Page 3 of The Flame and the Forsaken

Irritation flashed across her flushed expression, but humor was quick to supplant any evidence of it. She smirked with her entire face in a startlingly swift recovery that she must have assumed was convincing. “It’s fine when you want to go chasing skirts, Errandil, but if I have a congenial meeting with an old friend, I’ve lost my mind?”

No one, not even his blessed mother, called him by that atrocious name, not until Mariel had learned it at their wedding and decided it was an enjoyable way to get under his skin. “Willnae even dignify that with a response.”

Mariel scoffed and tried to brush past him, but he side-stepped into her path, flipping her annoyance to disgust. “I realize this is a challenging concept for a Rutland to embrace, but I’m nay your property. I’m allowed friends.”

“Friends.” Erran flung his arms out with a dry laugh. “Oh, aye? Friends? Kiss all your friends then?”

“I donnaeanswerto you either. And, eh, you can drop the phony salt-and-sand brogue around me. Your grubby mates aren’t around to judge you for being soft, and it won’t impress me.”

“Impress you?” Erran was speechless. Humidity clung to his skin, but her accusation hung heavier. He’d always switched between accents without even thinking about it, because he was sensitive about his privileged Whitecliffe upbringing, which was far more refined than what most of his mates had experienced to the north and west. The Rutlands were one of the few families who neither looked nor sounded like they were part of the Southerlands at all. If one really wanted to insult them, they made the inevitable comparisons to the gold-laden tree-dwellers in the Easterlands who lived better than kings. “And why in the bloody Guardians would I ever want to do that?”

“Aye, well, that’s better. You’re more tolerable when you speak with the gold pacifier in your mouth, tucked right where it belongs.” She tried again to get past, but he held his ground. “Think I won’t stab you just because your family bought me?”

Erran had no doubt Mariel would stab him, but a conversation needed to happen, away from the ears and eyes of his father’s staff. “Listen to me, Mariel?—”

Mariel’s hands shot to her hips in a snapping gesture that cut him off. Her eyes flashed with a dozen competing reactions, so fast he could read none of them. She was both cornered doe and raging bull, engaged in a silent battle with herself.

“We didn’tbuyyou, all right? Our marriage was brokered like any other. And I’m no more keen on it than you are, but do you not remember why we were sent to this lake to begin with?”

Mariel burst out laughing. “Because you were, what,twodays back from sea, and you couldn’t keep your spindle away from a married woman?”

“I did not...” Erran grimaced, bracing. He’d already learned that there was no such thing as a simple conversation with her. “Nothing happened between Yesenia and me. You know that.”

“Because she can’t stand the sight of you anymore. Chose atree-dwellerover one of her own, which...” Mariel whistled. “Even I can feel the sting ofthat.”

He bristled, drawing rigid. “I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. Not even you.”

“Who’s asking you to?” Mariel threw up her hands, incredulous. “Why did you follow me?”

“Had a sense.” Erran chewed the inside of his mouth, once more preparing for her inevitable fire. “Seems I was right to be suspicious.”

Her eyes rolled. “Mark it in your diary.”

Erran dragged his hands down his damp face with a groan. “We both want the same thing, you know.”

Her grin was murky, but she kept her response to herself.

“To be left alone? To do as we please? To not hear another of my father’s loaded lectures about duty?”

She laughed and gestured around. “Aye, well.”

“You know how we get that, don’t you? By playingnice,for feck’s sake. By... at leastpretendingwe wouldn’t like to chuck each other into the White Sea and be done with it all. And by not sneaking about at dawn and meeting strange men, which will surely be news to my father by, oh, noontide today.”

Mariel’s unctuous grin faded. “No one followed me.”

He gaped at her. “I’m standingright here.”

“No one whose tongue I’ll have to cut out for informing on me.”

She was right; he was the last person who’d tell Rylahn Rutland she was up to nothing good. In that, he might actually be her ally, not that she’d see it that way. “Who was he, anyway?”

“None of your concern,” she retorted.

“If he accidentally gets you with child?—”

“Unlike you, I’d never even entertain dodging my vows, no matter how I... feel.” Her eyes pinched, narrowing. “And there wouldn’t be such pressure, would there, if your chin-wagging sister hadn’t spread false rumors about us expecting.”

Sessaly was as much a thorn in his side as Mariel’s, but her false declaration that Erran and Mariel had a bundle on the way was more than an irritation. When Erran had to confess to his parents it was not true—and how the only thing they’d consummated was their aggravation for each other—the disappointment had come down like a landslide on the dunes.For Guardians’ sake, it’s not that hard to bed a woman, Erran. You’ve done it before!Rylahn had roared, in front of everyone, before storming away.

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