Page 11 of Wench

Another figure scurries to the giant’s side. Smaller, wiry, with quicksilver grace. A lute is strapped across his back, the polished wood gleaming faintly in the dim light. His dark hair whips loose as he vaults over a root, landing with a flourish beside the larger fae as though the chaos around them were no more dangerous than a festival celebration.

Marian tries to still the wild beat of her pulse, but it refuses to slow. Unwilling to sit still any longer, she claws at the carriage latch. The wood has splintered where the wheel struck a rut, and the door hangs crooked on its hinge. She cannot force it open, so she drags herself up onto the bench and scrambles toward the narrow window. The fabric tears against the edge of the frame as she shoves her shoulder through, wriggling until she tumbles headfirst into the mud. Cold seeps into her dress, soaking her within seconds.

She looks up just as a flash of metal glints through the fog.

One of the Sheriff’s guards, face twisted with desperation, charges from behind the pair. His sword gleams wet in the weak light, raised high for a killing blow. His boots churn mud, the sound of his breath harsh, ragged, final.

The fae with the lute does not see him.

Marian’s stomach pitches. Every lesson ever branded into her by priests, tutors, her father, screams in her head – the fae are monsters, soulless tricksters, never to be aided, never to be trusted.

But the sight of that blade, the inevitability of it, tears all of that away.

‘Look out!’ she cries.

The fae with the lute whirls, and drops into a crouch, the blade whistling just above his head. Mud sprays as he pivots, boot snapping against the guard’s knee with brutal precision. Bone cracks with a wet pop. The soldier screams and crumples, his weapon spinning harmlessly into the muck. The larger fae turns with a grimace, catching the guard’s collar and hurling him into the brush like a sack of grain, while the head of the lute-bearing fae snaps toward her, emerald eyes flashing through the chaos. He studies her as he straightens with a fluid twist, one hand snapping the lute’s strap tighter across his chest.

By every law of crown and creed, by every decree the Sheriff has ever scrawled across parchment, Marian has just committed treason.

And she knows there will be no forgiveness.

ChapterFour

Marian staggers back a step, mud sucking at her slippers. What will her soft heart cost her? The stocks, a branding iron to her tongue, the hangman’s noose?

Before she can spiral, she turns on her heel and bolts. The forest blurs as she runs, heart battering so violently that it drowns out the clash of steel and the curses of men behind her. She barely feels the briars biting her ankles as terror drives her harder, faster.

Against her better judgement, she glances back over her shoulder.

The instant she does, her body collides with something so hard that the impact jars her teeth and knocks the breath from her lungs. She stumbles back, half-sinking in the mire, and looks up.

He looms from the mist without warning. A solid wall of muscle and scar and ink. His shoulders alone swallow the path whole, but for all his size, his step had made no sound, his presence revealed only when it was too late.

Marian’s heart clatters like loose stones in her ribs. Her body screams at her to flee, but he’s blocking the only clear path through the underbrush.

‘Let me pass,’ she whimpers, managing to force herself upright.

He tilts his head and utters only a grunt in response. It’s low and gravelly like a landslide. One large hand moves to grab her by the arm, to seize or stop or drag her somewhere she doesn’t want to go.

Marian acts on instinct. She twists out of reach and yanks her mother’s fox pin from her hair in a single, fluid motion. Without hesitation, she plunges it into the fae’s forearm, driving the point as deep as her strength allows.

He bellows, more in surprise than pain, gold eyes flashing wide as his other hand pulls back reflexively.

That’s all she needs.

She takes off without a backward glance, slippers sliding on slick leaves and soil, snagging on every branch. The mist thickens the deeper she goes, softening the trees into pale phantoms. Vines slither across her path, moving just after she passes them.

She doesn’t stop when something laughs behind her, high and light and wrong.

She doesn’t stop when the air coils tighter, curling around her throat like ribbon.

She doesn’t stop when her slipper tears free, leaving one foot bare and bleeding.

Marian changes tactics and turns sharply, hoping the fae won’t be able to track her erratic movements. Instead, she finds herself falling. She tumbles down a slope slick with moss, mud smearing her palms as she scrambles for purchase. Her body pitches forward and the edge of her gown snags until it tears at the hip. She wheezes out a ragged scream as something cinches around her leg with brutal force.

The world jerks.

She’s flung upward and the ground vanishes beneath her as the trap’s counterweight whips taut. She screams, the sound ripping from her throat as she’s wrenched off the earth. Pain explodes around her ankle, but worse is the momentum that sends her swinging back into the trunk the snare is fastened to. Speckles of white light bursts across her vision, attempting to swallow her sight entirely.