Page 84 of Wench

The words slip out before she can catch them, and Tilda’s eyes narrow with sharp, maternal intuition. ‘Oh.’ Her voice drops, barely a breath. ‘So that’s what kept you alive out there.’

Marian meets her gaze at last, voice low but certain. ‘It’s not like that. He’s . . . He’s not what they say. He’s dangerous, yes, but not cruel. Not like the Sheriff. When he looks at me, I don’t feel small. I don’t feel owned.’

A door closes somewhere above, and both their heads snap toward the sound.

‘You should go,’ Marian whispers.

Tilda’s hand lingers, thumb brushing the grime on Marian’s cheek as if she could erase the bruise there. Her touch trembles, caught between comfort and farewell. ‘I’ll come back when I can,’ she whispers, but her eyes betray the fear that this may be the last time.

Marian shakes her head. ‘It’s too risky.’

Her old handmaiden swallows hard and pulls her hand back. ‘I can?—’

‘Please,’ Marian begs, her voice breaking.

Tilda hesitates, torn between defiance and obedience. She steps back and wipes her palms on her apron, as though scrubbing away the courage that drove her there. ‘Be careful, Marian. Men like the Sheriff will keep you alive only so he can watch you break by his hand.’

Marian’s throat thickens as she watches Tilda hurry back up the stairs.

In the cell beside her, Allen groans as consciousness trickles back in. Slowly, he sits up and looks around, until he finds her and smiles. He’s broken and blood-stained, and one of his eyes is swelling shut, but at least he’s alive.

‘You look like hell,’ he rasps.

Her laugh cracks, bitter and raw. ‘You’re one to talk.’ Marian closes her eyes. The sound of the forest is still there, faint but steady, like a heartbeat beneath the earth. She feels it under her skin, a pull in her blood, a promise that it has not forgotten her.

Let the Sheriff believe he’s already won.

He may cage her body, but the wild in her is already sharpening its teeth.

ChapterTwenty-Five

Marian cracks her knuckles as she paces the length of the cell with the restless desperation of a caged thing, boots scuffing against the cold stone. Every few steps she stops, neck craning toward the narrow window, desperate for the smallest glimpse of Sherwood’s edge. The sight is both a torture and a balm – freedom painted in green while she suffocates behind bars.

Her muscles scream from the thrashing the night before, but her body knows only motion. Each step drags straw across stone. Each turn puts her back at the wall where the window waits. Her eyes dart up, greedy, searching for a flash of antlers in the mist, a shape cutting free of the trees. If Lox comes – when he comes – she has to find some way to warn him. Even if she has to scream until her throat bleeds, she will get the message to him before the Sheriff’s trap can snap shut.

‘Would you please stop that incessant pacing?’ Allen groans, his voice drifting from his cell. He’s sprawled in the hay, head tipped back against the flagstones, bruises mapping his jaw and temple. A dark clot at his hairline makes her stomach knot, but his grin curves with a familiar insolence. ‘I know my head won’t be attached for much longer, but while I still have it, I’d prefer to reduce how much pain it’s in.’

Marian stills mid-step. The joke shouldn’t land: it’s too sharp, too dark, but her throat makes an awful sound somewhere between a laugh and a choke. Allen will be the Sheriff’s warm-up. A throat to cut before the show begins.

‘Don’t say that,’ she whispers. ‘Please.’

Allen studies her in the half-light, grin fading to something softer, something almost kind. ‘I’ve always known my luck would end in a performance worthy of an audience. I just never thought it would be singing my own funeral dirge.’ Something in Marian buckles. She slides down the wall until her knees meet straw and the cold seeps through to bone. ‘Allen, I’m so . . . Saints, this is all my fault. I’m so sorry.’ The apology pours out as if her mouth has found a spring and can’t stopper it. ‘I did this. My arrogance, my fury, my pride walked us right into the trap like a fool.’ Her throat tightens. ‘I swore I’d never be what they wanted me to be, and look at me.’ She gestures at the bars, their shackles. ‘Exactly where I started. A pitiful, trapped thing. A lesson for other girls to cede to their husbands.’

Both their eyes fall to the crumpled bundle of fabric in the corner that the Sheriff had presented her with in the middle the night. She promptly tossed it aside, not wanting to be within an inch of it. Now, the ruined dress glares back at her, all throat and ribs and empty promise.

It’s the shade of bone left to weather. The silk netting is snagged and snarled by rough handling, and a bodice stiff with whalebone sits above it. The hem, meant to skim polished tiles, is already streaked with soot and rust. Tiny seed pearls, pale as teeth, are stitched in rows running up the high collar neckline that will trap her the moment she slips it on.

Allen sighs. ‘Your pride didn’t put us here, Marian. Courage did. And courage is messy. It bleeds. It misjudges. Sometimes it breaks a nose and forgets there are ten more behind it.’

She shakes her head, but the tears keep coming, wetting the rust where her cheek presses to the bars.

‘The Sheriff picked you for a reason,’ he continues. ‘Not because you’re weak, or because you’re easy prey, but because you terrify him. That’s why he wants to make a spectacle out of your ruin. You’re not the pawn here, Marian. You’re the threat. And that bastard is scrambling for every chain he can find to prove otherwise.’

Her fingers swipe at her cheeks furiously, smearing soot and blood like war paint.

A shout rises from beyond the manor; a ragged note from the woods that sends her to her feet so fast the blood rushes from her head. She scrambles to the slit of a window, toes straining for purchase. She can’t see anything but the light itself, tilting brighter, cruelly indifferent. No antlers. No flicker of gold.

Clamouring footsteps rattle above them. A barked order echoes, and the parade of soldiers pours into the yard.