Page 80 of Wench

For a heartbeat his face softens, but he quickly shutters it. ‘This is why the Verdant Guardian is forbidden the comforts others take for granted. I cannot afford to think like a man reaching for a body in his bed, when I am asked to think like a root holding a forest. A leader does not gamble lives for the sake of his own heart’s noise.’ His voice is rough, a confession he doesn’t want to name. ‘I cannot afford to let your wants become my compass.’

She hates how cleanly that wounds her. Hates that the hurt blooms right alongside the understanding.

‘My wants?’ she says, and her voice goes terribly calm. ‘You mean wanting to see children live to grow their second set of teeth or to walk in a wood that doesn’t smell like a pyre?’ She shakes her head. ‘If that is a softness you cannot afford, then perhaps the forest needs a heart more than it ever needed a shield.’

She doesn’t wait for his response. The chamber air is suffocating, heavy with unspoken truths. Marian turns on her heel and flees. The heart tree groans as if in mourning, the lanterns dimming to a sickly pall when she passes.

The fury that held her spine straight in the chamber slips its leash and leaves her hollow. Tears come hot and graceless. They streak soot across her cheeks, sting the tender skin at the corners of her mouth. She wipes them once with the heel of her hand and only smears the pain wider.

Her legs carry her through Elswyth, up the winding staircase, and through the door of her quarters without breaking pace. Inside, it’s too quiet. Her hands go straight to the window, to the basin, to anything that promises a smaller task than tearing the world down. She empties the pitcher. The water hits the copper with a soft, forgiving sound that makes her throat knot.

She palms a cloth and dunks it. The first pass over the back of her neck is blessedly cold. She holds it there until the chill bites, but when she drags the cloth down her face, across her brow and cheeks, the water turns brown and grey and sick. She rinses, wrings, and presses harder. Again. Again. The water clouds darker, a thin oil-sheen rimming the edges. She scrubs until her skin stings, and when there’s nothing left to clean she flings the rag across the room with a roar.

Marian grips the basin until it creaks. In the warped reflection she is no Council’s guest and no baron’s daughter – just a woman filled with a rage as bright as pulsing coals.

If they won’t cut the hand that feeds her father’s forges, then she will.

The thought lands clean and certain.

She dries her hands on what’s left of her tunic, slips on a pair of leather bracers until they’re snug against her forearms. Her fingers bind her hair in a braid that she coils at the base of her skull, securing it in place with her mother’s fox pin. She pulls on her cloak, fingers sure now that a decision has found them.

When she unbars the door and swings it open, she isn’t alone.

Allen stands on the threshold, lute nowhere in sight. In its place, a pair of twin bo staffs, and in his hand a bow slung next to a quiver full of arrows. His usual grin is gone; what sits in its place makes her entire body tense.

He’s furious.

He looks her up and down. Her mouth opens, excuse at the ready, but he holds up a hand to silence her. ‘I’m not here to talk you out of anything. I want blood.’ He holds out the bow and arrows. ‘If I can’t have that, then I’ll take fire.’

ChapterTwenty-Four

Hallomere Manor rises from the mist, its iron-braced windows and bone-white columns gleaming beneath the moon.

Marian studies it from the treeline. The house stands tall, still filled with the memories of a life that no longer fits her. She tells herself it’s not a home – it’s a wound.

And tonight, she’ll cauterize it.

Marian’s bow is steady in her grip as Allen trails behind her. Their boots make no sound as they cross the field to where her childhood was melted down and hammered into obedience.

The air outside the forge tastes of rust, even with the fires banked low. Marian breathes it in and nearly gags, but forces herself onward.

‘Where are the smiths?’ Allen whispers.

Marian’s gaze cuts past the shadowed arch of the slag pit and over the stables, and points to the span of hillside in the distance. ‘First shift starts when the light hits that ridge.’

‘Then we’d better get to work.’

They slip through the side entrance. The space stretches cavernous and hollow, ribs of timber blackened with soot. Anvils line the room like pews, surrounded by racks of half-forged blades gleaming with oil. Chains clink faintly, and fully forged weapons sit in crates, their veined edges showing the fae ore laced within.

Marian’s stomach knots. Each weapon hums with the same faint resonance of magic – only here it’s warped, beaten into shape by fire and greed.

Allen moves ahead of her. He thrusts his bo staff into the cogs of the waterwheel before grabbing a hammer off the wall and bringing it down on the nearest spear haft with a snarl. The shaft splinters, metal skittering across the stones, and he jams it into the firepit to stir embers back to life.

Her hands move fast, hauling every weapon she can grab and tossing them into the smelter. The flames lick bright as the metal softens and curls, before collapsing into its molten grave.

The mournful chord grows louder with every piece destroyed. She wants to cover her ears, but the song is inside her bones. Still, she shoves another spearhead into the coals, jaw clenched, fury loud enough to drown out the sorrow.

Allen’s face is a mask of soot and sweat. He slams another rack into the pit and spits on the sparks as they fly.