Page 35 of Wench

He exhales and the air stirs the stray hairs against her temple. She can feel the pulse under his skin where his hand still rests near her waist, the faint quiver of muscles that haven’t yet decided to stand down. Every inch of him is tension barely leashed.

The forest feels suddenly smaller, the space between them smaller still.

‘Sherwood intervened to safeguard you.’ His mouth tilts, not quite a smile. ‘It thought you’d listen to its warning if you couldn’t run from it.’

Something in his tone unsettles her. She folds her arms to hide the trembling in her fingers.

‘I could have protected myself.’ The words come out barely above a whisper.

‘I believe you,’ he murmurs. ‘But I don’t plan to test it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because Sherwood would never forgive me if I let you die on its soil.’ The smirk deepens, but the warmth behind it is dangerous. ‘While you’re in my charge, I’ll not let harm come to you. I’ll drag you back to Elswyth myself if that’s what it takes to keep you breathing.’

The arrogance of him – quiet, assured, wrapped in that calm that only makes her want to shake him – snaps what’s left of her composure. She steps closer, chin tilted up until the barest movement would bring her mouth to his throat.

‘You don’t own me,’ she says.

‘No,’ he answers, his voice low enough to vibrate through her ribs. ‘But I am responsible for you.’

Heat flares under her skin. ‘You think?—’

‘I think you attract trouble faster than I can shoot it,’ he finishes, fingers tightening against his bow.

‘Perhaps you should shoot faster.’

His breath catches, a laugh half-formed, roughened at the edges. For a moment she sees what he might look like unguarded: wild, bright, dangerous in a different way. The thought scorches through her before she can stop it.

Without another word, she spins on her heel and starts down the path back to Elswyth, each step loud against the hush.

The forest seems to bend around her steps, leaves shifting in her wake. Her heart pounds too hard, her throat tight with the heat of words she refuses to say.

Behind her, Lox calls out, ‘You can storm off all you like. Sherwood will still find you.’

She doesn’t turn around. ‘Then maybe it should learn to mind its own roots.’

The forest answers with a rustle that could almost be laughter.

ChapterEleven

Night in Elswyth is a soft thing.

It doesn’t descend so much as it unspools like pulled threads of dusk-coloured silk. Moonlight slips through the leaves in quiet beams, casting dappled silver across all of Sherwood and over buds that only open after sundown. Laughter rises from the village’s lower boughs, where fae still share wine and songs and stories that never seem to end.

Marian squats on the low windowsill of her small room. One leg is tucked beneath her, the other bare to the thigh and dangling off the ledge, catching what little breath of wind the forest offers. Her auburn curls, still wet from her bath, fall in wild tangles down her back. Her chemise clings damply to her skin, fabric nearly translucent with the humidity, the neckline slipping off one shoulder.

Thunder rumbles in her stomach. A grimace scrunches her face as she forces herself to take another bite of the bitter tuber she pulled from the riverbed a few days prior. Silt coats the back of her tongue, but she swallows it down.

Another sharp pang coils through her gut.

She presses a palm to her belly, glaring down at it like that might shame her hunger into silence. In the distance, she can see the village gathering at the base of Elswyth’s heart tree in solemn clusters. Fae walk in single-file lines, carrying clay urns filled with the ashes of those lost in the past year. With each name spoken aloud, a hand reaches into the urn, fingers streaked grey as they scatter a thin trail into the soil beneath the tree. The air shimmers faintly wherever the ash falls as they chant,‘What was taken is returned so that the dead may nourish the living.’

‘Everything in Sherwood serves a purpose,’ she mutters, echoing Lox’s words from earlier.

Marian drags the charcoal across the page in long, decisive strokes and slowly the gathering fae take shape. The hollow cheeks sunken with grief, the greying temples and tear-streaked faces.

The smell of roasted vegetables and meat drifts up to her window, crueller than she thought possible. She swallows the last of her meagre meal, desperate to ignore the ache in her stomach.