Page 52 of Wench

She repeats the movement. Shift. Catch. Step. Each time smoother, quieter. Slowly, the memory loosens its grip.

‘Now, once you have someone this close, you have a few options.’ He ticks them off with his free hand. ‘Bite the forearm. Knee to groin. Stomp the knee. Or – my personal favourite – turn his own hand toward him.’

He walks her through the steps slowly: her stick anchors his wrist, her forearm presses, his own imagined blade angles back toward his belly. Even pretending, she feels a thread of savage satisfaction pull through her.

‘Again,’ he says.

They run it until her body starts to find the corners without him naming them. Shift. Catch. Step. Leverage. His pace never rushed, each repetition sanding more fear off the memory.

Little John watches, correcting with a knuckle or brief touch: a knee too straight, breath too shallow, a stance that’s crept narrow. When Marian’s attention frays, he simply breathes, an anchor she can moor to without looking.

Like clockwork, her second meal of the day appears outside her door without fanfare, only a single knock to signal its arrival. She quickly devours it before continuing. She grinds through it. Sweat beads at her lip. The bandage pulls. But she pivots on instinct now, catching, stepping, driving a phantom fist into a phantom knee with a satisfying thud of boot against mat.

‘Good,’ Allen says, a rare solemnity in it. He slashes slowly toward her midline. She pivots, the willow skimming fabric instead of flesh. She angles the stick to catch his wrist and drive it away. He feints and when she starts to chase, he clicks his tongue.

‘Don’t stretch,’ he warns. ‘Make him come to you. Let his greed overextend him and then punish the reach.’

They run it again. Marian baits, retreats a hair, and when he overcommits the next cut, she slides past and brings her willow down on his hand with a crack that stings them both.

Allen laughs, delighted and a little proud. ‘There she is.’

They keep going until Little John rests his meaty palm on her shoulder in a way that says ‘enough for today’. Exhilaration leaves Marian shaking. Her bandage is damp, red colouring the beige material. Her palms are raw where the wood rubbed. But under the ache, a different heat takes hold – fierce, bright, alive.

Allen sinks to a crouch across from her.

‘What you survived . . .’ he says quietly. ‘It rewires the world until everything looks like a knife. The point of these drills isn’t to pretend it never happened. It’s to give your body new endings from which it can make new beginnings.’

New beginnings. The words press behind her breastbone until she has to look away.

‘I want them to regret underestimating me.’ Marian swallows, the sting at her eyes not entirely from sweat. ‘To feel the fear I felt, when they see me coming.’

Allen’s gaze doesn’t flinch. ‘You’ll get there. But if I toss you steel today, you’ll lean on it and someday, when your hand is empty, you’ll fall. Our aim is to build the foundation out of pieces no one can take. Breath. Balance. Timing. Then, when Lox gives the word, we’ll put iron in your palm and you’ll make poetry of it.’

‘And if he refuses?’

Allen’s crooked grin returns. ‘Then I’ll teach you to hang a grown man by his own belt.’

A startled laugh breaks out of her, raw and grateful. ‘Thank you.’ Her eyes cut to Little John, his bulk filling the entirety of the doorframe, eyes softening like a meadow in the sun. ‘Both of you.’

They leave with a nod and Marian moves to the washbasin to clean up. The ache in her ribs flares with every motion, but something inside her begins to steady. A root pressed into the dirt of a different life.

Maybe she can’t undo what’s been done to her. But here, in this quiet bough above the forest floor, with a bard and a giant who teach in breath and bruises, Marian begins to believe she might someday wield her body like something that belongs to her.

Not a thing shaped by fear, but a blade honed by choice.

ChapterSixteen

‘Remind me why we’re training all the way out here?’

Marian wipes sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, cheeks flushed, damp curls sticking to her temples. The clearing Allen dragged her to is at the very rim of Elswyth, where the trees grow thin and the canopy opens to a spill of late sunlight.

It’s been ten days since the attack, and she can finally move without wincing. Once she was cleared by the healers, Marian slipped back into the rhythms of life within Elswyth. Mornings are spent at the river, hands plunged in the cold spring water, steam rising off drying linen in the sun. Afternoons belong to Little John, who teaches her balance with the patient, brutal economy of a tree withstanding the wind. Evenings are Allen’s, who shapes her anger into something sharp and deliberate. Together they worked on her reflexes so that when the memory of that day clamps down on her heart, there is now another rhythm beneath it to answer.

The work was practical and loving in its brutality. She finished her days sore, her body aching with the pull of new muscles. The bruises and the burn of exertion mattered less than the small victories: a clean pivot that didn’t throw her off; a strike that landed without the reflexive flinch; the steadiness that would let her be grabbed without allowing panic to win. What they’ve helped build is a body that belongs to her, a skin that would not be surprised into silence.

Allen leans against a crooked oak, a branch balanced across his shoulders. ‘Because, Mare,’ he drawls, his training staff tracing idle circles in the dirt, ‘tomorrow night’s the Severing, and everyone’s in a frenzy, trying to make themselves look holy and important. The glade’s quiet, which means no nosy Elders, no sharp-eyed Will, and, most importantly, no antlered overlord storming in to ask why you’ve got a black eye or a split lip. Now, quit stalling.’

Marian rolls her eyes and adjusts her position, fists raised like he taught her.