Erran Rutland, heir to the wealthiest region in the Southerlands, would have surrendered his birthright for his first love, until she was sold into a political marriage. To alleviate the dishonor he brings upon his family when he tries to steal her back, his father arranges a quick, quiet betrothal with someone far beneath his station.

One day his heart is shattered, the next he’s married to the most unnerving woman he’s ever met.

Mariel Ashdown is even more disgusted by the match. The Rutlands and their lackeys first starved her people and then stole their land from under them, leaving blight and death in their merciless wake.

From the heartache was born Obsidian Sky, a band of rebels she founded at the young age of twelve. They work under the subterfuge of darkness and masks, slowly taking back everything pilfered from their people. But her repulsive marriage affords her something they could never obtain on their own.

Access.

This next job could change everything, but if they fail, she and her five friends—including her beloved brother—will hang.

Erran is not the stupid dilletante she assumes him to be. He’s known from the start she’s hiding something. Motivated by the threat of being disowned if he cannot get his marriage in order, he follows her one fateful morning, and what he discovers, he simply cannot believe. Before he can even process it, though, she does something drastic to save her friends from the scaffold.

He’s faced with a choice he has no time to ponder.

Though Mariel has offered her husband nothing but contempt, Erran takes a leap of faith, leaving them shipwrecked, battered, and fighting for their very survival.

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The Flame and the Forsaken is the second and final in the Southerlands Cycle of The Book of All Things.

The Southerlands Cycle:
Arranged marriages, enemies to lovers, and salt & sand redemption in the Southern Reach (medium low heat)
The Sylvan and the Sand
The Flame and the Forsaken
And more