Page 98 of The Flame and the Forsaken

“There’s an ease about her. When she’s with him... she has to pretendnotto love him. I’d hoped and prayed I was wrong, but—” Augustine slammed her mouth shut. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “You know, if I know Mariel, she’s embarrassed. She’ll believe she’s lost the part of herself we love and respect, and I...” She wiped one eye, then the other. “I’ll nay contribute to that.”

“But shecan’tlove him, Auggie. It’s impossible.” Remy’s eyes flared wide in his desperation.

“Why, becausewelove her?” Augustine shook her head. “Remy, I told you before. Erran is well loved by his people. For his kindness... his uncommon empathy. Maybe she sees in him what others do, or maybe she sees that, through love, she can do more than she’s ever done with us.”

“She’ll never persuade a monster to stop terrorizing.”

Augustine shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But she’ll do all she can. You know that.”

“When Mariel gets here,” Destin said, “she’s going to call for an end to Obsidian Sky. Not forhim.For you. Your names are known because you were there, but Erran, his mates... No one wants to take this further. It dies here. In this forest. And we let it die.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Augustine said. “Like there aren’t now three highborns who know two-thirds of the names of the outlaws who terrorized them.”

“Nothing about our lives has ever been simple, Augustine.” Destin searched for her gaze and locked it. He felt the full weight of his question as it left his tongue. “Aren’t you tired?”

More tears spilled. “Of course I’m tired, Des. But ifwetire, where does it leave the people suffering?”

“There will always be suffering, but adding to misery with our own doesn’t ease theirs. Sometimes enough is enough. We’ve done enough.”

Destin had decided to leave before Mariel arrived. He’d delivered her message for her, for better or worse, and the two she owed the most to were still there.

He knew in his bones they’d never see Alessia or Magnur again.

Destin stood. “She’ll be here soon. I can’t tell you how to feel. And yet, try to remember all she’s done for us. It’s not for us to decide where and how she finds her happiness. But we can try to be glad she’s finally found it.”

“Where are you going?” Remy asked.

“To do what’s necessary,” Destin said. “Before I no longer can.”

Remyand Augustine were the only ones there when Mariel arrived. Augustine recounted everything Destin had said, while Remy offered only sighs.

Mariel felt herself paling with every revelation. She’d planned to tell her friends herself about Erran, in her own words, but her brother hadtakenthat from her. In doing so, he’d driven off both Alessia and Magnur, and she might never get a chance to explain things. And then he hadn’t even stuck around for the aftermath.

“I see,” she said when it was all out. “Was he on the drink again?”

Remy shook his head with a short laugh. “He was as lucid as I can remember him.”

“Why then? Why would he say all that?”

Augustine slid in beside her on the log. “He wanted to help you. And we love you, Mar. We always have.” Augustine’s face had been hidden by the evening shadows, so Mariel hadn’t seen her tears before. “It defies all logic, but if you love Erran, who are we to tell you it’s wrong?”

“It is wrong.” Mariel wrung her hands over the warm fire. Everything she’d planned to say had to be scrapped. The team already knew Obsidian Sky was over. They’d learned the truth about her darkest secret but also her greatest joy. “Nay. Nay, it isn’t wrong. What he and I went through would bond anyone, but...”But it was more than that. I see him, who he’s meant to be. And he sees me as I am and loves me all the more for it. He sees what made me, and he would do anything to keep that hurt from others.

“But you love him, and that’s that.” Remy stood, dusting his hands down his pants with a hard breath out. “A quite unexpected twist, but you never did anything halfway.”

Mariel looked at his sister. Her first love, in a way. She and Remy had both filled that need, and she’d fulfilled theirs. But she saw now there were phases to a life, and she was no longer in the one that had held them so cosmically close. “Auggie?”

“Oh, ah, I ken we’ll manage,” she said, squinting tears away. “It was time.”

“Time?”

“There can be no momentum from a slow horse,” Remy answered for her. “We’d been slowing for some time now. All of us. The heist before the auction wasn’t our best work. We left tracks. We... doesn’t matter. All things have a season, and this season has been over for longer than we chose to admit. Now that they know our names, it’s over regardless.”

She sensed more unsaid. “But?”

Remy sighed. “But now we have to figure out what to do with ourselves, aye?”

“There’s something... else, Mar. I have a confession,” Augustine said quietly. “When I told you about Erran bedding all those women, it wasn’t true.”

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