Page 97 of Wench

Marian lifts a trembling hand, pressing it over his where it cups her cheek. This time when she tries to answer, the words come with ease.

‘I saw them.’ Her chest rises and falls with shallow, uneven pulls of air. ‘Shéruel and Wodenna. They asked if I thought myself worthy.’ She lets out a broken laugh, shaky and soft. ‘I told them no. But they said . . . my mother didn’t think herself worthy either.’

He sighs as if puzzle pieces strewn before him are finally fitting together. ‘Your mother was fae.’

She nods. ‘She turned from what she was in the hopes that the wild would forget her.’ The admission is a soft wound. ‘They asked if I would make the same choice.’

‘And you chose us,’ Lox murmurs.

‘I chose both.’ Marian looks past him to the ring of green lifting itself out of ash. ‘I am not only fae, and I am not only mortal. I’m meant to be the bridge that keeps both our worlds from tearing each other apart. I am Sherwood’s Heartkeeper.’

Wind moves through the new fronds as if the forest approves of her name choice.

Lox’s hand slides from her cheek to the curve of her neck, thumb finding the steady drum under her skin. ‘You’re certainly mine,’ he whispers, palm moving to the ink at her sternum. ‘I wanted to kill him. In that moment, I could feel the shape the Sheriff cast for me closing over my head. Beast. Monster. I wanted to step inside it, because it was easier than bearing what he did to you.’ His jaw works; something fragile and furious flashes through his eyes. ‘I was prepared to drown in that fury.’

‘I know,’ she answers. Her palm covers his, lending weight, borrowing steadiness. ‘This power . . . it asks for teeth as often as it asks for tenderness,’ she finishes softly. ‘But if you drown, I will call you back to shore. Every time. I will be the rope at your waist and the hand on your collar. And when I go under, you’ll pull me to the surface too.’

He bends until his brow rests against hers, until their breaths tangle in the quiet.

‘I almost lost you,’ Lox says, voice raw at the edges.

‘But you found me again.’ A small, helpless laugh slips out. ‘Seems to be our pattern.’

‘I’ll always find you,’ he answers. His thumb strokes her bottom lip, the faintest tremor betraying the war he fought with his fury. ‘Even if Sherwood falls to dust, I will claw through the grit and find the shape of you in whatever’s left behind.’

Her heart stutters. ‘You sound like you mean to follow me past death.’

‘I would,’ he says without hesitation. ‘But tonight, I would rather keep you here.’

The kiss is gentler, though no less consuming. His hand cradles the nape of her neck as if she is something sacred, not a woman broken open by violence. And when she gasps, he drinks it in as if her breath itself is sacrament.

They move carefully at first, as if testing the strength of a bridge they’ve just built. Between one breath and the next, relief turns to heat.

Clothes peel away. His palms travel reverently over her skin, tracing each scar, each curve, until she feels rewritten. He kisses down her chest and when his tongue brushes across her breast, she cries out, not only from the pleasure but from the surge of light that bursts outward in response. Plant stalks around them quiver, leaves unfurling open in response.

‘Do you feel it?’ Marian groans into him. ‘How the world blooms when we do?’

‘Yes,’ he pants, rocking against her, every nerve a live wire. ‘We are two parts of the same wild heart.’ He leans in, his teeth grazing her throat. ‘I hold everything above, and you . . .’ His hips roll against her in a maddening tease. ‘You hold everything below.’

His hand slides beneath the torn silk. She opens beneath his touch, legs tangling with his, pulling him closer. The moss cushions their weight, and when she moans, the trees around them sway.

The thin golden veins that flickered before flash like a fired cannon. She closes her eyes and sees them everywhere: braided through the moss, pulsing in the blackened soil, streaking the trunks of trees.

When Lox sinks into her, the world explodes in light.

They move together, slow and inexorable; he thrusts inside her like roots plunging deeper into soil.

The forest answers. Leaves ripple overhead, though no wind stirs. Vines unfurl, tendrils pushing free of soot, stretching toward the source. Each stroke of his body within hers is echoed by a pulse beneath them, as if the land is remembering how to breathe, how to grow, because of their union.

‘I choose you,’ he moans, forehead pressed to hers, sweat beading on his temples. ‘Marian Hallomere. Heartkeeper. Little fox. Every name you will ever bear; I will choose you until the stars burn out.’

Her eyes sting. ‘You’re my hearth. My haven. My home.’ A brittle cry echoes out of her when he buries the entirety of himself between her legs. ‘If I am the heart, then you are the pulse it beats for. You are the promise that even when my heart stills, the echo will find its way back to you.’

They move with the slow surety of tide and shore. Where once their joining felt like a spark struck in dry tinder, now the fire between them unrolls into every corner, light seeping under every sill. They do not just make love; they graft themselves into Sherwood.

When she comes apart, the forest erupts in a cacophony of light. A cascade of luminous spores drifts down from the canopy like stars shaken loose from the sky. Her cry echoes through the roots, her pleasure carved into the bark itself. Lox follows with a roar, the ground beneath them quaking with the force of release.

They collapse together, skin damp and slick, bodies still bound as if unwilling to part. His mouth trails salt-sweet kisses along her brow, her cheeks, the corner of her swollen lips.