Page 89 of Wench

Lox’s jaw clenches, but his gaze softens, an unspoken vow blazing through the exhaustion.

The Sheriff’s boots scuff closer, his laughter low, savouring the inevitability. ‘Pathetic,’ he sneers. ‘All that power, and what is he now? A beast caught in his own brambles.’ He taps his ore-tipped blade against the netting, eyes fixed on Lox’s throat, and the lattice hums louder at the contact.

Marian’s eyes tighten, a thread of memory winding through her pain:Mortal steel cannot sever what binds him, the Sheriff had said, so smug in his assumed victory.

But perhaps fae ore can.

Every muscle protests as she claws toward the downed guard sprawled nearby. The bow lies just out of reach, quiver spilled across the grass. Her fingers stretch, nails filling with dirt, until the wood scrapes her palm. She drags it to her chest and forces herself upright enough to string an arrow.

The tip glimmers faintly, a resonant tone thrumming in her blood. It sings not of obedience, but of endings and beginnings.

With his back still to her, the Sheriff pauses just long enough to savour the spectacle. ‘Watch closely,’ he calls to her. ‘You’ll want to remember how hope looks when it’s severed.’

I am not what he wanted, she thinks.Not a bride. Not a pawn. I am the wildfire that will not be tamed. The arrow that severs all chains.

Her breath stops as she pulls the bowstring back. The ore-tipped shaft hums against her skin, vibrating with a frequency that makes her bones sing. Blood slicks her knuckles, smears the wood, but she holds the draw. The weight of it shakes her arms, tears her belly open anew, but she steadies herself on rage, on love, on the root-deep conviction that this moment is what she was made for.

The Sheriff straightens, blade poised above Lox’s bound throat. The lattice crackles brighter at the touch, threads tightening. Lox jerks, choking, veins bulging as the invisible snare bites.

Marian exhales and lets go.

ChapterTwenty-Seven

The arrow screams through the morning. It strikes the web and the lattice shatters like glass struck by a hammer. Threads of light recoil and die, sparks raining down in a furious hiss. The shaft doesn’t stop. It drives clean into the Sheriff’s thigh, punching through muscle and sinew with a sickening squelch.

He howls, dropping his blade and staggering sideways.

Blood spreads dark and fast on his beige trousers.

Lox surges forward, golden power rushing back into his body with the force of floodwater breaching a dam. His chest heaves for several breaths before he roars. The ground answers. Roots explode from the soil, thick and furious, tearing across the slope in a writhing tide.

They slam into the Sheriff, wrapping his torso, his limbs, his throat. He thrashes, spitting curses, but the roots only coil tighter. His eyes bulge as red foam flecks his lips. Every line of Lox’s body holds the promise of execution. He raises his hand, and the roots constrict.

Marian sees the hunger in him to rend and crush until nothing remains.

‘No!’

The cry rips Marian’s throat raw. Blood coats her tongue, filling the cracks at the edges of her lips. She staggers to her feet, body screaming in protest, palm pressed futilely to her gut. Her legs shake but she forces them to hold, every ounce of will funnelling into her voice.

‘You can’t kill him,’ she wheezes. Her vision swims, breath coming in short bursts.

Lox’s head whips toward her, roots frozen mid-strangle, their knots trembling with his wrath. Golden light blazes down his antlers, painting him as an unearthly saviour and executioner.

Ichor trickles between Marian’s fingers, streaking the torn silk of her dress, but her eyes never leave his.

‘If you do this,’ she gasps, voice shaking, ‘all of England will see Sherwood as nothing more than a burrow of beasts to be purged.’ She coughs, the taste of copper searing her tastebuds, but she pushes the words out. ‘They will come for all of you, and any peace you’d ever hoped for will be drowned in fire and iron. That is what he wants, Lox. His victory will come not in the form of your death, but damnation for all fae.’

Lox’s chest heaves, breath ragged, gaze seared with fury and grief. The roots pulse at his command, eager to break bone, to pulp flesh. His voice rumbles low, guttural. ‘He would have gutted me and then ravaged you, or worse.’ His jaw tightens, teeth bared. ‘He deserves to rot in the earth until worms choke on him.’

‘Yes, but not like this. Not by your hand, as a martyr.’ Marian sways, blood hot beneath her palm, but she doesn’t break his gaze. Her voice is splintered and weak, but sharpened with everything she has left. ‘If you kill him now, he wins – you’ll become the monster he paints you to be.’

The roots cinch tighter for a heartbeat, the Sheriff’s strangled cries muffled in the twisting coils. Lox’s breath comes ragged, his antlers blazing gold like torches at dusk. Every inch of him screams for release, for violence, for the brutal satisfaction of ending it here.

But her plea manages to wriggle through his surly resolve, fracturing his steely demeanour. His hand quivers as though he’s wrestling his own magic into submission. Slowly, and with great visible effort, the roots groan, then shift. They drag the Sheriff deeper into the soil until his chest sinks below the dirt, up to his armpits, his limbs splayed and pinned, every joint bound tight by living wood. Vines bite into his jaw, silencing anything besides angry grunts, leaving only his hate-consumed eyes above the writhing knots.

Lox stalks forward with barely contained wrath. He stops above his captive.

‘You call us beasts, a plague upon your world,’ he fumes, voice cold with the timbre of judgment, ‘but it is you who poisons the earth, you who scours the marrow of all that lives. Men like you don’t fear monsters. You make them because you need them to feel like bigger, better, men.’