Page 78 of Wench

But it isn’t enough. The fire roars higher, greedy, clawing at the barricade with red tongues.

Marian’s lungs seize from the heat, her burned hands screaming, and she stumbles away from the surging inferno.

The fire devours everything it touches.

She stares at the ruin clawing across land, and the fury in her chest outpaces her fear. The way men – her father, the Sheriff, even the king – build their thrones on the bodies of everything wild and call it order. They strip the marrow from the earth, and when the world screams, they beat it into silent submission. She watches as fae children are carried out of the fray half-dead. Creatures scorched to bone scuttle deeper into the wood.

She wants to tear her skin open and scream with it.

Lox claimed he would not start a war without the Council’s blessing, but if this isn’t war, then what is?

Shapes break through the haze. Fae of all kinds, their eyes molten-bright with magic, flood the clearing in every direction. One sweeps her arms, and the creek’s bellow rises, to lash across the flames. Another raises both hands skyward, and the fire shivers, folding in on itself as though pressed by an unseen force. Steam hisses as water and blaze collide, filling the air with a choking steam.

Slowly, the flames die, but the damage has been wrought.

Where once there was greenery, only jutting spears of blackened trunks remain. The earth exhales smoke like a sleeping dragon. Embers pulse in the wreckage, a heartbeat refusing to die. The forest quiets, but it is not peace.

It is the silence of graves.

Marian stands as the ruin sinks in. The fae murmur in relief, but her chest is hollow with rage. Ash clings to her hair, her tongue, her skin.

In the distance, Lox looks carved from fury – shoulders taut, jaw locked, and chest heaving. The sight of him both steadies and unravels her. He stands here, watching his home burn, and is forced to measure his wrath against the weight of his duty.

Marian cannot bear it.

Bodies move in fragments through the haze: fae with singed wings, scorched hands, eyes red from smoke and grief. A sprite kneels by the charred husk of a sapling, rocking back and forth as though it were a child. From the creek-bed stumble the river-born, hair dripping, their mouths stained with soot. They cradle limp fish in their arms, pressing them back into ash-coated water. Around them, branches groan as dryads emerge from hollowed boles, their bodies streaked with burn scars and trails of blood. A redcap sits in the soot, wailing over the bones of some small, scorched creature.

Everywhere she looks, the forest grieves.

* * *

Tension ripples through the chamber at the heart of Elswyth.

The nine stand around the ringed table, their faces etched in stone as Marian awaits their decision. She’d done her best to impress upon them the urgency of needing to defend their land, to make the Sheriff pay for what he’s done. Now she stands just inside the threshold – palms damp, jaw set – while they deliberate. Smoke from the burned quarter still sticks to her. She closes her eyes to try to drown out the Council’s squabbling, but all she sees are limp bodies.

‘If we strike at the Sheriff now, we invite a purge,’ Onóra’s voice rings out. ‘Fair folk will not survive a war waged on human terms.’

Aife’s forearms flex. ‘Every day we wait, we give them time to strike harder. The bogs are scarred; the reeds carry water poisoned by decay. We cannot pretend we are not already at war.’

‘And what of those who will die because of our meddling?’ Corven rasps. ‘Men we do not know, hearths we do not hold. We are kin to the sky and to the small things under it, but not to human cruelty. If we spill human blood in our war, where does it end?’

The Elders’ faces tighten, some with empathy, others with impatience, but all with the hard calculus of survival.

Cern leans forward and rumbles, ‘It ends when the Sheriff’s forges lie drowned and his wagons rot in the riverbeds. Men will always have hearths. Sherwood has only itself. And it is dying.’

‘And yet, if we harden our hearts so fully against mortal suffering, do we not risk becoming the very cruelty we despise?’ Lyss pleads. ‘The forest grows wild, yes, but it also nurtures. If our answer to every wound is steel and flame, what is to be left of Sherwood’s soul?’

Rían gives a sharp laugh, too bright in the gloom. ‘The Sheriff’s men aren’t weaving garlands. They’re hauling ore and spilling blood while we sit here trading philosophies. Would you rather drown in verse or in chains?’

Dáin’s hooded eyes glitter beneath flint-furrows of worry. His thicket-mind goes to the corners most of the others ignore. ‘Let us find a middle until the king returns and grants us the boon he promised. We focus on ambushes, continue raiding wagons and?—’

‘The next time those wagons come, they will bring chains for our children!’ Rían interrupts, shoving back from the table.

Their voices overlap until the chamber swells with them, heat rising brighter with each argument.

Marian grips her trousers until the seams pull. She wants to scream that fire doesn’t wait for debate, that the Sheriff’s forge won’t cool itself, and that every moment they hesitate, more of them will die. But the words stick in her throat, because here, her voice is still a trespass.

Lox has not spoken yet. He sits at the head of the table, silent as storm-clouds gathering, golden eyes fixed on nothing and everything at once. The others clash like steel, but he merely waits.