Page 31 of Wench

She swallows, her pulse thundering against her ribs. ‘I was trying to find someplace to put these,’ she says, lifting the basket of linens.

Allen doesn’t reply at first. His usual smile doesn’t come. The light of the blossoms reflects in his eyes, bright and unguarded for once. For a moment, he just stands beside her in the dim corridor, gaze fixed on the children.

‘That’s the part no legend ever gets right,’ he murmurs, his voice low enough that only she hears. ‘They all say Lox is fire and fury, that he carries Sherwood’s wrath in his veins. Which is true.’ His throat bobs as he swallows, gaze lingering on the children’s thin faces. ‘But what he holds back is just as dangerous as what he lets out. That . . .’ He nods toward the petals drifting in the air. ‘That is the side of him no one warns you about.’

Marian’s arm throbs from holding the basket, but she can’t seem to make herself move. ‘Why do that? Why waste magic on something so frivolous when you say it’s fading?’

Allen tilts his head, finally glancing at her. ‘Because joy isn’t frivolous. Not for them. They’re the ones who carry the brunt of it when the Sheriff’s men drive deeper into the forest. Too many wake with nothing but pain for company. Lox gives them a moment when that isn’t the only thing consuming their thoughts.’

Marian presses the wicker harder against her hip, as though its bite might steady her. She tries to anchor herself in the scratch of straw through her skirt. Anything to blunt the sharpness of what she’s seeing.

She knows she should look away, and she wants to, but her eyes betray her. They keep following the curve of Lox’s hands, the way he coaxes beauty from bark as if the forest were a body answering to his touch. The chime of the blossoms rings inside her chest, and for one reckless instant she envies the children their laughter.

‘I don’t understand him.’ She swallows.

Allen chuckles softly. ‘You don’t have to. Few do. Some call him storm; others call him shepherd. The truth’s somewhere in-between.’ He turns his body toward her, grin flickering back at last.

As she turns back, a wave of light-headedness grips her, her vision narrowing for half a heartbeat. The basket nearly slips from her arms. She falters, catching herself with a sharp inhale and a stiffening of her spine, forcing her stride back into rhythm before Allen can notice.

Marian dares a final glance over her shoulder.

Lox’s green and gold gaze burns steady as it rakes over her. He studies her like he’s seen the crack in her composure ripple across the room, as though he’s weighing the shape of her weakness with the same reverence he gave the flowers.

Her cheeks feel too warm, pulse flickering too close to the surface. She turns before the soft, unguarded thing in her chest can rise to meet his gaze. Better he watch her leave than catch the flicker of something fragile in her eyes. Strength is easier, at a distance.

ChapterTen

Late afternoon drapes Elswyth in the colour of tarnished coin. It’s neither daylight nor dusk, only that gauzy hush between. The village hums with the sounds of preparation for tonight’s Ashen rite.

Marian keeps her head bowed beneath the burden of folded linens, the basket balanced on one hip. From a distance, she must look perfectly obedient, merely another laundress on another errand. Up close, her steps are measured, deliberate, always angling a little too far from where she should be.

No one stops her. No one looks twice.

Allen had said the rite would begin when the sun burned itself down on the horizon, that the fae would gather at the river to sing for the dead.

‘A night of remembrance,’he’d called it.‘A night when even the trees bow their heads.’

Perfect. Let them bow.

Marian’s sketchpad rests flat at the bottom of the basket, hidden beneath the folded tunics. Each step takes her further along the map she’s been building for days. She follows the lines and marks rendered in charcoal smudges, little notations of ladders, bridges, guard posts, and rope spans. And now she tests what lies beyond.

Lanterns begin to brighten high in the canopy, one by one. Around her, fae string garlands of ash-grey blossoms, their petals falling like thin flakes of snow.

She cuts left at a narrow span of rope bridge that winds through a tangle of trees. When the path forks, she takes the steeper climb that she marked with a faint X days ago, where the ropes thin and no light crystals burn.

The boardwalk narrows, rising and falling like the bones of a spine. Her heart keeps its own pace, quiet but insistent, as she crosses into the western quarter, where the walkways lose their polish. Moss creeps over the planks. The air grows cooler, stiller, as the village falls away.

Marian sets the basket down to stretch her sore arms and flips the linen back just enough to reveal her sketchpad. Her own scrawled notes meet her:Western ridge, roots exposed, no guard post. Possible descent beyond outer wards.

She presses on. The last of the lamps vanish behind her, swallowed by the trees. Her steps grow careful, almost soundless. Bark curls like old parchment along the rails. A wind moves through the treeline, but it isn’t the playful sort that tousles hair. It brushes over her neck like the exhale of something watching.

Every few paces she pauses to scratch a mark on the edge of her map: a split trunk here, a vine ladder there. Her pulse quickens when her charcoal begins to skip. Whatever magic veils Elswyth makes her hand shake. She tightens her grip until the lines even out again.

She descends a crooked staircase that twists around the base of an enormous oak, where roots braid into the hillside, and the forest floor meets her at last. The path before her is barely a trail, more suggestion than structure, the planks half-eaten by dirt. The hum of the village fades into a heartbeat’s echo, leaving only the creak of her basket handle and the sound of her own breath.

This is the furthest Marian’s ever managed.

She moves carefully, testing each step before putting her weight down fully, expecting the wards to trigger and Little John to lumber from between a pair of trunks, or Will to rain daggers from a branch above.