23. A Lit Torch into a Gaseous Mine

Chapter 23

A Lit Torch into a Gaseous Mine

E rran had slept only in small stints since the day of Mariel’s imprisonment, but he’d been fast asleep when the screams rang out.

He bolted upright in his bed, still fully dressed on top of the blankets, and launched into a coughing fit. His eyes stung and burned. Breath was trapped in his lungs.

Smoke.

Fire.

Erran staggered from the bed, shielding his eyes on his way to the door. The metal handle seared his hand, and he withdrew it with a sharp hiss. Flouting the pain, he reached for the nearest cloth he could find, his coat, wrapped it around the burned flesh, and tried again.

The hall was a disarray of panic. There, the smoke was thicker, choking the air. Attendants hurried each direction, slamming into each other, ignoring orders to help get everyone out.

Mariel was still in the upper hall, tucked into a corner. If the workers were running for their own lives, no one would be running for hers.

Erran brought his wrapped hand to his mouth and stumbled sideways down the hall, squinting to protect his eyes. He couldn’t hear anything over the exodus. The smoke was so disorienting, he didn’t realize, at first, that he’d passed Sessaly’s door already, but when he saw no one else there, he reached for the handle. One girl running by screamed, “She’s nay there, sir. I already checked!”

He wasn’t taking anyone’s word for it, so he opened her apartment and charged inside. Fire engulfed Sessaly’s entire bed. Some windows behind it had shattered, flames licking through the glass. A beam had crashed down through the tester, allowing the fire to work upward through the wood.

He checked her privy and closet, but she wasn’t there either.

Erran coughed and backed into the hall. He was knocked sideways by someone barreling toward him, but he kept on, sightlessly stumbling toward the nearest staircase.

He started up a stair and was shoved into the wall again. A faint apology followed the offender, but Erran didn’t care or blame them.

Upward he ran, passing a dozen more fleeing staff on their way down. Some paid him no mind. Others gave him a wide-eyed stare that read, You’re going the wrong way , but no one said anything, for they were all doing as he was, with clothing pressed to their mouths to preserve their health for as long as they could.

He was equally hindered by the smoke as he was the stinging tears pouring down his face. The fire seemed contained to the lower floor, but the fumes had risen, and the hall was clogged with them. One last person flew by on his way down the hall, and he hoped it meant the others had already gotten out. He wished he’d asked someone for help, for he had no idea how he was going to get Mariel out of a locked room without a key.

But when he reached Mariel’s apartments, the door was open. He entered just in time to see his father scoop Mariel into his arms and hoist her high against his chest.

“Erran, run !” Rylahn screamed, coughing through the second word.

“You go first!” Erran cried, pumping his arms to encourage his father to go, go.

His father briefly seemed like he might argue. He shook his head, tucked it against Mariel’s, and sprinted past, Erran directly behind.

The fire was in the hall when they reached the residential level. The shortest path to the outside was through the flames, but Rylahn charged in the opposite direction, practically leaping onto the staircase as he hustled downward with Mariel, skipping steps.

Both doors to the entrance were open wide, and Erran could see beyond that there were already hundreds on the front terrace, huddled in horror. His mother and Sessaly had to be out there. Destin too. He couldn’t believe otherwise.

When they passed through the doors, Erran turned toward his father and held out his arms. Rylahn passed her over, careful to leave the pillowcase over her mouth.

Erran ran with Mariel to the edge of the outside steps and set her down underneath a tree.

“Mar. Mariel.” He shook her, but still she didn’t wake. “Mariel!” He murmured an apology and gave her cheek a slap.

“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. “I love you, 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. What later looked 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?—”

He looked again at the line to keep from losing it, then let his eyes travel back toward her.

“I love you, Erran.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “Please be safe.”

The night started in flames and ended in embers.

Mariel waited with the others in the carriage house in solemn silence. Destin and Erran arrived first, and she launched herself at them both, hooking one arm around each. They were covered in soot and stank of wood smoke but were unharmed.

Rylahn came later. He entered quietly and sat in the tall chair they’d left empty for him. It took some time before he had anything to say.

“Everyone escaped. Most of the damage was in Sessaly’s apartments, where it’s believed the fire originated. Who started it, how they got in...” He leveled a drained, accusatory glance Mariel’s way.

Hestia opened her mouth to speak, but he stayed her. “There’s no need to apprise me on the letter, love. I already know.”

“Rylahn, we must do what they say.” Hestia’s crestfallen expression became more wilted with every word. “That’s our lass. Our Ses.”

“We do not negotiate with radicals,” he grumbled and drilled his gaze at the stone wall.

“You don’t mean to let them hurt her.” Erran looked dumbfounded. He peeled away from Mariel and approached his father. “Father?”

“Did I say that, Erran?” Rylahn pushed the words through a hard clench. His stony gaze persisted. “Look to your wife. She knows where your sister is.”

“If I did, I would go for her myself,” Mariel said, rising. “This isn’t the work of Obsidian Sky, Rylahn. We have never harmed anyone.”

“Haven’t you?” Glaring, he scratched his fingernails down his neck. “Aye, you know more than you’re saying.”

“I know it wasn’t us!”

“Do you expect anyone to believe that?”

Erran stepped between them. “The auction announcement threw a lit torch into a gaseous mine. How many people saw that? How many people are slated to lose everything? Mariel’s right. Obsidian Sky would have sabotaged the auction, but they wouldn’t have set fire to our keep. They wouldn’t have taken Ses. They wouldn’t have risked Mariel’s or Destin’s lives.” He glanced at Mariel briefly. “And they look to Mariel for direction. They wouldn’t undertake such a violent act without her nod.”

“You opened the window for her,” Rylahn said to his wife.

“Darling, you’re tired. Who was going to see any message all the way from the sea?”

“I sent no message. I—” Mariel rushed off when a bout of nausea gripped her. She made it as far as the handwashing basin before she lost her belly.

Erran pulled her hair out of the way and traced a hand down her back. “I’ll send for a healer.”

“Nay, it’s...” Mariel rested the back of her hand against her mouth, but then more came up. “I’m not unwell.”

“Inhaling smoke can be deadly. I’d feel so much better?—”

“Erran, I’m with child.” Until she said the words aloud, the revelation hadn’t felt like a truth belonging to her at all. It still didn’t, though her surprise was embarrassingly unearned. They’d lain together dozens of times and had taken no precautions. Maybe it was as Hestia had said, and she’d suffered from the lack of mothering into her adolescence, but it wasn’t that she hadn’t known better. She understood good and well how bairns were made.

“You’re...” Erran took several steps back. One hand scraped his face. The other hovered just over his mouth. “You are?”

“Mar, is this true?” Destin asked. She heard his chair creak from the shifting weight.

“Hestia said” was all she could get out before she vomited again.

“All the signs are there,” Hestia said. “And she has not bled the entire time she’s been in convalescence.”

“Is that what you call being imprisoned, Mother? Convalescence?” Erran snapped. He placed his body between Mariel and the others, lifting her chin to catch her eyes. He breathed in and held it, his mouth inflating through the release. “You’re not spending another day locked away. Not fecking one.” His head moved only slightly over his shoulder. “Do you understand me? I will take her tonight, and you will never see us again.”

“We’ll speak on it later,” Rylahn replied, weary.

“We’ll speak on it now.” Erran laced a hand in Mariel’s, and together they returned to the sitting area. “She stays with me. That wasn’t a question, nor is one coming.”

“Of course she stays with you, love,” Hestia said swiftly. “We’ll work out the other troubling details another time, when we’re not...” She sighed.

Mariel wanted to speak up in her own defense, but even opening her mouth made her queasy. Erran doing it for her was startlingly satisfying.

“By other details, you mean her brother, who will also not again be locked away?” Erran asked in challenge. His hold on Mariel tightened. “We need to find Sessaly, but you also need to understand the way of things. She’s my wife. He’s our family.”

Rylahn shot to his feet with a forceful grunt. “She’s not your wife , Erran. She’s a thug ! I did not raise you to be so willfully blind!”

Erran swallowed hard and spun to face Mariel. “I’m offering you an annulment. Right here, right now. You can leave with as much gold as you want, and you never have to see me again. This is your way out, Mariel. I won’t stop you.”

Tears spilled over her lids. She shook her head. “Never.”

“And if instead all I could offer you was obscurity? A quiet life without any of what you’ve had here?”

It was horrifying, baring her heart in front of those who thought so little of it, but Erran needed her to say it, and he needed his parents to hear it. “I only need you, Erran.” She trapped another wave of bile to add what he needed to hear. “And our child.”

“And should their crimes be swept away, merely because your heart has softened?” Rylahn asked. One shaking hand gripped the mantle.

“Yours were.” Erran stood tall, challenging his father in a silent standoff. “For who had the power to hold you to account?”

Rylahn shook his head as though shedding the conversation entirely. He sucked in a sharp breath. “It’s late. It’s been a long night. We’ll reconvene at first light about our Sessaly.” His hand lifted at Mariel. “She stays with you but under guard. She will not leave the grounds until I say so. Her brother as well.”

Erran nodded once in understanding.

“Where are you going?” Hestia asked when Rylahn slipped his vest back on and headed for the entrance. “Are you not going to catch some rest?”

“To call my banners. Until we know the size and shape of our foes, we must assume we are at war.”

He slammed the door.

Erran undressed and bathed his wife not because she needed it, but because he did. The weeks apart had demoralized him in a way he’d never experienced, and he’d accepted it could only have happened because he’d never been so teeming with purpose.

She was his purpose.

He no longer cared how she’d come into his life, only that it was her choice to stay when it would have been so much simpler for her to go. Only if she wanted to leave would he allow it. He’d stand aside for no one else.

It wasn’t just about the two of them anymore though. Erran pictured the life growing within her as he slid the soapy sponge along her belly, still smooth enough he wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t said something. He didn’t know how to ask her if she was happy about being a mother, or to tell her how thrilled he was at the prospect of fatherhood. Neither seemed appropriate with so much unsettled.

He was bursting with things to say. Maybe she was too. Maybe the long, lingering moments when her eyes commanded his were the message.

But nothing that came to his tongue was enough.

So he didn’t say anything.

Nor did she.

Erran cleared his mind of the worries of tomorrow and carried his wife to a foreign bed in a building he hadn’t been inside of until that night.

She curled against him.

He folded himself around her, his thighs cradling her and his arms crossing over her, forming a shell.

His eyes closed.

They were on their island again, just the two of them.

The island could be anywhere.

Anywhere they were.

It was true before, and it was true still, and in the midst of so many lies and deceptions, it was the only truth that mattered.