Page 21 of Wench

On him.

Loathing rises in her like a tide. Yet, beneath it, something treacherous uncoils and stretches. Attraction is too tidy a word, too human. The pull of Lox’s beauty is not the soft, courtly kind she was raised to admire. It’s sharp-edged and feral.

And Marian hates him for it.

She hates the treachery of it. She hates herself for feeling it. Her palms dampen. Her pulse climbs. A treasonous hum travels her spine and pools where she despises it most.

She tells herself it’s fear wearing a different mask. She tells herself many things in quick succession, until the lies stack neatly enough to stand on.

Lox does not move. He sits the way mountain faces sit, as if time itself must ask permission to pass. His gaze does not soften. It does not goad. It simply holds her where she stands until the last of the Elders are gone and the long door sighs shut on its hinges.

‘You stare as if sight were a blade,’ he says at last. ‘But beware, some things cut both ways.’

Her jaw tightens until it aches. ‘Then I suggest you look elsewhere.’

A faint sound answers her, almost a laugh. He leans back a fraction, and in that small slackening she remembers how to breathe. She realizes only then that her hands have curled into fists.

‘Allen,’ Lox calls, without turning his head.

Marian startles, a quick jerk that betrays just how tightly she had narrowed her world to Lox alone. She had forgotten that others still shared the room’s edges.

The minstrel peels away from the shadows where he’s been lingering, with Will close behind him. He strolls forward with his usual grace, though there’s an edge of curiosity in his eyes as they flick between Marian and Lox.

‘Since it was you who dragged her out of the snare and through our gates, she will be yours to mind,’ Lox announces. Allen blinks, his easy grin faltering for the first time since Marian met him. ‘My lord?’

‘Our generosity is not without cost. Elswyth is no refuge for idle mouths. See that her hands are kept busy, her feet stay where they belong, and her tongue halts before sowing discord as we prepare for the equinox. And if she disobeys, you will answer for it.’

Allen’s mouth opens, then closes again. For once, no quick quip leaps to his lips. His lute strap shifts against his chest as he drags a palm down it, buying himself a moment.

‘I am not a child who needs minding.’ Marian bristles with the humiliation of being bartered from one hand to another.

‘No, you’re a weed that needs pruning,’ Will seethes, hands resting on the pommel of one of their daggers. ‘Allow me the honour.’

Allen rolls his eyes. ‘For Shéruel’s sake! Not every problem is solved by cutting it to pieces, Will.’ He angles his body toward Marian with a wink.

Will bares their teeth and spins toward Lox. ‘You are making a mistake. After everything their kind has done, everyone we’ve lost, you’d let her stay?’

Lox doesn’t rise to the bait. ‘It isn’t I who allows it.’

Will’s eyes narrow. ‘Then who?’

‘Sherwood.’ The word lands like a decree, quiet but absolute.

For a heartbeat, the only sound is the low hum of the roots beneath their feet. Will’s jaw works, a thousand retorts burning behind their teeth, but none make it past their tongue.

Whatever argument they might have had with Lox dies there, smothered by something older and greater than either of them.

Marian looks between them, pulse quickening. The forest? The idea that roots and leaves could decide her fate sends a chill through her chest. She’s no stranger to superstition, but this feels different. The thought unsettles her more than the possibility of any punishment. Why would the wood will her safety? What claim could it have on her life?

Lox turns his attention back to Allen, the moment already dismissed. He leans back in his chair, the motion slow, casual, as though all of this unfolds by his design. ‘It is settled. Allen, she is yours to guard. And, little fox?’ His voice turns flint-sharp, cutting clean through the room as he drinks her in. ‘It was your fear for his neck that put you in our path. Now, it will be bound to yours,’ he finishes. His words fall heavy as iron, final as stone. ‘Think twice before you bare your teeth. Bite too hard, and it will behisflesh, not yours, that bleeds.’

ChapterSeven

‘That foul, loathsome, arrogant—’ Marian seethes as they march back into the village.

Allen’s laugh cuts her off. ‘Yes, yes, all of that. But you have to admit he’s devastatingly attractive, which makes the arrogance almost forgivable.’

Marian whirls on him. ‘Forgivable?’