Page 82 of Wench

‘I’m going to break your spirit and your body so thoroughly that when I toss what’s left to my men, they won’t even want it. I will carve Loxleigh’s mark from your flesh until there’s nothing left of him in you. And when I am done, you will be grateful to kiss my boots for the honour of being stepped on.’

His nose is inches from hers. He wants fear. He wants the flinch. Marian gives him neither. Instead, she jerks her head forward with just enough clearance in the guards’ grip for a sharp, brutal snap.

Pain explodes across her face, but she can only smile because the crunch is exquisite.

The Sheriff’s nose shatters beneath her brow, cartilage giving way. Blood geysers from his face, hot and scarlet across her cheek. He reels back with a roar, hands flying to his face, curses muffled by the gush of crimson spilling through his gloves. It spatters his polished armour in gore.

For a heartbeat, the guards’ grips loosen in shock. Marian surges, twisting hard, using the pain in her shoulder as leverage. She throws her weight into the guard at her left, heel slamming down onto his foot. Bone snaps under boot with a yowl. She rips an elbow backward toward the other’s ribs, but he anticipates it. He catches her forearm and wrenches until agony spills down her side.

Allen surges, chains jangling as he tries to throw himself between them, but two soldiers shove him down, boot to shoulder, toe to neck.

‘Cowards,’ he grits, voice ragged. ‘All of you.’ A guard cracks his baton across Allen’s head until his body goes limp.

The Sheriff bellows and staggers upright. His eyes burn with loathing. ‘You’ll choke on that insolence, wench,’ he snarls.

She lunges at him and a guard drives a fist into her gut. The breath is ripped from her lungs in a dry, useless wheeze. Marian gags as her knees buckle and the world tilts.

‘Chain her,’ the Sheriff growls, blood leaking between his fingers as he pinches the ruin of his nose.

‘Why bother?’ Marian spits.

‘If Lox cares enough to mark you, then imagine how quickly he’ll come running when I dangle you like bait.’ He licks his lip as if lusting for the image he conjures. ‘I’ll put his head on a spike where the market women can hang garlands from his antlers.’ He leans close enough that his ruined breath crawls down her neck. ‘And when I’m finished with him, I’ll parade what’s left of you through the streets as a lesson for girls who don’t obey.’

Something inside her goes very, very calm. It is not the calm of surrender. It is the quiet of a bow at full draw.

She spits. It lands on his cheekbone, shining in the forge-light.

The guard twists Marian’s arm until her shoulder nearly dislocates. She ignores the pang slicing behind her eyes, and laughs, blood dripping down her chin, a feral grin splitting her bruised mouth.

The Sheriff leans in to wipe his cheek on her shoulder as if she were a cloth he owns. When he looks up, his smile has curdled into something knife-thin. ‘Bring them both in Hallomere’s cells and ready the courtyard. At dawn, the forest learns what becomes of thieves and traitors.’

Iron bites Marian’s wrists, the cold cuffs making the hairs along her arms lift as if a storm is crawling over her skin. She fights with everything left in her. She kicks backward, heel catching a shin; she twists, shoulders screaming; she drops her weight so suddenly that a guard stumbles and swears and another hammers his baton into the meat of her thigh to make her move.

Allen is a dark smear being heaved ahead, head lolling, chains clanking like a butcher’s bell. The forge’s heat chases them to the door, then cold seizes all at once as the early dawn wraps around them.

They drag her through the yard at a trot, her heels carving trenches through the dirt. The oak doors of the manor yawn open before them – and there, waiting at the threshold, her father looms like a ghost.

Eamon Hallomere’s hair is greyer. The flesh at his jaw sags as if a string’s been cut. When he sees her, something collapses and hardens at once in his face. Marian can practically see the shame crawl up his neck, but habit wins out. He glances at the Sheriff first, as if seeking permission to breathe.

Marian bares her teeth like an animal and lunges, but the chain yanks her short. The guard on her right jerks her arm higher until the cuff bites bone. Another shoves her forward with a palm to the spine. She stumbles through the same doors she’d crept through as a child, barefoot and silent, now hauled like wild game.

Eamon doesn’t move. Guilt flickers across his face but is strangled by pride and smothered by cowardice until his gaze drops.

‘You don’t get to look away now,’ Marian roars, chest heaving as they pull her past him. ‘Look at me, you coward!’

Her father’s eyes twitch upward but slide away again, as if her fury is too bright to bear. His knuckles whiten on the ledger clutched to his chest, and he takes one faltering step backward.

‘You would rather bow to a butcher than lift a hand for your own blood! Did you get what you wanted?’ she spits, her words cutting under his ribs. ‘A county’s worth of silver and a daughter delivered like a side of meat? Did the Sheriff pat your head for being a good dog?’

He flinches as if she’d struck him. His bottom lip quivers as he turns to the Sheriff. ‘Please, Baldric. She’s my daughter?—’

‘You no longer have a daughter.’ Marian laughs, harsh and ragged. ‘You sold her!’

The words ricochet off the stone, her insides shattering with every word, but burning too hot to be held. The cuffs cut until her wrists are slick, but she doesn’t stop yanking against them.

‘Look at me!’ She thrashes, throwing her shoulder into a guard’s chest hard enough that he grunts. ‘LOOK AT ME!’

At last, his gaze meets hers. He opens his mouth, but the Sheriff cuts in.