Yesenia to leave her husband. It might have been better for everyone if shehad,because then Mariel’s nearly histrionic performances would have been more reasonable.

“You’re not drinking. Or singing. Or doing much of anything other than staring at that ridiculous wad of gold,” Augustine whispered, craning sideways with an inebriated grin. She batted her lashes at Mariel, which made her laugh. “Would you prefer we retire to our tent? Just you and me?”

Mariel lowered her eyes toward the forest floor and shook her head. “Nay, sorry. It’s not about the heist. I wasn’t myself at the party tonight, and I need to do better.”

Augustine’s smile faded. Her expression clouded. “He deserved everything you said.”

“You heard, aye?” Mariel shook her head. “I humiliated him.”

“He deserved it, Mar.”

“But I’m not there to humiliate him, Auggie. Ineedhim.Weneed him.” She watched Destin accidentally slosh whiskey into the crackling fire, sending it roaring briefly higher. Magnur shot him an irritated glare as Destin stumbled away with his bottle without saying a word.

Augustine pulled herself erect. “Be careful about needing him too much, Mar. He’s a volatile man, who would let you starve if it meant filling his own plate.”

“Were you not just telling me you’ve heard naught but good about him?” Mariel laughed. She’d clocked Augustine’s strange fascination with Erran, but she didn’t know what to make of it yet. “Which is it? Is he a diabolical lion or a tender little lamb?”

Remy’s brawny arms hooked around Mariel’s neck as he pulled her head back for a teasing kiss. “What are you two she-demons whispering about over here? Hmm?” He squished between them on the log. Augustine groaned. “And why are you not drunk, lass?”

Her malaise aside, Mariel’s fondness for spirits had waned as Destin’s problem had increased. The others loved him too, but their world was one of high stakes. The reward was helping others, but they bore all the risk. Every heist was a new opportunity to meet the noose. Drinking themselves into oblivion was a small vice in comparison.

“Long night for me,” she replied, trying to smile. “You had no problems with the buyer?”

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