Page 54 of Wench

Each impact zips through her. Her chest begins to buzz with it, like the body she once thought useless has found a purpose it wasn’t supposed to. She grows faster, sharper.

Allen doesn’t let her off easy. He shifts his palms, forcing her to adjust, to miss when her gaze drifts. ‘Eyes up. Don’t look at your fist, look at what you want it to break through.’

Marian’s lungs are a forge. Each breath scalds on the way in; each exhale hisses through clenched teeth. Her chest tugs where the scar runs, but she keeps going until her knuckles sting and her arms tremble.

‘Better,’ Allen wheezes, flexing the pain in his hands away. ‘Now give me three – high, mid, low – without resetting your feet.’

She does, the last landing with a bark of satisfaction. Allen shakes his hand out, grin going lopsided. ‘See? There’s a wolf under all that civility.’

‘Or a fox.’

Marian’s head snaps up. Allen startles hard enough to flail. A dark shape shifts among the higher boughs, half-shadowed beneath a twisted elm.

Lox sits perched on a branch like he’s been there for hours, brows arched in mild appraisal. Bow and quiver strapped to his back, one boot braced lazily against the bark, the other hanging loose in front of him.

‘Either way, lots of teeth.’ Allen chuckles nervously. ‘How long have you been there?’

Lox’s gaze slides to Marian’s face. ‘Long enough to see her stance still needs work.’

‘We’re –Iam – still working on the basics,’ Allen sputters.

Lox shifts forward, dropping from the branch with a catlike grace that belies his size. He lands without a sound, straightens, leans his bow and quiver against the tree, and steps into the glade. Sunlight breaks against his shoulders like it’s trying to reach him, casting shadows across his collarbones and the line of his jaw. His eyes flick between them, lingering on Marian longer than she expects before shifting to Allen.

‘This is hardly what I asked of you,’ Lox sighs.

Allen rubs the back of his neck. ‘In my defence, you never expressly told me Icouldn’t?—’

Lox’s eyes sharpen. ‘I didn’t realize I needed to specify that you weren’t to turn her into a brawler before her skin’s even finished knitting itself back together, Allen-a-Dale.’

Old fear that she’s about to be punished, dragged back into obedience, inches up Marian’s spine.

‘She’s not porcelain,’ Allen argues. ‘You asked me to remind her that she’s not powerless, to give her back her shape. Well, part of that shape has sharp edges.’

The cord in Lox’s neck jumps. ‘You will push her into breaking!’

‘I’m already broken,’ Marian blurts out. Both men turn toward her, and she flushes hot, breath ragged. ‘I wake with what those men tried to do still on me. You think I can breathe through that? That standing in various poses will scrape it off? If I don’t learn how to fight for myself, I’ll rot with it in my bones.’

The forest falls to a hush around them, leaves stilling in the canopy.

Allen exhales, scrubbing a hand down his face. ‘She didn’t ask me for mercy; she asked me for tools, and since I couldn’t give her steel, I gave her what I could. You wanted me to teach her not to drown . . .’ He flicks a glance at Lox, then back at Marian. ‘But this world’s an ocean and she wants to swim.’

For a long moment, Lox doesn’t speak. After a while, his eyes finally meet Marian’s. The green-gold in them seems brighter. She expects dismissal, an order to rest, to stay put. Instead, he huffs through his nose and turns to Allen.

‘You’ve taught her well,’ he finally says.

Allen blinks, caught off guard. ‘I . . . um, thank you?’

Lox’s focus remains on Marian, sharp enough that she feels it in her chest. ‘If you’re willing, you’ll continue working with Little John on breath work in the morning. Control. Strength without tension. Afternoons, Allen can drill you on your balance and reflexes. But, if you’re amenable to it, your evenings will be spent working on hand-to-hand . . . with me. That is, if you’ll have me.’

Her body reacts before she gives it permission – spine straightening, breath hitching, throat drying. She remembers too clearly the heat of his palm on her neck as he held the cup to her lips. The way his voice dropped when he said her real name. The look in his eyes when she called him Robin.

‘You want to teach me?’ she manages.

Lox’s mouth tilts, half in smile, the other half in challenge. ‘Unless you think Allen’s antics are enough to keep a blade from your throat.’

Allen sputters, indignant. ‘Oi! My antics are a gift.’

Neither of them looks at him. Lox’s gaze stays pinned to hers, weighty and unflinching. He isn’t teasing. He isn’t coddling. The predator who stalked her in the court-chamber, the Lord of Sherwood who could break her bones without a second glance, is offering himself up as her teacher.