Page 5 of Wench

But precision wasn’t what he wanted.

The Sheriff had sneered at her tidy columns of numbers and sketches, jabbing a finger at the pattern of interlocking mesh. Too clean. Too quick, he’d said. He desired cruelty woven into every knot and ordered her to rework the braiding so that the ore didn’t just bite, but burned. So that flesh would blister and peel the moment it touched fae skin.

Marian dresses slowly, ignoring the bitter taste in her mouth as she pulls a plain brown frock from the peg near the hearth. The neckline is high and the skirts unadorned. It is the closest thing she owns to invisibility.

When she dares to lift her gaze to the mirror propped in the corner, an exhausted reflection stares back.

Her auburn hair, still damp from the bath, tumbles in long waves nearly to her waist, the strands heavy and wild. Her skin is warm, its golden undertones kissed with pink. Rounded cheeks that taper to a sharp jaw mark her father’s blood. But her eyes – sage rimmed with molten flecks of hazel – are every bit her mother’s.

And she suspects it’s why her father can’t bear the sight of them.

Tilda tugs her backward to the stool by the hearth. Marian sits, fingers tight on her knees, while her handmaiden parts the thick curls into sections and begins braiding. Each twist of Tilda’s hands pulls her further from the forest and back into the cage of the manor’s stone walls.

When the last strand is tucked and the braid tied off with a strip of leather, Tilda pulls a small vial out of her apron pocket. ‘Don’t forget your tonic.’

Marian’s nose wrinkles before Tilda even uncorks it. The scent is sharp and herbal, like nettles left too long in the rain. The liquid inside glints a murky green-brown, catching the light like swamp water.

‘It smells like it was brewed in a boot,’ she groans.

‘Better a foul brew than a fae curse,’ Tilda chides, planting her hands on her hips. ‘It’ll keep the wild out of your blood and the forest from your bones.’

Marian tips it back before she can talk herself out of it. The tonic hits her tongue like metal and moss, bitter enough to make her gag. She coughs, grimacing. ‘Sometimes I think I’d rather face the fae than taste that vile liquid again.’

Tilda’s mouth quirks despite herself. ‘Mind your tongue, girl; your mother brewed that tonic herself. Thank the saints she left the recipe behind before she . . .’

The humour slips from their faces like a curtain drawn shut.

Marian wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, grimacing at the lingering taste; bitterness clings stubbornly to her tongue. ‘A lot of good it did her,’ she mutters before she can stop herself. The words fall between them like a blade dropped point-first.

‘That’s not fair,’ Tilda says softly, her voice wavering. ‘Your mother did what she thought would keep you safe. She . . . She gave everything she had to protect you from what’s out there.’

Silence gathers between them, only broken by the crackle of the fire burning low. Marian keeps her eyes fixed on the hearth, memories thawing beneath it – her mother sitting by a similar fire with her shawl drawn close. The way her hands had begun to tremble when she lifted a cup, how her once-bright eyes had dimmed to grey as if something inside her was ebbing away.

Isadora had faded by degrees, like a candle guttering in its own wax. Every season, she’d grown smaller, quieter, her laughter thinning into whispers that never quite reached her lips. The physician had called it consumption, but Marian remembered how her mother would stare at the forest from her window, her fingers twitching as though reaching for something she could no longer feel.

In the end, she’d simply . . .emptied. Not violently, not with any great spectacle, but in the still, unremarkable way a well runs dry. And every ounce of kindness her father was capable of went with it.

Marian looks down at the empty vial in her hand, its glass slick with condensation. ‘If that’s what safety looks like,’ she murmurs, setting it down with a hard clink, ‘perhaps I don’t want it.’

Tilda flinches, the sound of the glass against wood too loud in the small room. ‘Don’t say that, child. The world’s teeth are sharper than you think,’ she warns, but there’s no heat in it. ‘Now hurry along. Best not keep your father or that wretched Sheriff waiting.’

Marian rises and gathers the loose bits of parchment on her drawing table, the paper edges soft from use and smudged grey with charcoal.

Her thumb traces over the top sketch. The dark, cruel smudges feel wrong against her skin. These were not her drawings. They were forced from her hand by command.

She presses them flat against her chest, as though their lines could shield her heart, before turning and marching out the door without another word.

If she’s lucky, she can slip them onto her father’s desk and vanish before either he or the Sheriff darkens the doorway.

The scent of smoked meat and boiled starch clings to the halls. Boots thud across stone, followed by the sharp bark of a steward’s reprimand and the hurried shuffle of servants trying to rush past.

Marian moves through the manor like a phantom. Her skirts brush against her ankles with every step. She avoids the main staircase, instead cutting through the narrow side corridors used by housemaids and scullions that don’t meet her eye. The paintings that line the walls are of ancestors she’s never met and hopes never to resemble. Lords and ladies with pinched mouths and jewel-studded collars, expressions carved from granite. Her mother’s portrait used to hang here too, in the alcove at the turn of the stairs, but it was taken down the week after she died, with no explanation, no ceremony.

Marian arrives at her father’s study to find the doors closed. A warm amber glow seeps out beneath them. Her palm stills on the handle as her father’s voice, low and irate, echoes off the stone.

‘We lost thirty blades, a dozen crossbows and bolts! It was the better part of a month’s worth of work, and you expect my men to replenish that in a mere few days?’

The voice that answers is oil-slick and unconcerned. ‘Your so-called men should have thought about that before allowing that fae bastard and his pack of mongrels to strut off with my weapons.’