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“Nothing will change until we get John back,” Will said.
It was just the four of us around the fire. The children we’d brought had been put to sleep, exhausted after being roused in the middle of the night and dragged out to the forest. I imagined being with their friends and housemates had helped their dispositions, and allowed them to fall into somewhat-peaceful sleep.
Much and the other Merry Men weren’t invited to this little meet-up, either.
Our camp was getting incredibly cramped and tight . . .
Which made me think of something and whip my head up from the fire. “We can’t leave.”
Three pairs of eyes veered to me.
“Who said anything about leaving?” Will growled. As usual, he was growing untenable the longer we talked about this. “We’re doing the opposite, little thorn. Obviously.”
“Obviously not,” Tuck said, stopping his pacing for a heartbeat to slice a hand through the air, before picking up right where he left off. Grooves were growing deeper under his boots as he trudged from one space to the next. “We have more than just ourselves to worry about now,” he added, nudging his chin toward the clearing where the orphans slept. “It’s paramount we get the children to safety. Somewhere away from here.”
“They seemed perfectly fine at the alms—”
“No, Will,” Alan cut in curtly. “You didn’t see their little defeated faces. Didn’t hear the stories of their friends going missing. They were anything but safe at the orphanage, and we did the right thing taking them.”
I smiled weakly at Alan when he looked over to me for support. “Alan is right.”
“And as usual, I’m the bad guy,” Will said, “but you know I’m right, too.” He stormed up from the fire and crunched on leaves while walking over to me. “We’re this close to getting Little John back, Robin. Tell me to my face that I’m wrong.”
I bowed my head as he stood over me. “You’re not.”
“I’m also the so-called leader of this outfit.” He folded his arms.
That made my head rise, brow scrunched. “You just told me earlier that we were finished playing this cock-measuring contest. This game.”
“Not if it means deciding between the right and the wrong decision.”
Tuck strode forward. “Anything you come up with right now will be out of anger, Scarlet. You know this. You also know better than anyone that an ‘execution’ is an excuse for the Sheriff to round us up and skewer us like pigs.”
Alan and I nodded with Tuck’s words. That’s what we were trying to get at—what Will himself had suggested at the Wilford estate, and was now changing his stance on.
“Believe me,” I said, standing so I didn’t seem so small in front of the angry young man. I put a hand on his bicep, rubbing softly. “Charging headlong into this madness is exactly what I’d like to do. It’s also exactly the kind of thing that’s going to get Merry Men killed. I’ve learned that. Which is why Tuck is right—”
“—And we need a plan,” the friar finished, nodding.
Will flared his nostrils, then shrugged my hand off his arm and spun away. “Then come find me when you think of something better.”
With that, he began marching away from the fire toward his tent. I was shocked. When he made it to the flap, he wheeled around and sternly pointed at us. “I won’t fall prey to the same weakness that got Little John captured in the first place, little thorn: Hesitance. You gave me the quarterstaff because you wanted me to make decisions—”
“She gave you the quarterstaff,” Tuck interrupted, “because the other Merry Men wanted her to. Don’t be daft, and don’t be confused that it was over anything else.”
My face sank as Will’s eyes drilled into mine and he clamped his jaw shut. He retreated into his tent without another word.
I plopped down at the fire, shaking my head, feeling awful. We hadn’t had a blow-up argument like this in a while, and I’d started to get a false sense that we were past this level of hostility.
Alas, heated situations brought vying opinions, and my lovers were nothing if not opinionated. Intensely so.
“He’ll get on,” Tuck said to me, resuming his pacing. “Maybe without him prattling on, incensed, we’ll actually be able to hear ourselves think.”
“Well,” Alan said, sitting down next to me and thankfully staying close, “what would Little John do?”
I rolled my eyes and groaned, then reclined to stare up at the purple sky and high moon. “We know what he would do, and it would probably be as reckless as what I want to do.”
“Which is?”
