Page 13 of The Flame and the Forsaken

The distant ocean roar defeated all other sounds. Though it wasn’t the perfect stillness of a lake, the crashing surf made her chest soften, easing its feverish cadence of the past hours of drink and dance and music. It was the party they were supposed to have had three months ago, after their hasty handfast, but Erran’s campaign at sea had forestalled something she’d preferred to have gotten out of the way months before.

The Golden Coast had never been home to her, but she’d just returned from the one place thathadbeen, and the foreignness had been nearly unbearable.

She’d been twelve when her parents had died of scurvy, after feeding what meager fruit and greens they’d had left to their two surviving children. Afterward, she and Destin had been taken in by Remy and Augustine’s father, but then Sir Perevil, too, had died after drowning his desperation too deep in a bottle. Many of the adults in their small world had been taken by either the malnutrition or the despair, leaving a surplus of children to fend for themselves. Remy, who had been away at Oldcastle on apprenticeship at the universities, returned and attempted to assume domicile of his father’s estate, until that, also, had been stolen from underneath them.Too youngwas the official reason, which was merely an excuse, like all the other justifications the Rutland supremacy had concocted for tyranny.

It was on one of their late nights, starving and cold, when the four orphans had conceived of the first and barest of bones of Obsidian Sky, starting with the question:What if it didn’t have to be this way?

A few nights later, Remy overheard two drunkards talking about the gold they were hauling for their wealthy patron in Sandymount. The inept guards had stumbled to their room that night without even bothering to secure their wagon. When Remy came home, laughing about the idiots in the inn, Mariel had told him they needed to go back, that they could do so much good for others with that gold. He hadn’t argued—had even confessed he’d been thinking it himself but didn’t want to scare her with such a reckless suggestion. But the only thing Mariel dreaded was a lifetime of the same suffering they and their people continued to endure.

A year later, they’d rescued Alessia from a sex trader they’d robbed outside Warwicktown. Magnus had come a couple of years after that. He’d been a hired muscle, hauling a cart they’d targeted, and had unexpectedly turned his coat and joined them instead.

Obsidian Sky was the only family Mariel and Destin had left.

No one inside the lavish pillared keep could ever be.

Fingertips brushed her back. She spun almost fully around before she saw Augustine’s wild braids whipping through the air. The redhead winked at her and puckered her mouth in a brief air kiss before moving to the far end of the balcony, becoming a silhouette as she blended with the curtain.

“What are you doing here?” Mariel whispered. Augustine, as one of Hestia’s seamstresses, had more access than most of the staff, but she’d never be in their inner circle. They certainly weren’t inviting her to their parties.

“I live here,” Augustine said, grinning.

“You know what I mean.”

Augustine tilted her head back with a deep breath. “I’m relieved you survived your week in purgatory.”

“Could have been worse,” Mariel said, her stare on the wispy curtains dividing them from the elaborately festooned terrace, where far too many people were drinking and dancing and carousing. She was close enough to the party to hear the trailing bits of conversation, raucous and grating. “He and I have come to an arrangement.”

“Oh.” Augustine tucked her chin in amusement. “Is itthatbig, then, that you’d throw it all away for pleasure?”

“What?” Mariel gaped at her. “You’re surely not implying what Ithink?—”

“Ah, you’re too serious sometimes.” She watched Mariel closely, like she was testing her. “Some of the other girls here talk is all, especially now that he’s come home from securing evenmoreships and trade agreements for his father. Yesenia Warwick wasn’t his first or his only.”

“Course not.” Mariel shook her head. “When have men like him ever had to practice discretion or moderation?”

Augustine crossed her arms. “Your arrangement then?”

“As long as others believe we’re doing our duty, we live our separate lives and cover for each other. It only has to last as long as it takes me to get what I need about the auction, which should be any day now. If everything goes to plan, I’ll never even have to sleep with him.”

“And you trust him?”

Mariel scoffed. “Nay, but he believes he has even more to lose than I do. Cannot bear to disappoint his daddy.” She laughed. “Or his mommy.”

Augustine made ahmmsound. “And so you’re out here alone and not celebrating with all the other somebodies?”

“I’ve been doing my part all night.” Mariel leaned over the balcony with a stretch. “Smiled at his dodgy mates, laughed at their bawdy humor. I let his mother introduce me to dozens of people whose names I only bothered to learn so we can add them to our list of enemies. Even kissed the princeling again to help sell the facade, which was no small thing, Auggie, let me assure you.”

With a soft, trailing laugh, Augustine said, “I’d have let him dodder me by now, lacking any better ideas to placate him and the other nonces.”

Mariel’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just as clever as your brother.” Augustine—otherwise known as the Needle—had skill with sewing and weaving that was only a cover for her innate ability to thread herself through the most unlikely spaces and situations. Whatever Augustine couldn’t glean from slipping indiscernibly through the spaces of the influential, Alessia gained through taking powerful men to bed—with the occasional brute force from Magnur.

The rest was up to Mariel.

“Remy misses you,” Augustine said distantly. Her eyes were turned on the sea.

“And you?”

The redhead grinned. “I can just watch you while you sleep. Being the Needle and all.”

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