Page 93 of The Flame and the Forsaken

Oh, yes,she thought, drawing her tongue along the back of her teeth. The foreign word, the accent... What a mystery he still was. In a world where she’d been most at ease when everything around her was known, she hadn’t dreamed of how exciting it might be to live for the unexpected.

Erran’s thumbs traced her nipples, sending her eyes rolling back. “Look at yourself, Mariel. Really look at yourself. See what I see, and you would never feel like you did when I walked in, ever again.” He bent down and took a nipple in his mouth. Hot desire coursed through her. “Every time I look at you now, I feel this... this thought:she’s mine, she belongs to me. But you belong to no one. It’s I who belongs to you.”

Mariel spun around and leaped into his arms. “You’re half right, princeling.”

“Mm.” His fingers spread across her bare ass as he held her higher. “Which part?”

“Join me in this bath,” she said between the safety of his kisses. “And maybe I’ll tell you.”

Mariel dreaded their pending departure.Not the leaving part, as she couldn’t get out of Warwicktown faster. It was the good-bye itself, having to look everyone in the eye and pretend she felt no humiliation. She was adept at hiding her true self when she was the Flame, but that cool subtlety existed nowhere in Mariel herself.

It was a good morning to leave. They’d picked fair weather, and the soft-enough coastal breeze would keep them comfortable without waylaying them too far inland.

Mariel was the last to approach the farewell line, after Erran. Khallum leaned in to embrace her and whispered, “Don’t ye dare break his heart.” He kissed the side of her head. “Told him the same.”

She smiled as she moved on to Gwyn and Korah, both women talking over each other through their insistence she was welcome anytime.

“Yesenia, it was lovely to see you again,” Erran said, just ahead. He chastely kissed her cheek before moving on.

“It was... nice to finally make your acquaintance,” Mariel said when it was her turn. She’d practiced the words, but they had the soreness of a still-healing wound.

Yesenia chortled. She looked as radiant as she had every day of the trip, her hair full and flowing, her masculine fashion giving her a dangerous sexuality even Mariel could concede was appealing. “Ye donnae mean it. And I ken I wouldnae either, were I you.”

Mariel lowered her eyes with a laugh. “Aye. All right.”

“Itwasgood to meet you, Mariel, if only so I could see Erran will be fine, more than fine. He’s where he was meant to be all along.”

“He is. I won’t let him forget it.” Mariel left it at that, moving on.

Corin offered a sympathetic smile and a hug that seemed out of place, mumbling something about doing it again sometime, but she was glad for his understated good-bye. Glad her last memory of the place was the restrained comradery of someone who understood how something that could no longer hurt them could still be painful—maybe the only one who could.

Sessaly opted to ride with her parents on the return, likely on account of the whispers she’d been seen a bit too much with her brother-in-law.

“Are you going to tell us about...” Mariel nodded at the carriage ahead of them.

Destin groaned. “She’s obnoxious.” He nodded in apology at Erran. “Sorry. Since she’s your sister and all.”

Erran held up both hands. “Can’t be angry with a man speaking the truth.”

“She’s betrothed to Aliksander Law, Des,” Mariel said, though it vexed her to remind him. That she had knowledge or interest in the doings of the marriages of highborns was another slap in the face of her cause. Her deterioration.

“Why are you telling me, tell her!”

“Oh, I ken Mother is doing so herself right about now,” Erran said.

“I’m nay interested in her... her whatever.” Destin rolled his eyes and pointed his gaze out the window.

He is,Erran mouthed and Mariel laughed. Destin scowled at the passing hills.

She curled into Erran’s welcome arms and nuzzled against his chest. His fingers brushed soft lines down her arm as he opened the book Khallum had given him, a fiction about two travelers stranded in a forest. One of his lawmen had confiscated it off a thug beating another man in an alleyway, and he’d saved it for his best mate, since he enjoyed reading so much, usually when he was at sea for a spell with long hours to kill. That was something new she’d learned about Erran. It made her like him even more. It made him even more real, a man of his own nature and creation.

Counting his heartbeats calmed hers. It was something she used to do when she was a little girl, when her nightmares had been so frequent and consuming. Her mother would come in and lie beside her until she fell asleep again, to the steady rhythm of her pulse.

“Any good?” she asked when he was an hour into his reading. Across the carriage, Destin snored into his sleeve.

“Hm? Oh, aye. It is.” He kissed the top of her head. “It’s about two people from different kingdoms who end up in the same place by some coincidence and then are chased by madmen into this enchanted forest. They escape, but then realize they’re no longer in their own world at all. They have to work together to find their way home.”

“Do they?”

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