Page 56 of Wench

It isn’t fear that keeps her still this time – it’s want, raw and reckless.

She’s tired of trembling before monsters. She wants to see what happens when one trembles for her.

ChapterSeventeen

She lunges slower than she means to and Lox catches her wrist easily. He twists it gently and redirects her with a turn of his hips.

‘Again,’ is all he says.

This time, she feints right and pivots left, but she barely manages to graze his side before he steps out of reach, spinning her momentum against her until her face nearly meets the moss.

‘Lesson one,’ he murmurs, stepping back into stance. ‘Make your movements unpredictable.’

Marian grits her teeth, breath burning in her lungs. Her fists curl. She charges again, this time aiming for his ribs, elbows tucked close the way Allen taught her.

Lox sidesteps, catching her forearm and spinning her neatly, a twist of motion that leaves her facing away from him before she can catch her footing. He holds her around the waist with one firm hand that stays just long enough to remind her he could throw her to the earth if he wanted.

‘You’re hesitating,’ he says, too close behind her. ‘Stop holding back.’

‘I’m not?—’

‘You are,’ he cuts in. The laughter in his tone only makes her angrier. ‘And that’s all right. Fear is honest, but so is fury. Use them both.’

Marian wants nothing more than to knock that smug smirk off his face. Over and over she lunges, swings, twists, and swipes. Her muscles burn, her curls stick to her neck, and sweat stings her eyes, but he won’t let her win. Every strike she throws finds empty air or the unshakable wall of his defence. Every movement he makes is a lesson wrapped in provocation.

She becomes a blur of motion until, finally, a knuckle glances his jaw, knocking his head to the side with a satisfying jolt. His breath catches. Just a hitch, but enough for her to know she surprised him.

Marian straightens, blinking in disbelief. ‘I did it!’

Lox steps back and claps his hands once in exaggerated applause. ‘Well done.’

She grins victorious. But it’s brief.

The gold in his eyes flashes. That’s the only warning she gets before roots writhe beneath her boots. She yelps, thrown off balance as the grass gives way underfoot. Lox darts forward and presses her back against a tree before she can recover, his forearm braced beside her head.

‘Lesson two,’ he murmurs, his voice wicked. ‘Arrogance has no place on a battlefield.’

Marian glares up at him, panting. ‘Ironic, coming from you.’

Vines slither up from the mossy earth and wrap around her ankles. Not tight enough to trap, but enough to keep her pinned. A branch creaks overhead, and when she glances up, the canopy shifts with unnatural ease to cast Lox in shadow while the sunlight blinds her.

She blinks through the glare, scowling. ‘That’s cheating.’

‘No fight worth surviving is fair. Use what you have available to you, or be buried by what you don’t.’

Marian jerks at the cords around her legs until they snap. ‘Not all of us have the luxury of commanding an entire forest.’

‘No one commands Sherwood,’ he says, stepping back to give her space.

Marian watches him warily, adjusting her stance as the last root curls back into the soil. ‘And yet it obeys you so willingly.’

Lox kneels, brushes his fingers against the earth, and the undergrowth stills as if soothed. ‘You cannot command something so old, so vast. As its Rootkeeper, I merely listen, persuade, and occasionally prune,’ he finishes, palm spread flat. ‘Sherwood and I are kin, not master and hound.’

Curiosity edges out the sting of being taken down so neatly. ‘Defending all of Sherwood seems an awfully heavy burden for one soul to carry.’

For a long moment, he doesn’t answer. The forest hushes with him, a suspension of sound that makes Marian’s ears strain for the twitch of a branch, the far-off call of a night bird, the rustle of something unseen.

‘Some say there should be two,’ he finally answers. ‘That if Shéruel was its defender then Wodenna was its heart, and both are needed, as protector and pulse, for Sherwood to thrive. But it’s been over two hundred years since both Verdant Guardians watched over the wood, and almost half a century since Sherwood had a Heartkeeper.’