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With a gasp, stark coldness seeped into my bones, wrapping around every part of me. My arms were sore, held over my head. When I tried to bring them down to cover my body, the clanking of shackles rang out, tight around my wrists. My ankles were similarly shackled to the floor where I stood, lank and disheveled.
I gaped at myself—at the darkness of the room I was in. My senses were heightened. I could hear a distinct pitter-patter of water dripping nearby, quickly driving me to madness. All else was quiet.
My heart hammered behind my ribs. I assessed myself and found no pain in my muscles, bones, or any part other than the throbbing headache pulsing behind my eyes.
Despite my shackled situation, from what I could tell with a cursory inspection, I was unmolested. For now.
With a wince, my head slowly lifted, bringing the sharp throb in my head to a fever pitch—
And I gasped when I stared at the shadowed silhouette of Sir Guy of Gisborne, seated on a chair in front of me with one leg thrown over his knee in a lounging position.
An involuntary hiss pushed out of my mouth, and I recoiled. The manacles binding me rattled and jangled, keeping me from hiding my modesty or defending myself.
The worst possible situation had arisen. I had only myself to blame. I had traded myself for Emma, knowing the nobility and lawmen of Nottingham wanted me more than my poor handmaid. Now I was paying the price for my foolishness.
Guy’s dark mustache twitched with an eerie smirk curling his lips. He enjoyed watching me squirm, and his eyes never left my naked body.
“Well, that wasn’t fun at all, now was it?” he asked. His spindly fingers drummed on the knee of his slanted leg.
I swallowed hard over a dry throat. My lips were cracking, my head was thumping, and my heart was raging. My tongue felt like a dry, leathery blob, yet my body was somehow clammy and slick.
In short, I was in a poor state.
“What . . . what are you talking about? Where am I?” I eked out, trying my hardest to remain calm.
Every fiber of my being compelled me to flex and try to rid these shackles keeping me bound. To fight this bastard with everything I had, even though I knew it was futile.
He uncrossed his legs and put his hands on his knees, then stood from his chair with a groan, towering over me only five feet away. His arms crossed over his narrow chest. “I can’t very well be a hunter when my prey is trying to make herself a huntress, now can I?”
I had no idea what he was going on about. My eyes scanned the sparse room, trying to find a means of escape.
A small table stood behind me, with my belongings on it. A candle flickered on a sconce near the door, and that was the only source of light. According to Guy, it was morning. I’d have never known if he hadn’t said “good morning” as a way of introduction.
I wasn’t in the jailhouse. Not in a cell. Maybe a safehouse of some kind? Or a torture dungeon, more like it. Fear inched up my spine. It was taking everything I had not to let it consume me completely.
There was nothing here to be used as a weapon. And that was if I could somehow slide my wrists through the shackles, which wasn’t happening.
I was stuck. Imprisoned. Sir Guy’s captive. Easily the worst place in the world I could imagine being.
Guy muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. It felt like he was speaking to himself more than anything, but I tried to latch onto his meaning all the same.
“Prowling around on your own like a damned fool,” he said, frustrated about something. “Found yourself snooping around in the wildflowers again, haven’t you? And now here you are.”
It was like I had been dropped down into a story I didn’t recognize. What the hell is he talking about? Through the pounding in my head, I tried to connect the threads. I went to Wilford. Traded my freedom for Emma’s. Spoke with Maid Marian, though I didn’t drink her concoction. And then she . . . knocked me unconscious with something.
All the pieces fit. I remembered the story. Yet it still didn’t seem to make any sense when compared to Guy’s version of events.
Shaking my head of the cobwebs, I grunted, “What are you planning to do to me?”
His eyes glanced down to my chest, where my nipples were shamefully tight and pebbled against the cold.
I had much bigger problems to worry about than my modesty right now, however.
“I am to watch over you until the carriage arrives.”
I hadn’t expected a straightforward answer, so I just blinked at him, confused. “That’s not the first time someone has mentioned a carriage.” Marian did, too. “Where am I going?”
“That, I don’t know.”
