Page 114 of The Flame and the Forsaken

Rylahn swept his eyes over Destin. A flicker of...somethingwas there, but it left before she could understand. “You and I have matters as well. I’ll find you later.”

“You misunderstand me. I won’t leave her to be harassed by you.”

“It’s you who misunderstands, Destin. Now leave us.”

Mariel nodded to show him it was all right.

“Mariel,” Destin hissed.

“It’s all right,” she said. “He can’t hurt me.”

“I’ll bejustat the outside of the maze. I’ll hear if you yell.” He backed away with his dark gaze fixed on Rylahn.

The moment he was gone, she regretted it. Vulnerability crawled through her marrow. She was alone and undefended, with a man whose life would be drastically simpler without her in it. Even if she screamed, no one would come. Not for her.

“Where’s Erran?” she asked, hoarse.

“Helping his mother. At ease, Mariel. I’m not here to hurt you.” Rylahn gestured at the bench. “May I?”

Mariel inched farther to the left.

Rylahn sank onto the bench with the stiff awkwardness of one who had forgotten how to sit. He slapped his hands atop his knees and said, “There’s something I need to tell you, and there’s no point in wasting breath getting there. I knew your mother. Ofaelia. When she was still a Braeloch.”

“My mother?” Mariel retreated into her shock. More questioning she’d been prepared for. Harassment. Threats even. He’d shown her an entire arsenal of tactics over the past weeks. But not once had he ever mentioned her family. “How?”

“My father’s grocer purchased our cabbages and carrots exclusively from the Braelochs.”

“All right. And?”

“He liked them so much, he eventually went into business on the side with her father, Cohle.” He shook his head and blew a pursed breath. “Your grandfather’s vegetables were the best in the region. The land around the lake is fertile and generous, which you know. His peers said he should raise the taxes to pocket from Cohle’s success, but my father didn’t want the man to suffer.We can both eat more, he used to say, so instead, he invested by doubling the Braeloch lands. In turn, Cohle tended that land for free, and all profits for the extended acreage belonged to the Rutlands. It seemed overly generous, even for my father, but I was just a boy—fifteen, perhaps, the last time I went with him. I didn’t yet understand the ways of men.

“Your mother was a few years older than me. Ah, Ofaelia was a force. A sharp wind when a breeze would suffice. Southerland women often are, but she was different. Cohle used to say she could command the skies themselves. I always knew the moment she’d stepped into the field because the birds would fly to this large tree at the north end of the property and wait for her to finish her business before returning.”

No one had ever described Mariel’s mother to her that way. By the time she was old enough for memories, her mother had been whittled down by the demands of a hard life. The image of Ofaelia storming through a field, sending the birds aflutter, seemed a fiction too great for a man of Rylahn’s voided imagination, but there was nothing in his face suggesting he was being anything but earnest in his remembrance. “She never mentioned you.”

“Aye, she wouldn’t have. I was a mirror to her shame.” Rylahn squinted at the midday sun. “But we were friends, I think. Father’s deal meant more visits to Mistgrave and the lake. I liked talking to her. For all she unsettled me, there was an ease to the way she moved through the world that was foreign to me. It was as though she never needed to question where she stepped, for she was confident the world would adjust to her stride.” He looked upward with a sigh that was almost wistful. “What I didn’t know then, inexperienced in the ways of men as I was, was that my father had more than gold on his mind when he made the deal with Cohle. I wasn’t the only one who looked forward to visiting the Braelochs.”

Mariel turned so she could look at him better. She held her patience to let him finish his own way. Whatever else his words intended, they were a confession, and there was a reason he’d chosen her, his greatest antagonist, to hear it.

“Ofaelia tells me one day she’s with child. For the first time in our acquaintance, she seemed unable to find her words, but she finally gets out that it was my father who put her in that state. She assured me there was nothing untoward, that they werein love.” Rylahn scoffed. “Aye, and in the next breath said my father wanted nothing to do with any of it. The whole time, right under my nose. While I’d be learning the harvest with the men, she and he were rutting like barn animals in the stables. It was the only time I ever saw her cry, and I did nothing. I didn’t understand why her confession had turned me inside out. She was five, six years older than me and never looked at me with anything but the regard of an older sister. But first love can be a dangerously powerful thing. Erran knows. I could do little but watch him tear himself in two for someone...” He trailed off. “He had to learn the hard way. As I did. But in my woundedness, I chose not to believe her. I called her a liar who was trying to destroy my father and our family, and I promised she’d come to regret her lie. That the next time she saw me, I’d be there to collect on my promise.”

Mariel’s hands formed a knot in her lap. It was too much, all of it, but he hadn’t spoken so openly about anything to her before. He might never again. And what he was saying, it made some sense, more sense than a man who comported himself as a decent conscientious steward caring for naught but gold. She could deconstruct his words later, but she might never hear them again if she stopped him now. “Are you actually suggesting Destin is your father’sson? That’s he’s your...brother?”

Rylahn made an ambiguous shrug. “It was because I believed her I was so full of rage. Not long after, she was married off to Astin Ashdown, another local farmer, and several months later was a mother. My father sold the land to Cohle for a fair price, and our visits stopped. We found another farmer to supply our cabbage and carrots, and the name Braeloch was never again mentioned. Even on progress, we gave the lake a wide berth.” He paused briefly. “Two years later, my father was dead—heart stopped when he was out riding. No physician could tell us why, when he was otherwise in perfect health, but I knew it was her. And in her absence, it was all too easy to let the blame fester, to replace the grief. Anger is always easier, is it not? I ken you know better than most.”

His story was so utterly preposterous, but Mariel could neither move nor speak. She stared at her lap with a dread still forming.

“I didn’t return until I was steward myself. She wasn’t the same woman at all. A wisp of who she’d been... a mother twice over, another on the way. I dealt with her husband only, but I would catch her watching me from the window. Hiding. Not once did she come down. And I looked at the land, the prosperity, and contrary to my vow, she’d not suffered at all. She was thriving. And I was still grieving my father—my youth. It was blinding, how furious it made me. I knew nothing else. I couldn’t make myself see her again, so I delegated stewardship to my most ruthless officers, gave them some... ideas on how they should govern, and walked away from it. You know better than I what happened next.”

“Aye, because you were a craven bastard who couldn’t even face the wreckage of his own tantrum! And you madeeveryonesuffer for the actions of one, actions that had naught to do with you at all!” Mariel’s breathing pitched and crashed. The dull roar of the surf beyond the maze reminded her she was alone and isolated with a man who loathed her—and apparently her mother—enough to destroy an entire region in the wake of a broken heart that he should have had the better sense to subdue.

Rylahn didn’t even seem to hear her. “Years later, when Korah Warwick came to me with a list of ten potential brides for Erran, I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the name Ashdown. Number eight on a list ordered by importance of birth. No one expected any serious consideration to be offered beyond the third name on the list, but ah, I chose you. Korah, Hestia, even the late Lord Warwick asked me to reconsider. The Rutland name is second only to the Warwicks, they said, as if I didn’t know. Any marriage made must reflect that.” Rylahn flexed his hands over his thighs. “I told them a highborn wedding would require planning, dowries... contracts upon contracts. The Ashdowns weren’t even barons anymore. They’d been stripped of lands. Titles. They’d fallen so far, I didn’t even need your signature, Mariel. I could have wed you to Erran either way. Even after all my explaining, they still didn’t understand why I would let my son, my heir, marry someone so far beneath him. Even I couldn’t quite see the edges of the grudge I’d held for so many years.” He bowed his head, pulling his hands across the back of his neck. “When I look at Destin, I see my father. When I look at you, I see her. Ofaelia.”

Mariel wanted to avail herself of the dagger in her boot so she could press it to his throat and carve the truth away, but his words had unlocked the final box of her childhood confusion. How and why it had all changed sofast. Why she, a pauper, had been chosen for a prince. The disproportionate disgust Rylahn held for Destin, despite his string of excuses for the reasons he couldn’t send him to the gallows. The only disconnected piece of the puzzle was that Rylahn had told her any of it.

And then she knew.

“This is some final confession, but you’re not dying,” she drawled. Her hands wrapped around the bench. Her legs readied to spring. The sea was just ahead and beyond. Rylahn’s leg was so bad, she wouldn’t even have to run fast, just fast enough for him to lose her trail. A quick climb over a bush and she’d be free. The rest she could sort later. “Tell me, will you wait until I’ve delivered to dispose of me, or do you wish for my child to die too?”

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