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Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. I had felt abandoned and betrayed for years now. I had defended myself from the hurt, with the help of Robert’s voice, yet it now threatened to spill out. Even never letting my guard down, it still broke my heart to hear it laid out in full.
Maid Marian and Father’s words came in a flurry, dazing me until I felt as if I weren’t even there, but rather floating alongside my body, the last vestige of my spirit drifting away from my being.
“Are you mad, man? ‘Did that for us’?” Marian called out with a scoff, and I heard her heeled boots stomp on the floorboards. “You poisoned your wife, Thomas!”
Tears welled in my eyes. I tried to fight back the pain so I wouldn’t make a sound. Always silent, never making a sound. Keeping quiet, even during my beatings.
And now . . . this?
“And you took the job, woman!” Father railed back. The heavy tread of his boots joined the chorus in the room. “What do these vicious rogues possibly have over you, for you to cry loyalty after they’ve shown you none? This was how it was supposed to be!”
I furrowed my brow. Took the job?
“I didn’t expect so much death,” Marian said, sighing. “I didn’t expect . . . her.”
SLAP—
My father’s hand smacking flesh. Marian crying out. A clatter of things falling off a table as Marian staggered.
The slap startled me. Not from the sound, but from the memory of its brutal sting needling across my skin.
I had half a mind to jump through this window and help Maid Marian from my wicked father.
But I needed to learn more. I had to know the truth, as much as it pained me to hear. Please, Mama, don’t let it be like this. I just want to see you again!
“She is nothing,” Father growled. “She means nothing.”
Marian’s voice was flat and unaffected, despite just being slapped. Cool, collected. “Just as your wife means nothing, Thomas?”
Unlike her, my father was a tempest of unpredictable rage. “Do you want the back of my hand too, whore?”
Marian laughed.
She laughed.
“I’ve always loved when you put your hands on me, Tom the Stiff.” Her voice was low and throaty now. Filled with something else entirely—something removed from the pain. Something akin to experience, and what she was known for.
My brow twisted with contempt. Just what is going on?
My father let out a low chuckle, a similar darkness to Marian’s. “I do give that silly little moniker some credence, don’t I?”
The soft steps of their boots lingered. Closer, closer. The rustling of clothes, a light whimper from Marian.
I slid down the wall, pulling my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. Trying to drown out their lewd sounds even as I listened to their heinous words. These two, I realized, are perfect for each other.
Then my father’s words ripped my heart out of my chest in a way I’d never recover from.
“Those two names mean nothing anymore, love,” he drawled, voice thick and gruff. When he was rewarded with another whimper from Marian, and I heard a wet squelch, I closed my eyes shut. “One of them is gone already. And now that my dear daughter has joined her mother in Hell—”
“Robin isn’t dead yet,” Marian cut in. “The little bitch is slippery. Even after—mmph, yes, right there, love. Even after giving Sir Guy the map to her location, the viper moved too slowly.”
“The details don’t matter,” Father assured her. “It’s only matter of time until that viper finds them and rids us of her. For now, she’s still an outlaw for what she did to that stupid noble boy’s eye.”
Marian laughed, then moaned, and within moments carried on the conversation like nothing had happened. “I always wondered if the debacle with Peter Fisher was your staging, as well. Wily that you are.”
“Just a happy mishap, my love.”
“Hmm, call me that again, Thomas. Tell me how much you want my sweet cunt wrapped around that hard cock of yours. Tell me the devious things you plan to do with me . . .”
