Page 9 of The Flame and the Forsaken

Ever briefly, she looked affronted. “Aye, well you’ll never know, will you?” Her eyes softened, like she regretted the words but didn’t know how to say so.

It took him a few more moments to work up to what he wanted to say. “I have to say something, Mariel.” Erran pulled a chair from the writing desk and sat backward, eyeing her. His mother’s ominous words had played on perpetual repeat in his thoughts. Mariel might have been the last woman he’d ever choose, but if he couldn’t bring her around to his side, he’d lose everything that mattered. His birthright. His honor. Forthathe could close his eyes and his heart and do what was required. “You keep saying you were sold into this marriage, but there was no... noforcingyou. Your brother signed the pre-contract. You signed the contract. So I don’t ken why you’re now acting like a prisoner of my family.”

She appeared taken aback by his question, her mouth opening in the start of an answer that never came.

“Am I wrong?”

Mariel shook her head. “Submission and permission have different definitions.”

“Submission?” He scoffed. “When have you ever known any Southerland woman to be submissive?”

“You ken what I mean.”

“Do I?”

She said nothing.

“So the man in the reeds this morning, is he the one you really wanted?”

Mariel gave up on her pacing and dropped onto the edge of the bed, her languid gaze pointed toward the row of windows overlooking the loch. “He’s not my lover.”

“Then what?” He leaned closer. “What is he to you that he would sneak onto our property to come visit you before dawn?”

She ruminated before answering. He couldn’t help wondering at all the responses she’d abandoned. “Khallum. Samuel. Hamish.”

“What about them?”

“Your mates, not quite kin but the closest to it.”

Erran nodded. “All right.”

“That’s what he is to me,” she said, looking just past him. “Like kin.”

“You’ve never mentioned him before.”

“You’ve never asked me about my life before I came to Goldsea Spires.”

“Haven’t I? Perhaps because we’ve had so little time together.” He knew he hadn’t. Even his mother knew how shameful little interest he’d taken in his wife’s past.

“Right.”

“Mariel, be fair. You’re not exactly areasonable—” The cutting look she gave him made him reconsider finishing.

“Your mother knows we’re standing on stolen Ashdown land. She doesn’t hide it or smooth it over with pretty illusions. Why do you pretend?” She finally looked at him, her mossy eyes piercing his with cool indictment.

Erran sputtered. “Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”

Mariel shifted a weary, withering glance toward the ceiling. “You’re either a feloniously terrible liar or you really do know nothing, and I can’t decide which is worse. Truly I can’t.” Her hands lifted and then fell with her gaze. “I don’t ken why I’m even explaining this to you. You’re just a...” Her words collapsed with an open-mouthed sigh.

“Iwantto know.” Erran reached without thinking, his palm skating across the bony part of her knee. His own horror reflected back at him through her stunned glare as she shot to her feet in defiance. He tucked the offending hand under his leg. “Tell me. Please.”

Mariel looked down at herself like she’d gladly be rid of her own skin. “You want to know? Then ask your father, Errandil. I’m calling for a bath.”

Mariel didn’t havetime or energy to waste in bickering with the princeling, but he wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t outright called her a hypocrite, but he would have been well within his right to.

---