Page 63 of Wench

Here was their chance to lay blame, to drag her name through the dirt and scorn her with all the weight of their disappointment. But that one word is all they offer, as if that alone is enough to explain the blistered flesh and iron stink still clinging to their hands.

Thankfully, Allen nods, face carved in grim concern, and helps bear Lox toward the healing bough.

Marian stumbles in behind them, blood still crusted at her shoulder. She doesn’t remember when she started crying, only that the tears come hot and silent, tracking down her sweat- and soil-stained cheeks.

The hours blur. She sits outside his room as they tend to Lox, listening to the low murmur of Elswyth’s healers and weavers, the occasional groan that breaks past his clenched teeth. Allen emerges once to press a hand to Marian’s shoulder, but says nothing before slipping back inside.

Eventually, one of them steps out from behind the curtain. ‘He’ll live,’ she sighs, and something inside Marian cracks in relief. ‘We’ve done what we can to keep his connection to Sherwood alive, but we’ll know more in the coming hours.’

‘Those burns are nasty business,’ another healer chimes as they shuffle back inside. ‘Never seen anything like it before.’

Marian has.

After all, it was her idea to overlap the lattices to keep fae magic from slipping through the seams.

* * *

Twilight bleeds into night, the hush of the forest settling heavy over Elswyth. Her hands are raw, knuckles red, dirt embedded in the creases of her skin, but she doesn’t scrub them clean. She hasn’t earned the right to remove the forest from her flesh.

At some point, Will joins her. Their skin is still mottled where the iron-ore burned, welts rising up along their forearms, but it’s clear Lox took the brunt of it.

Marian wants to apologize, to ask if they’re all right, but the words knot in her throat.

For a long while, neither of them says anything. But Marian sees the way Will’s jaw juts to one side then the other, like they’re weighing the taste of something bitter on their tongue, and wonders if they too don’t know what to say. When they finally move, it’s with the rigidity of someone who has made a decision they loathe, but one they intend to live with, nonetheless. The usual violence in their eyes has dulled, tempered now by something harder to name.

‘You chose to free that Fellhart; you chose us when you could’ve run. And because of that, you’ve earned something I never thought a human would – my thanks.’

‘I-I-I don’t know what to say,’ Marian sputters.

Will exhales slowly. ‘And as loath as I am to admit it,’ they say, mouth pinching to the side, ‘this also means you’ve earned your first vine.’

Marian looks up, startled. ‘My what?’

‘It’s what we mark ourselves with.’ They pull up their scorched sleeve to reveal dark tendrils of leaves wrapped around their wrist, forearm, and bicep. ‘Those of us who’ve fought, or suffered, or given part of ourselves in service to the fae.’ Their fingers drift to the intricate tangle of ink just above their pulse point. ‘It’s a promise. To the forest. To the dead. To each other.’

They glance down at Marian, and for the first time, there is no suspicion in their eyes. Only bone-deep tiredness and something just adjacent to respect.

The words strike at Marian. She thinks of the leaves gracing Little John’s thighs, the two placed on the back of Allen’s hands, and the many she’s seen on the small bit of flesh Lox has revealed. The thought of what he’s sacrificed, what they’ve all sacrificed, renders her mute with emotion.

‘Thank you,’ Marian eventually says, but the words don’t feel like enough.

Will exhales. ‘We don’t take oaths on paper or pledge fealty with coin,’ they say. ‘We carve truth into our skin so that nothing and no one can strip it from us.’ They trace the edge of their forearm, where the ink curls and twists across old wounds.

‘And you’re saying I get one?’ she asks, uncertain.

‘Not get,’ Will chides. ‘Earned. And only if you want it.’

Marian stares at the tattoos, their pattern both wild and deliberate – leaves and thorns and tendrils woven as if growing there of their own accord, planted by pain, watered by choice.

Her hand presses against the swell in her chest and her fingers ghost the edges of the raised crescent, still tender, where the skin had split and grown back. She should hate it. Greed and gluttony had carved this into her, same as they’d carved up Sherwood, but there was something defiant about it now.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ she mutters, voice quiet but sure.

The shadow of a smile tugs at the edges of their mouth. ‘Think about it.’

As they step out into the night, Marian looks back at Lox and then down at the scar on her chest. For a flickering instant, she wonders if this is what it feels like to choose your soil and to grow new roots.

ChapterNineteen