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Robert hesitated. Glanced at me. “What will you do, Robin? I will explain everything once you’re safe with me.”
Safe with me . . .
Turmoil ran rampant through me, like a physical thing eager to make me sick. The pressure nipping at my heart was too much. Here was my brother, the man I had lost to war under mysterious circumstances. In the flesh. Living, and apparently thriving. He had just killed a man to protect me.
Safe with me . . .
“Say the word and we’ll strike this madman down,” Will growled. “Happily.”
I shook my head adamantly. “No. He just saved me.” I pointed at the dead timer-man behind me.
Seemed everyone in this damned competition was using some kind of disguise. But what did Robert mean when he said the timer-man was one of his men? And how is he alive?!
I had so many damned questions. If I went with Robert, he promised to answer them. We could rejuvenate the Wilford estate, reclaim our name and legacy.
We could make Mama Joan proud in Heaven.
I was torn in so many directions, I didn’t know which way was up. This was the boy I’d grown up with. My flesh and blood. The boy I admired, who taught me everything. The boy who enabled me to do so well in this tournament, because he believed in me when we were younger and didn’t scoff at me when I said I wanted to learn how to shoot arrows and swing swords like him. The boy I spoke to in my mind, even after losing him, because the pain of him being gone forever was just too difficult for me to admit.
So I played pretend.
This entire time, I’d been playing pretend with the Merry Men. Acting like I was one of them. Gallivanting around the woods, taking part in daring robberies, living a life of subterfuge and adventure. Fucking them like they would ever think of me as anything other than their prize or possession. Their trophy.
My eyebrows arched helplessly, and I looked into the faces of my men: Alan, Tuck, Will.
Where is John?
I blinked, and saw something in those gazes. Something that made me reappraise the entire situation, and my entire way of thinking.
I saw true love there. They didn’t need to say anything. Didn’t need to try and coax or coerce or force me into a decision. Because they trusted me. They had said it, and shown it by letting me live my life how I wanted.
Robert? He was an extension of my family. My dead family. Mother, father, brother. They were gone, and even when they were here, they hadn’t been much of a family at all.
No. They had forced me to go looking for a family to make my own.
And I had found them.
“Robin, there’s no time!” Robert yelled, growing frustrated as the yelling grew louder.
I flinched. Shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said.
I turned away from Robert, perhaps for the last time, and faced my men. My forged family. The people who had ripped me from the group who called themselves my bloodline, and made me fall for them.
If it was Robert from my childhood, perhaps my decision would have been different.
But this Robert? I didn’t know this Robert.
“You’re making a mistake, Robin!” he yelled after me.
“Let’s go,” I said to the trio, squeezing between them.
“Good idea, little thorn,” Will said. “We can ask questions and talk about the dead bodies around you later. Right now, there’s something big happening.”
“What is it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A rebellion of some sort. Men flying in from the trees and river, attacking the fields of eastern Nottingham. No idea, but they don’t look happy, and I would prefer not to get caught in the crossfire.”
“This isn’t our fight,” Tuck agreed.
