Page 46 of Wench

She swallows the guilt burning its way up her throat and shifts to sit up. The sheet rasps against her skin and pain surges up her side so sudden she nearly gasps. Her teeth sink into the inside of her cheek until copper floods her mouth. She lowers herself back down, jaw clenched, not wanting to wake Lox.

A soft knock breaks the quiet.

Lox doesn’t startle the way most do when dragged from sleep. Instead, he exhales slowly, as though surfacing from somewhere deep, and pushes himself upright with a groan.

Marian’s eyes slam shut. She waits a breath or two before chancing a look through her thin veil of lashes. His movements are stiff. He drags a hand over his face, fingers catching in his tangled hair, then rolls his shoulders just as another knock comes, more insistent.

He pads barefoot toward the door and opens it without ceremony.

Will’s voice carries into the room. ‘The Council wishes to speak with you.’

Marian shifts slightly, enough to angle her body toward the gauze curtain drawn across the threshold. But the motion tugs at her wound. Her breath hitches, a tremor barely audible, and she bites the inside of her cheek harder.

Lox exhales through his nose, subtly shifting his stance as the coil of authority wraps back around him like a cloak shrugged on. ‘They can wait. Did you retrieve it?’

‘If they could wait, I wouldn’t be here,’ Will snaps.

‘Did you retrieve it?’ he repeats, his tone offering no reproach.

Will huffs. ‘Little John is stashing the ore behind the healing bough.’ Their lips curl into a sneer as they tip their head toward where Marian rests. ‘Though why you’d want to risk everything we’ve built for that girl is beyond my comprehension.’

That girl.

Not Marian or Mare. Not even ‘captive’. Just a problem in a girl’s shape. She wonders if that’s all she is to Will, to any of them, now: a liability wrapped in borrowed clothes.

Lox doesn’t rise to the insult, at least not aloud. But the silence that follows is heavier than anger – a pause that makes Will’s sneer falter. Lox stands with his back to Marian, broad shoulders dark against the fire-lit frame of the doorway, but she sees a subtle bracing of his weight.

‘She is under my protection,’ he says finally.

‘That’s shit and you know it!’

Lox exhales, long and ragged, like the breath of a man fighting not to bare his teeth. ‘There’s something about her, Willow.’ He balls a fist, thumping it against the jamb. ‘She’s different, she?—’

‘Why? Because she’s pretty? Because saving her might make you less of a monster in the eyes of mortals?’

‘Sherwood spoke the night she arrived.’ Lox’s jaw flexes, the fire painting a harsh line down his cheek. ‘I don’t know how or when, but Sherwood made it clear she will be needed for what’s coming.’

Marian’s pulse hammers in her throat. She keeps her eyes half-shut, but she can almost feel Lox’s frustration radiating through the air, a heat that makes her ribs ache worse than the wound.

The flicker of the hearth catches on the golden trinkets woven through Will’s dark hair. ‘You’re risking everything on a feeling.’ Their voice drops to a dangerous whisper. ‘You broke the oldest rule we have, Loxleigh. You killed three men! Three mortals. Time and again you’ve said we take gold or weapons, but we never trade blood for blood, not when we can help it. And you did it with Sherwood’s magic! Do you have any idea what that means if the Sheriff comes sniffing this far north?’

‘It means they will learn what it costs to trespass this deeply.’

‘You’re not the forest’s executioner,’ Will spits. ‘You’re its keeper. There’s a difference.’

‘Then let it judge me,’ he growls. ‘If Sherwood disapproves, it will take back what it’s given. Until then, I answer to its will – not yours.’

Will stares at him, something wounded flickering behind the anger. ‘Robin Hood has gone soft.’ They wield his name like an insult. ‘You’ve changed since she came. The forest may have whispered, but I think you’re the one who’s stopped listening.’

‘What would you have had me do?’ Lox snarls. ‘Three men gutted our land for ore, laid hands on what they had no right to. Would you have let them walk?’ His voice drips with restrained fury. ‘Would you have spared them if it was a fae child dragged into the dirt and threatened to be carved open like game?’

Will doesn’t answer right away. Their shadow leans long across the threshold, weight shifting restlessly as if the question itself presses them off balance.

Lox’s fingers curl against the wood until the grain creaks. ‘Tell the Council I’ll come when I’m ready. Not before.’

‘We both know you didn’t do this for Sherwood, and you’re fooling yourself to think that she would do the same for you or any of the rest of us.’ With those parting words, they leave, their footsteps fading into the hush beyond as the door shuts.

Silence returns, broken only by the muted pop of the fire.