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Forward, to my father’s small land. Past a meadow slick with dew, tucked away on a hillside away from prying eyes. The moon cut perfect slivers over the hedgerows surrounding my father’s plot, casting the picturesque cottage from my childhood in dim light.
I veered off the path once the cottage came into view up the hill. There, in a mess of trees and shrubs, I tied Mercy away, gave her mane a hearty rub, and put my forehead to hers. “Thank you for riding so swiftly, Mercy. I’m sorry I pushed you so hard.”
She looked at me with those dull black eyes, neighed tiredly, and went to grazing at her feet.
I made my way back onto the road, low under the hedges, keeping out of sight. Peering up over them every once in a while to make sure I knew where I was going.
Memories of my past barreled into me as I climbed the winding, gentle hill. Thoughts of me and Robert, running through these very shrubs, playing games as children. Laughing at our easy life, before it became so much more complicated in Wilford. It was here he first taught me to use a bow, playing target practice with hay bales.
“And remember what I taught you when you first wanted to use a sword? No more than five winters old, hand barely able to wrap around the hilt?”
I smiled fondly at Robert’s words. “You told me to stick with the bow, because I was small. To keep my enemies far from me, where I’d have an advantage.”
“Aye.” His voice in my head was quieter now, lower. Sad, even. “Yet you’ve been eager to let those enemies get close to you. You’ve welcomed it, in fact. And look how dangerous your life has become because of it.”
I frowned and shook my head. I was tired of Robert—my conscience—chiding me about the Merry Men. I was also too exhausted to fight him. “You don’t understand, Robert. The way I feel around them . . .”
“Of course I do. It’s the devil’s lure, trying to convince you he’s your friend. Do you think I was never in love, sister?”
My eyes widened. “Love?”
I scoffed. No, that was ridiculous. I didn’t love Little John, Will Scarlet, Friar Tuck, and Alan-a-Dale . . .
Right? How could I? I had only just met them, and Robert was correct about one thing: My life had become a lot more dangerous since meeting them.
Has it, though? I asked myself. Are they anymore dangerous than Father beating me? Than being abandoned by my brother and having no one to protect me from Father’s angry fists?
I shouldn’t have to live like that.
I flared my nostrils, balling my hands into fists, staring at the dirt path leading up the hill. I noticed divots in the ground—hoof prints. They looked fresh.
Glancing up, I saw my conversation with myself had brought me to the plateau of the hill, where it leveled off. The cabin rested peacefully in the middle of a garden. I saw a dim orange glow emanating from a nearby aperture on the side of the house.
Candlelight.
Someone was inside.
My heart squeezed in my chest. My blood quickened. My suspicion was correct. I would have never thought to come here had the strange healer Wulfric not called me by a name I hadn’t heard in years: Robin of Loxley.
Crouching, hood pulled up, I inched alongside the shrubs, toward the cottage. I stayed mouse-quiet. Hopped over slick stones in the garden, slithered around a row of wildflowers and tall vine trellises.
Low voices carried from inside. My giddiness made me dizzy. Hiding in the trellises, concealed among the colorful flora, I crept below the lip of the window so I could listen in on them. Based on what I recalled of the cottage’s layout, the people were situated in the small main room directly above my window.
The voices rose in volume. I held my breath as my stomach jumped to my throat, my whole body tensing.
Because the voices, both of them, were so painfully familiar.
“I’ve been in their good graces for years, and I won’t let this little . . . dalliance of ours fuck that up,” spat the woman, her voice rising to a near-screech.
No, I thought morosely, as the recognizable timbre of betrayal bloomed inside me. It can’t be . . .
I’d never heard her voice like that before—never seen her lose her temper in such a way.
“Dalliance?” cried the next voice, incredulous. Its deep boom made my skin crawl. My father’s voice would always make my skin crawl. “Is that all this is to you, Marian? I did this for us! So we can have land of our own, have children, and start anew!”
A gasp wanted to rip from my throat. I wondered what they could have possibly been talking about. What devious conversation I had stumbled upon.
Deep down, I already knew.
