Page 34 of Wench

‘What exactly isit?’ she breathes.

A sound rises from the dark as if to answer her.

Lox’s hand eases from Marian’s mouth, but his palm hovers a breath from her jaw, ready to silence her again if she so much as inhales too sharply.

‘Don’t move,’ he murmurs.

The air tasteswrong. Like meat left too long in the sun. Her instincts scream to run, but Lox’s other arm pins her against him.

‘What does it want?’ she whispers.

‘You.’

Lox’s hand leaves her jaw to reach for the bow slung over his shoulder. The motion is fluid, quiet as breath, and for the first time she notices the weapon in full. It’s made of polished yew, an inlay of silver veined along its grip. The string isn’t sinew or fibre; it looks as if threads of ambient amber light have been woven together.

Of course, the infuriating fae lord who embodies everything she’s sworn to hate would wield the same weapon that once felt like an extension of her own hand.

‘It can smell you,’ Lox says.

‘Whatcan?’ she hisses through her teeth.

‘A Fellhart.’ Lox’s antlers glint as he turns his head toward the shadowed path. ‘One of the forest’s sentinels charged with discouraging mortals from wandering too deep.’

The darkness to their left shifts. A crack, like bone splitting, echoes through the grove, followed by the slow drag of weight over leaves. A branch bows under pressure and then releases with a whip-snap. Marian’s breath locks in her throat.

She glimpses a blur of something massive threading between trunks, catching faint shafts of green light. Between blinks, eyes glint back at her: too many, too bright, burning from the dark like scattered coals.

Lox shifts, placing himself between her and the sound.

For a long, aching moment, nothing moves. Even the leaves seem to have forgotten how. Marian feels the weight of it press against her lungs until every breath becomes an argument. Her fingers twitch, aching for a weapon she doesn’t have. Despite being in front of her, Lox’s arm remains iron around her waist, a wall of warmth and muscle that pins her in place while the dark beyond the trees shifts and hums with something ancient.

One heartbeat. Then another. Slowly, the smell of rot is replaced by the scent of freshly turned earth as the Fellhart’s presence recedes, coiling back into the deep.

Lox spins around to face her, barely a breath between them. His eyes narrow as they move over her expression, tight and sharp as a hawk’s.

‘It appears Sherwood’s in a generous mood tonight,’ he murmurs.

Marian still can’t move. Her pulse is a snare drum in her throat. ‘Generous?’ she hisses. ‘That thing was going to tear me apart.’

He steps closer, his voice quiet. ‘But it didn’t.’

‘Why?’

His expression tightens, but there’s a flicker of amusement in his eyes. ‘Why indeed . . . A Fellhart hasn’t spared a mortal in decades.’

Marian glares, breath still ragged. ‘Apologies for disappointing your expectations.’

The corner of his mouth almost lifts. Almost. But those sharp, burning green eyes stay fixed on her, narrowing, as though she’s a riddle that refuses to solve itself. There’s a tension in him she hasn’t seen before, a restlessness that doesn’t suit his usual control. He looks at her like she’s an equation that won’t balance, and the failure of it needles him.

She wants to say something cutting – wants to wound him with words – but the closeness unravels her tongue. His chest is inches from hers. The heat coming off him is disorienting; it smells of pine sap and rain, wild and clean, nothing like the stench that lingers in the creature’s wake.

‘Why didn’t you kill it?’ she asks finally, her voice small but edged.

Lox’s attention drifts to the dark. ‘Because everything in Sherwood serves a purpose. Even its monsters.’

‘A purpose?’ she repeats, half-disbelieving. ‘That thing wanted to eat me.’

‘It wanted to know you,’ he corrects softly, still watching the trees.