Page 41 of Wench

She turns away, tugging a thorn from her sleeve with more force than necessary.

‘It was quieter than I expected,’ she says at last. ‘I thought it would be blood and spectacle. That you would chant strange words and call down storms to prove your power. But,’ she clears her throat, ‘I have never seen grief treated as if it was something you could touch. We humans bury our dead. We say words and we leave them to God and worms. You put your dead back into the ground you will walk on tomorrow and call that returning.’

He hums, pleased in a way that skims along her nerves. ‘And the confessions?’

Marian keeps her eyes on the path ahead. ‘Startling.’

‘Honest,’ he counters.

‘Both.’ She steps over a root that shifts as she does, not enough to trip her but enough to make her heart hop. ‘A woman admitting she lusted after another’s wife. An old man who hid jars of his neighbour’s honey in his rafters because the theft made him feel alive. A hunter who resented the buck that kept eluding him, yet prayed for the arrow to fly crooked so the chase never ended.’ She glances at him. ‘None of that was monstrous.’

‘You sound disappointed?’

‘None of this is as I expected,’ she finally admits, and hates herself for it.

‘And that unnerves you?’

‘It complicates things,’ she mutters. ‘I was raised to expect blasphemy and vice, not . . . ordinary hunger dressed in honesty. It’s difficult to call people monsters while they confess to being afraid of the dark.’

‘Some of usaremonsters,’ he says without flinching. ‘And some of us are saints. Most are neither. The stories you were fed had fat trimmed off the bone until only teeth remained.’

‘And what about the tales you were raised on? I’m sure they told you that all mortals were greedy parasites?—’

‘With hands that never learn to loosen, aye,’ he finishes dryly. ‘We’re taught you’ll take until the world is a husk, then pray over the husk as if that mends it.’

Her temper kicks hard enough to steady her. ‘What do you think?’

‘I believe your kind are very good at convincing yourselves that needing is the same as deserving. Human lives are fleeting, which makes every appetite feel justified.’

‘You speak as if you’ve never wanted something you shouldn’t.’

‘Wanting is easy,’ he sighs. ‘Restraint is the work.’ Curiosity claws up her throat, but she swallows it.

Around them the mist shifts and resettles.

They walk in a hush salted with small sounds. Twice she catches herself anticipating the ground’s treachery and changing her step before it betrays her.

‘Tell me what you really think about us,’ he says after a time, almost idly.

Marian’s steps stutter. ‘What?’

Lox steps over a slick rock and offers a hand. ‘Think of it as your own Hollowing. An offering to Sherwood to grant you safe passage; an emptying of what you carried in so it doesn’t fester and rot on the path.’

She eyes his palm. Pride would have her refuse, but tact takes his fingers. His grip is warm and certain. Heat skims her wrist where his calluses meet skin, and something in her spine loosens.

‘One truth for another?’ she dares, her voice thin.

He smiles and nods, letting her hand go the moment she’s past the rock. When he does, the air feels colder.

‘Ladies first.’

Her fingers fiddle with the hem of her sleeve. ‘I was jealous of the way the confessors were listened to,’ she finally offers, surprising herself with the simplicity of it. ‘There was no mockery. No punishment. Only bearing witness.’

Lox nods and Marian swears the veil of fog before them thins, if only slightly. ‘I envy mortals their endings.’

She blinks. ‘Our endings?’

‘You get to be finished,’ he says, not looking at her. ‘To close a life in a single arc. To say, “This is what I was,” and then let the earth have you. Fae go on until our choices repeat, only in wider circles, to the point where we wear grooves into ourselves. Sometimes I would like to be a line rather than a ring.’