Page 106 of The Flame and the Forsaken

“The most terrible dream,” she muttered. Her eyes slowly opened and widened. “Erran?”

“There’s a fire in the keep,” he replied, forcing himself through hacking coughs. Over her head, he watched a long, blurry line of men racing back into the keep with water buckets, his father among them. “Can you walk?”

Mariel tried to sit. He helped her to her feet, but she was too unsteady, so he slipped an arm around her waist and half carried her across the veranda. He heard his name called out, and he followed it and found his mother and Destin standing with several of their closest attendants.

“Oh, my son, thank the Guardians!” she cried and flung her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder. “Please tell me Sessaly followed you.”

Erran’s stomach plummeted. “I thought she was with you. She wasn’t in her room.”

“Oh, Guardians!” Hestia howled and charged back to the entrance, but it was Mariel who stopped her.

“If she’s in there, they’ll find her,” Mariel said. She stumbled a step, her eyes fighting closure.

Erran tightened his hold around her waist.

“I saw your husband go in with the others, with buckets. He’ll find her, Hestia.”

Destin was crouched, breathing through his threaded hands. He abruptly sprang back up. “I’m going to help.”

“Desi!” Mariel cried, reaching for him, but her protestation did nothing. He ran off to join the others, and only Erran’s quick reflexes kept Mariel from darting after him.

Erran smoothed some hair from Mariel’s eyes and kissed between her brows. To see her in the flesh, after so many weeks apart, sent him reeling with how powerfully he loved her, even more with absence. He had a devastating urge to use the chaos to run as far away with her as their legs could take them. But he couldn’t leave with Sessaly and others still missing. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, speechless and teary.

“I don’t just mean from today, Mariel.”

“Nay,” she whispered, hoarse.

He whispered his gratitude to the sky and kissed her on the mouth. “If something had happened to you...”

Mariel swayed, and Hestia charged forward to help catch her. Erran suspiciously noted his mother’s concern for someone they’d kept locked up for months.

But she was his mother first, and if he needed her to protect his wife so he could help others, he knew he could trust that.

“You’ll look after her?” he asked her, following the line of men rushing in and out of the burning keep.

“Will I look after her? Of course, dear. But, Erran?—”

“Don’t tell me not to help, Mother.” He cradled Mariel’s face in his hands and crushed a fierce kiss to her mouth. “Iloveyou, Mariel Rutland. Whatever happens, never believe in any other truth but that one. Never listen to anyone who says otherwise. I never gave up on you, and I never will.”

He tried to smile through his fear, but his mouth would not obey. Reluctantly, he released her, but one of his father’s pages came rushing over, waving something in his hand.

Erran snatched the folded paper, right as Hestia and Mariel appeared over his shoulders.

“You took everything from us,” he read aloud, “and now we take everything from you. The land returns to the people in two days, or your daughter will be lost to the sea. Yours in vengeance, every man, woman, and child you’ve aggrieved.”

Hestia gasped, smashing her hands to her mouth. She screeched her daughter’s name into her fingers.

Erran closed his eyes and pocketed the letter. “Is this...” he asked Mariel, quiet only enough for the two of them.

“Nay. We don’t operate this way. They would never do this,” she said. “But they might... They might be able to find out who it really was.”

There was something distant and worrisome in Mariel’s eyes, and he sensed it wasn’t about the fire or Sessaly or anything immediately clear. He would ask later. Whatlaterlooked like was a matter for the fates, but the one thing he knew for certain was she would never be anyone’s prisoner again.

“Wait with my mother.” Erran spotted where the men were getting the buckets and pointed himself that way. “And tell her what you just told me, Mariel. We must do everything in our power to get her back.”

Mariel nodded. Her eyes were squeezed closed. She paced from one foot to the other. “Wait?—”

---