Page 43 of Wench

Because she doesn’t belong here either.

The fae let her wear their clothes, share in their rituals, sleep beneath their woven roofs, but she will never be one of them.

Still, there’s a wild corner of her heart that burns at the thought of staying. Of dropping her name like a cloak and walking the woods until she’s reborn. But she knows better. The world outside may be cruel, but it is what she knows. And perhaps there might be a sliver of land somewhere distant enough from the Sheriff’s reach. A place where she could live not as Marian Hallomere, but as no one at all – a ghost with no masters left to serve.

Two futures unfold so fast, she nearly staggers. In one, she kneels beside Lox. She touches his wrist, offers her presence and her apology. In the other, she picks a side that will keep her alive. Not noble. Not brave. But breathing. She returns home with maps of the fae world in her head and measurements in her pockets, ready to sell what she’s seen for the only currency that men like her father understand.

Her body decides before her mind catches up.

Marian’s feet carry her toward the shovel before guilt can worm through her decision. The wooden handle is worn, polished by mortal palms. She grips it with both hands. It’s heavier than she expected. A tool, not a weapon, yet she feels the weight of a blade all the same.

Her body shakes. The keening presses behind her eyes, needling her into action.

Lox is bent low, hair falling forward, inked vines shifting along his forearms as the muscles beneath them tense. He is wide open. She could speak. She could confess. She could beg. Instead, she swings.

The sound of wood striking bone is worse than she imagined. A dull crack, not sharp enough to split, nor soft enough to forgive. He folds sideways, a great shape collapsing in stages, one knee buckling, one hand flinging out uselessly to find purchase on ground that gives none. Eventually, Lox crumples into the earth with a grunt.

The shovel slips from Marian’s hands. She staggers back two steps, chest heaving. Slowly, she inches toward him. Her hands hover over him before closing around the strap across his chest. She yanks and the bow slips free, quiver skittering across the churned soil, wood still warm from his body.

Lox lies where he fell, half-curled, antlers raked through mud, dark hair splayed. Blood seeps slowly from his hairline, a thin thread that beads, then trails.

Her breath comes ragged. She fumbles with the quiver, arrows rattling, until at last she sets one against the nock and draws it back.

It would be kinder, her mind offers, viciously practical.

She stares at the slope of his ribcage. Watches it rise and fall. She remembers the flowers rising like stars when he willed children to hope for another day. Remembers his fingers against her chin.

With a strangled curse, she lets tension slip, easing the string until the arrow’s tip lowers. A gust of held breath surges out of her chest and leaves her light-headed.

‘Coward,’ Marian hisses at herself. She cannot bear his proximity; she cannot bear this place. She rights the quiver and backs away, but each step feels like tearing out a root.

She turns and scrambles, boots slipping as the slag shifts underfoot. Twice she drops a hand to steady herself and snatches it back, unwilling to accept even the ground’s help.

At the rim, she halts to throw one last look over her shoulder. He is still down. The antlers make him look like a felled stag left where it dropped because the hunter who claimed him could not carry the weight. The thought almost drives her back down.

Almost.

Instead, she lets her eyes rake the green. The canopy ripples away in waves – beech, then oak, then the darker seam of fir – until the land dips toward a faint pale scar she knows must be the old Roman road that feeds Nottingham. If she angles southeast to meet it and skirts the alder bogs opposite Hallomere Manor, it’s three days’ hard going on foot. Two if she doesn’t sleep much.

At least with a bow in hand, she can kill a thrush or woodcock easily, so she won’t starve. She slips into the thicket where the trees still stand tall, where the green hasn’t been bled out. She runs, lungs burning and heart wild, not knowing whether she’s chasing freedom or fleeing guilt. Every step feels like a trespass, every rustle of leaves whispers in warning. But she keeps moving. Swift and silent, dodging between roots and stone, heedless of direction.

Thorns catch at her borrowed trousers, and branches rake her arms, but she welcomes the sting. It feels honest.

Marian’s not sure how long she runs, but she doesn’t slow her pace until the trees thin and she hears the low murmur of voices.

She halts and presses her spine against the moss-slick bark of an old beech. Crouching low, she inches forward with care. Her boots find soft ground, and the hum of conversation grows clearer, words starting to shape themselves into meaning.

‘I’m telling you, we should take it to the Sheriff,’ says a man, gruff and wind-worn. ‘He’ll pay twice as much for proof the mine’s not dry.’

‘Hallomere would be safer,’ the other snaps. ‘I don’t want to be within three leagues of that fanatic. Did you hear what the Sheriff did to the poor sods who lost his bride? Strung ’em up like pigs.’

Marian’s breath lodges between her ribs.

Two men stand beside a low cart hitched to a pair of shaggy ponies, the wheels sunken slightly in the mud. Lashed across the back is a tarp meant to disguise the cargo, but wind has peeled it back just enough to reveal the dull gleam of ore, raw and sharp-edged. Its veins catch what little sunlight breaks through the canopy. One of the men is broad-shouldered and balding, the other wiry with a nervous twitch to his hands. Both are armed, though their swords hang carelessly from worn leather belts.

Her gaze flicks to the horses.

There are two of them, bridled but not yet tethered, snorting softly as they paw the ground. Their tack is plain, but well-kept. If she could distract the men somehow, perhaps she could slip onto a saddle and ride like hell for the forest road. It wouldn’t be elegant, but it would be faster than on foot.