Page 69 of The Flame and the Forsaken

After everything she’d done, carving through the meat and bones of her own life to make space for his, it broke his heart.

“Mar, I want you to know... If you love him?—”

“Desi.” She rolled her eyes but without her usual energy or disagreement.

“I have eyes, you know.”

“I ken you do, two of ’em. And you saw people doing what people do, and there’s...” She rolled her lips inward and glanced out the port window. “We had to be a team. We had to rely on one another, or we wouldn’t have made it very far.”

“I only wanted to say...” Destin continued carefully. He’d never been amazing with words, not when they were children and they’d lost everything and not across the years watching Mariel spend herself on vengeance after vengeance. Her heart was too big, and so she’d sealed it off, because how else was she to protect it? “If you cared for him, you’d get no recrimination from me.”

She scoffed. “How’s that? When you betrothed me to him so we could take down his family?”

I was drunk, and I made a mistake.He gathered his thoughts before answering. “I never cared about all that the way... the way you and Remy did. I don’t need it like you do.”

“What?” She twitched her head.

“I said, I never cared about Obsidian Sky and the wrongs done to us and others the way you two did. It was always your show. Your effort. Your dream. I only stayed because you wanted me to, and you wanted me to because you didn’t think I could manage my own self, and that’smyfault.Myfailing.”

Mariel studied him closely. “Destin, how long has it been since you had a drink?”

“Nineteen days.” He could have recited the hours, the minutes, but those were for him. “I never had to think much before. I’ve had more time in my head these past weeks than I’ll ever know what to do with.”

She leaned forward and gathered his hands in hers. “I amsoproud of you. So proud.”

He angled his face away, embarrassed. “Aye. Thanks.”

“And you did the right thing,” Mariel said. Her voice lowered an octave, her expression solemn. “Telling Sam and Hamish. I know you’re worried the others will think... but don’t. They’re loyal men, loyal to Erran, and Erran is... He won’t let this secret leak out, and nor will they. So please don’t berate yourself for making the only choice you could.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m not sure the others will.”

Mariel shrugged. “Then they don’t have to know.”

He flashed her a sad smile. “You don’t ken they’ll figure it out?”

“If they have anything to say about it, they can say it to me,” she stated and gave him a fierce hug from the side.

“I feel the same about you and Erran. I can see it’s more than you say it is, Mar. I can see it in his eyes. Yours.”

Mariel folded her hands in her lap and buried her gaze there. “If I explained it, they’d never understand, especially Remy and Auggie.”

“But what are you going to do when you get back? Return to hating him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want you to be happy?—”

“I said I don’t know!” She sighed. “I was already beginning to think of the island as a permanent home. I wasn’t prepared for... for this. And maybe, maybe we could get past my secret when it was only the two of us, but I don’t ken... I don’t see it being so simple when we’re back in his world and he has to face his father. And I… I have to face the fact that the auction will now no doubt go ahead, and this time they’ll win. They’ll feckin’win.”

“One moment at a time. Remember how you always told me that? To take life by the seconds, not think too far ahead?”

“Aye.” She nodded, looking unconvinced. “Aye, I suppose.”

He wasn’t getting anything more out of her. She’d always shut down at the slightest hint a topic was veering too close to personal... dipping too close to peeling down the drawbridge of the keep she’d raised to protect herself.

But what Destin had seen in those few, precious moments was his sister had beenhappy.

And though he didn’t have all the answers yet, he would make it his mission to protect that at all costs, like she’d always done for him.

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