Page 53 of The Flame and the Forsaken

He watched her closely for another second or two before sighing. “Is Destin the Flame?”

“Nay.” Her stomach clenched. “Are you still in love with Yesenia?”

Erran balked a bit, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t know.”

“It’s an aye or nay question,” she replied.

“Aye, and I don’t have an answer for you.”

“Why?”

“You can’t ask me that. Is Remy the Flame?”

“Nay. Would you rather it was Yesenia here with you on Feck-All Island?”

His neck twitched. “Nay.” He spread his hands over the table and looked directly at her. “Areyouthe Flame?”

Blood flooded her face, then rushed away. Her heart thumped wildly, her skin a graveyard of raised flesh. Her breath in was more of a shudder. “Aye.”

Erran closed his eyes. He pulled his hands down his face with a protracted groan. “So it is true. Guardians deliver us.” He shook his head. “NowI understand why you married me.Finally.”

Mariel asked her next question without thinking. “Do you hate me for it?”

Concern filled his expression. He shook his head slowly. “Nay.”

“Nay?”

“Nay, I don’t hate you. I never did.” His eyes swam with what seemed like pain. “You’re the only one who brought hatred into our marriage.”

“That’s... veering too far from the rules,” she said shakily. “Your turn.”

He held out his hands, his mouth parted. “I ken I’m done.”

“So that’s it? You have no more questions for me?”

“I have tons of fucking questions for you, Mariel!” His hands fell to the table with a thud. “But you won’t answer them. And I won’t make you.”

Mariel held her tongue. There wasn’t anything else to say, because there was nothing she was comfortable telling. He already knew her darkest secret. The rest belonged to others as much as her.

The room lit up. Thunder split the sky. She started to stand when he spoke up.

“Nay, I have one more for you. I do have one more.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. His cheeks were flushed. “Were you trying to stop the auction?”

“Uh...” Mariel was caught off guard by the question, but he’d already put it together, and he was after confirmation, not revelation. “Aye.”

Erran cast his gaze away, nodding. “I ken we don’t need a watch tonight. The boars will be sheltering from the storm, not conspiring to eat us.”

“Erran—”

“Nay. Nay, Mariel. I don’t have any talk left in me tonight unless you’re willing to tell me the whole story. And you’re not, are you?”

Tears pooled in her eyes as she shook her head. She didn’t know where they’d come from.

“Thought not.” He reached into the first aid basket and handed her a strip of cloth.

Mariel stared at it in wonder until she realized he’d given it to her to dry her eyes. She looked up at him, for once seeing a man not tied to her greatest heartaches. He was just the beautiful, raven-haired, mossy-eyed man who had followed the woman who had treated him with nothing but contempt into the doom of the unknown, knowing full well it would spell the end of his aspirations. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

He made a line with his mouth and nodded once.

---