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“Says the girl lying in a pool of her own blood.”
“Why else would you be here?” I added, ignoring her barb. “Taking the hand of the next best thing—my miserable excuse of a father? You two are made for—”
“Silence!” Marian snarled, and I finally got the satisfaction of seeing her pure, alabaster demeanor break into the mien of a grotesque witch. “You would let her speak to me in such a way, Thomas?”
He sighed. “Does it matter? She won’t be with us long. Ignore her childlike jabs. She has nothing else.”
“You won’t get away with this,” I eked out through my bloodstained teeth.
Marian said, “Yes we will.” She walked over to me, and I expected her heel in my side, because why not? Everyone else seemed to be enjoying it.
But she had a different sort of torment for me. A deeper, more visceral one, which she knew would cut deeper than physical pain because she was smarter than these dastardly men. Because she had probably felt it too, in her life, at some point.
She crouched before me and I trembled back, still hurting from my father and Sir Guy’s ministrations.
Her hand lashed out, caught the corner of the map that peeked out from my half-opened shirt, and ripped it from me. Then she wagged the map in the air and her voice lilted in a mocking way. “‘Who has the motive to call for help? Maybe the fucking hostage?’ Oh, you should have seen it, dear girl. A masterful display.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The map. The Merry Men, as they learned you sewed this beacon of their location into the dress. Poor Little John was too enamored and doe-eyed to even notice you scheming right under his nose, little bitch.”
“No!” I screamed. Tears blurred my eyes. “You lie. You know I had nothing—” I cut myself off, furrowing my brow. A fracture of a memory came to me: Maid Marian, walking out of Friar Tuck’s carriage full of linens early in the morning after my smoldering night with Little John. Before Tuck left with the dresses to Nottingham. Marian, readjusting her dress, glancing around. Suspiciously. Conspiratorially.
I hadn’t realized it until now. What had she been doing in that carriage? Now, the answer slapped me right in the face. “. . . You. In the carriage that morning.”
“I simply required fine, soft bedding to lay on while Friar Tuck plowed into me, if you must know.” She winked and grinned at me.
Anguish sprang through me. I didn’t believe her—couldn’t. I didn’t want to think of Friar Tuck with another woman.
My father’s body stiffened. “Careful, Marian,” he muttered, because he was a weak, jealous man, and didn’t want even a fabricated story to make a cuckold of him.
“The fools didn’t put the easy part together: That you couldn’t have drawn the map because you’d only been to a handful of their hideaways. How would you know where the others were located?” She laughed, shaking her head. “No, they did not immediately believe me when I explained the depths of your betrayal. I never expected them to given how obsessed and blinded they are by you. It’s such an easy thing to turn against silly men. So you see, Robin? The Merry fucking Men aren’t coming for you, because I’ve already planted the seed of doubt. That’s all they need to—”
The door to the cottage blew open.
A man stood in the doorway, black cloak rippling. He spotted me on the ground, brow furrowing, before wheeling his eyes to Sir Guy next to me. “Captain, we’ve spotted movement just past the perimeter at the base of the hill. Shadows—could be stray cattle—but I’m requesting permission to extend the watch line.”
Guy grunted. “Do it.”
The man saluted, his body stiffening.
Then he coughed, and blood sprayed out of his mouth on a confused gurgle, slashing across Marian’s face closest to him.
She screeched, hands raised in disgust as the blood splattered on her nice clothes and alabaster face.
The man stumbled forward two steps and collapsed into the room, with the fletching of an arrow sticking out from the back of his neck.
“Fuck,” Guy sighed.
Marian turned to me with wide eyes.
I smiled at her, reveling in her fear and anxiety. “What was it you were saying, Maid Marian?”
Chapter 47
Little John
Iwatched the bridge from the darkness of a forested pasture. Alan-a-Dale was beside me, fidgeting with the bow in his hands. It looked too small against the minstrel’s frame, but I made no comment on it.
