Page 48 of The Flame and the Forsaken

“You don’t want me to hunt him, aye, but you’re perfectly fine with him eating our dried meat?”

Erran balanced her leg with one hand and wrapped with the other, annoyed with himself for how gingerly he was being with her even as she was once again using insults to make him feel like less of a man. “Do you really think boars eat dried meat?”

“And why not?”

“For the same reason they wouldn’t eat a rotted carcass, Mariel. Their instincts would tell them it’s not fresh and therefore not safe! And from the scent of it, the dried meat is probably boar, aye? So you kenthisboar is just magically the only cannibal boar alive?” He cinched the first wrap, tighter than was necessary.

Her eyes closed briefly, but she voiced no complaint.

“Things I’d expect you to have learned, from all your outlawing.”

“Outlawing? Is that even a word? Or are highborns so used to everyone following what they say that you’re just inventing them now?” Mariel’s expression was curled in disgust, but her hands gripped the chair so tightly, her knuckles had gone bone white. “A desperate enough beast will eatanything.That’s what I learned all those years in the forests of Mistgrave, wondering where my next meal would come from.”

“Your parents,” he said through gritted teeth, tightening another length of cloth, “should have had a plan for you if something happened to them. That’s naught to do with me.”

“Whatprivilegedrips from the tongue of a boy who thinks everyone has access to the same advantages. A plan, you say? And what would such a plan entail, when most of the adults we knew were dead or dying from scurvy, and our land was being stolen faster than we could build upon it?”

“You say stolen, but thelawforbids felons from owning land in the Southerlands.”

“The law? You mean your father?”

“I mean the law, Mariel.” He tied another strip.

“They’re the same, and even you’re not stupid enough to be blind to it. Who benefits from the land being taken? Men like your father. Who determines what’s a crime and what is not? The men who work for him. Ah, what a pretty picture this paints, don’t you think, Errandil?”

Heat engulfed his face, burning the backs of his eyes, which watered from anger. His mouth puckered in rage he could barely suppress, but he had to. He had to. No matter how she goaded him, he could not let her see him like that. She was still his wife, at least until they returned home and he secured the annulment he should have demanded months ago. “You take the cot tonight. I’ll take the floor.”

“I’ll nay argue with that,” Mariel muttered. “And we may even keep warm, since we held onto the crate with the blankets.”

Erran restrained himself, giving her ankle a light tap instead of the squeeze he felt like offering. “Stay off of it.” He cast a sigh and a glance at the door, which was drumming open and closed in the building wind. “We’ll have to keep watch.”

“Watch?” She lowered her ankle to the floor, delicately resting her heel there.

“The door doesn’t latch. I could slide the table over, but there’s not much weight to it. Nothing else in here would do.” He gathered up the spillage from the crate and dug out the bag of meat, then tossed it to Mariel. “I’ll take the first.”

She looked almost sad as she eyed the bag in her hands. It faded abruptly. “Why? Because you’re a man?”

He snorted. “Nay, Mariel. Because I’m neither hungry nor tired anymore, and if I have to spend one more minute in here with you, I’ll go feral myself.”

“What about the storm?”

“I’m not afraid of a little rain.” Erran snatched one of the blankets from the crate and left before she could sling another cutting insult. He draped it over a log and checked to ensure the flint was still in his pocket after their near catastrophe.

Everything she’d said was taking up far too much space in his thoughts, making him angry all over again, so instead he searched for the sticks he’d need to kindle a fire, his eyes always toward the spot where the beast had watched them. There were still a few logs stacked against the side of the cabin from whoever had occupied it last. If they were there much longer, they’d need to chop more.

As he carried his bundle back, an idea came to him. It pissed him off that he was still thinking ofher,but he still lifted the branch from the gloaming and holding it against his leg in measurement.

Erran arranged the logs and kindling, then used the flint to spark a flame on the edge of the cloth he’d brought out as a fire starter. It flickered and caught on fast, and he quickly dropped it on top of the arranged twigs. Within minutes, it had enough life that he could settle onto the log and relax.

Relax. He wanted to laugh. Even if he wasn’t stranded on an island no one knew he was on, there’d be no relaxing when Mariel Ashdown was there to remind him of how fast she could go from warm and fun to a glacier.

He still hadn’t worked up the courage to push for the conversation he’d warned her was coming. But demanding answers at this point would only fill in holes, confirming the suspicions her visit to Banner had earthed. He just needed to hearhersay it. And he needed to know why.

With a sigh, he laid his sword on the log next to him for ease of draw. He extracted her dagger and whittled the branch he’d brought back with him, clearing his mind and heart of a day that had first lifted him but then buried him in the earth.

It was nearlydawn before Mariel finally succumbed to exhaustion. Her thoughts had nagged her into restlessness, sending her conscience into a confused tailspin.

Erran was a figurehead of everything she’d fought against for ten years. He was also a man who had been nothing but kind to her, no matter what profanities or bitterness she’d lobbed at him—a man who had saved her when leaving her behind would have been a guarantee of his own safety and then, as she’d accosted him, had calmly wrapped her ankle because even in his own anger, he could still do what needed to be done.

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