Chapter 40 #2
“Why?” The sheriff’s voice cracked, disbelief twisting into something poisonous. “Why would you choose that sniveling girl over your own father?”
“I love her!”
The declaration tore out of Baron in a single, thunderous burst—raw, startling, and echoing through the clearing like a war cry.
Everything stopped. Even the trees seemed to hold their breath.
Father’s hands froze mid-pressure over Little John’s wound.
Dale, now semi-conscious on the ground, went eerily still. Even the birds overhead fell silent.
Baron…loved me?
We were attracted to each other, of course, but we argued more often than we kissed.
When I imagined love, I assumed there would be misty eyes and moonlit walks around lakes, romantic poetry and bouquets of roses…
that sort of thing. I thought back to moments Baron and I shared.
He had hunted me through the forest and I had blacked his eye.
He dove off a cliff to save me and had saved my life time and again.
Then I asked him to run away with me… None of that was the type of love story I had heard about in quaint fairytales.
But it was ours, as brutal, messy, and painfully real as it was. Baron loved me.
“No!” The sheriff’s scream ripped the air, jagged and feral. “You can’t!”
“I do.” Baron’s voice was iron. He stepped forward, sword unwavering. “You’ve lost. I choose her, and that is something you never did for me.”
The transformation in the sheriff’s face was monstrous. Disbelief folded into rage, the rage then twisting into something nearly inhuman. Something in him snapped, and darkness seemed to pour off him.
Then, with a hiss of metal on leather, he ripped his blade from its sheath and charged.
“Look out!” I shouted, needlessly.
Baron barely had time to raise his weapon into a proper defense position before the sheriff’s sword crashed into it.
Sparks burst between them with such ferocity that Father flinched and I stumbled back a step.
The sheriff snarled, teeth bared, trying to force his blade past Baron’s guard as if brute hatred alone could grind through steel.
Baron gave ground, just an inch, then another. They began circling like two predators, neither willing to back down. My heart hammered so hard it felt like it might bruise my ribs.
I needed a weapon. Something. Anything.
My bow and knives were gone, swallowed by the earlier chaos.
My gaze swept the clearing in desperation and landed on Father’s discarded bow half-buried in leaves.
I lunged for it, nearly tripping in my haste, and slung it into my grip.
But when I reached back for an arrow, my fingers brushed only empty air.
My quiver was gone.
Think. Think, Laurel!
My gaze snapped to Dale’s prone body and his arm pierced straight through by an arrow.
“Sorry, Dale,” I muttered, wincing as I pulled the shaft cleanly out. He groaned, but was apparently all the way unconscious again.
The arrowhead was slick with blood as I nocked it to the bowstring.
Father’s bow was built for his strength, not mine, and the draw weight nearly overwhelmed me.
My arms quaked, burning instantly. But I held steady, raising the arrow to aim at the two men locked in the deadliest dance I’d ever seen.
I didn’t dare release. I only had one shot, one chance, and I needed to make it count.
The sheriff continued to attack with terrifying speed.
That rage had turned him into something feral.
He gave a sweeping backhand that Baron blocked.
An overhead strike. Blocked. A thrust toward the ribs.
Deflected. Another, faster. Side. Forehand.
Side again. The sheriff’s fury built into a brutal rhythm, a relentless battering meant to break through anything in its path.
Baron met every strike, but he didn’t counter with his own volley of attacks. His defenses were flawless, quick, and precise, but there was hesitation woven into every motion. I saw his disadvantage clearly now.
Though Baron had the skill and strength to strike a fatal blow, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want to kill the only family he had left.
The sheriff had no such restraint. His blade sought blood without pause, carving vicious arcs through the air.
Baron staggered back a step, then another, forced onto the defensive by the very compassion that had saved him from becoming like his father.
“No,” I whispered, the arrow shaking in my hands. “Please, Baron…fight back.”
I couldn’t release. They both danced through each other’s shadows, weaving in and out of my only clear line of fire and I would sooner die than risk hitting Baron.
Yet the truth hollowed out my stomach. If nothing changed, the sheriff was going to kill him.
The sheriff seemed to reach the same realization I had, and his lips peeled back into an ugly sneer.
His sword rasped slowly, deliberately, along the length of Baron’s blade until their cross guards locked.
The sound was a harsh, grating snarl of metal.
They stood chest-to-chest, blades crossed, breath mingling in short, violent bursts.
“After I finish with you, boy,” the sheriff hissed, forcing his blade harder against Baron’s, “I’ll take care of that tramp once and for all.”
For a heartbeat Baron didn’t move.
Then something inside him transformed.
The fear built up from years of flinching under his father’s hand bled out of his expression, along with the reticence he felt in fighting his only blood relative. In its place rose something fierce and unshakable. Even the sheriff faltered and the first flicker of doubt tightened in his jaw.
Baron surged forward, shoving his father back so violently the sheriff’s boots dug trenches in the earth.
Baron’s strikes now were the ones coming fast and relentless, hammering blows that sent shockwaves up the sheriff’s arms. The clearing rang with the violent symphony of their duel: swords slashing air, steel smashing steel, and the sharp crack of branches under their boots.
It was a testament to the sheriff’s training that he stayed upright at all, especially with his arm already wounded.
But his parries grew strained and his blocks started driving him sideways instead of stopping the blows outright.
The father and son moved in sync, each anticipating the other’s counters, each fighting with the knowledge of where the other was weakest.
Baron pressed harder, his long reach and sheer power forcing the sheriff backward step by step. I could see the strain in the sheriff’s arms as he lifted his heavy blade; sweat ran down his brow, and his movements grew jagged and sloppy.
Yet Baron didn’t let up.
With a final, brutal swing, Baron’s blade crashed into his father’s and tore it free. The sheriff’s sword spun across the clearing. He stumbled after it but Baron planted his boot firmly on the fallen weapon before it could be retrieved.
The duel was over.
The sheriff sank to his knees, gasping, with sweat-slicked hair hanging in his face. Baron stood over him, sword raised, every muscle trembling. His jaw clenched and his chest heaved. I could almost hear the echoes of every awful memory warring inside him.
The sheriff glared up at his son, hate curdling in his eyes.
Baron met his father’s stare with cold resolve, his fingers tightening and loosening on the hilt as he wrestled with a choice no child should ever have to make.
My shoulders screamed from holding the bow drawn, but I didn’t dare ease the tension.
Finally, Baron spoke.
“I’m not going to kill you.” His voice was steady.
“I’m done being the kind of monster you are.
But I want to be very clear. I want nothing to do with you.
You prey on the weak. You abuse women and children.
You make the world worse just by breathing.
You took years of my life and you won’t get another second. ”
He ripped the badge from his tunic—the one marking him as one of Prince John’s senior officers—and threw it into the dirt at his father’s knees.
“You can never pay enough for what you have done to me,” Baron continued. “There is no punishment bad enough to make you feel even a fraction of what I have endured all these years, and you are not worth killing. I hope you live a long life and suffer every day knowing what a coward you are.”
He gave one last look of revulsion at his defeated father then turned away.
That was when the sheriff struck.
In the space of a heartbeat, he lunged, hands scrambling for his discarded sword the moment Baron’s boot left it. His fingers closed around the hilt, and he swung wildly upward, blade arcing toward Baron’s unprotected spine. Baron would never be able to defend himself in time.
I didn’t think.
I simply released.
The bowstring snapped with a crack. I didn’t even see the arrow fly.
It was as if the arrow had materialized in the sheriff’s chest. Right over the heart.
Baron spun, horror etched across his face, gaze darting between his father and me. I stood frozen, the bowstring still trembling, my breath caught in my throat.
The sheriff staggered, dropping the sword as red bubbled from his lips. Even as his own life trickled away, he was still blinded by hate.
“You chose a murderer over your own father! You’re no son of mine!”
“You were never a father to me,” Baron said softly, steadily.
They stared at each other across the divide of everything that had ever passed between them. Baron stood tall and powerful. His father, miserable, humiliated, and defeated.
The sheriff’s eyes went glassy. His body crumpled to the forest floor.
He didn’t rise again.
“Goodbye,” Baron whispered, the word final and hollow.
I let the bow slip from my hands. I didn’t take lives lightly, but for Baron, I would have fired a thousand arrows. If anything, my only regret was that this hadn’t happened years ago.
The feud was over.
Baron’s tormentor was gone.
I walked to Baron and gently took his hand, threading my fingers through his.
“Are you alright?”
He exhaled shakily, as if he’d been holding his breath for years. “I am now.” Baron finally tore his gaze from his father’s still form and pulled me into him, wrapping both arms around me and crushing me to his chest. His chin settled on the top of my head.
“You’re free,” I whispered into his tunic. “I’m glad you chose me.”
He drew back, just enough to search my face. “About what he said…the things from my past…” His voice cracked. “I should explain—”
I pressed a hand over his heart. “I’ll forgive you your past, if you’ll forgive me mine. We don’t owe each other confessions we aren’t ready to give.”
The relief that washed over him was immediate and overwhelming—like watching a man lay down a great boulder he’d carried alone for far too long. “Thank you,” he breathed.
As one, we turned toward Father, Dale, and Little John. Panic fluttered in my chest until Father waved me off. “Don’t worry about these two,” he said gruffly. “They’re tough old hens. They’ll be squawking around in no time.”
Still, I moved to kneel beside Little John first. Blood streaked down the carved line across his chest, but his eyes blinked open and focused on me. “That’s going to be a fine story one day,” I said.
He huffed a weak laugh and winced. “I’m going to need a better excuse than ‘The sheriff tried to cut me in half.’”
Dale, on the other hand, lay sprawled in the grass, still unconscious. I checked his pulse—steady. His breathing—strong. “He’ll have a terrible headache,” Baron murmured. “But he’ll live.”
Another wave of breathless relief broke over me. I stood and slipped my hand naturally back into Baron’s. His fingers dwarfed mine—warm, steady, real. He squeezed gently, and I felt it all the way to my ribs.
I glanced once more at the scene of the fight. “Come on,” I murmured.
He didn’t resist as I tugged him away. The rest of the Merry Men would turn up soon, I knew.
Then they would want to hear the dramatic tale of our adventure with the Sheriff of Nottingham, and of his demise.
Baron didn’t need to hear that or see the reminder in the form of the bodies littering the clearing.
We slipped quietly into the trees and made our way to the clearing we had celebrated Baron’s induction to our band in.
Baron sank down with his back against a tree, exhausted in a way that went deeper than bone.
I sat beside him, leaning my head on his shoulder.
His arm wrapped around me instantly and I closed my eyes.
I had been wrong about heaven. It wasn’t sunshine and clouds with golden gates and angels singing.
It was this. It was the warmth of Baron’s arm around me and the cool breeze playing across my face.
“Laurel,” Baron said softly. “I love you. I have for a long time.”
I smiled, eyes still closed. “Well, of course you do. I’m pretty amazing.”
He gave a startled laugh that I opened my eyes to see, then narrowed his eyes at me. “What, nothing to say back?” he challenged.
“Oh, were you expecting something?” I gasped dramatically and sat up a bit. “I mean, I would apologize for killing your father, but I’m not sorry for that.”
He rolled his eyes and tilted his head back against the tree, letting out a quiet laugh. “You really are the most difficult prisoner I’ve ever had.”
I shrugged out from under his arm so I could turn to face him. Cupping his face in both hands and guiding him toward me, my thumbs brushing the faint scruff along his jaw, I told him what he so clearly wanted to know. “And I love you too, Baron.”
His breath hitched—just slightly—as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard me correctly. For a heartbeat, he simply stared, the world narrowing to the space between us. Then joy broke across his face—pure, unfiltered happiness, warm and bright and utterly breathtaking.
Then he kissed me, urgent yet also certain, as his hands slid to my waist. The kiss was long and deep and, for the first time since we met, blessedly uninterrupted.
Who would have thought that the daughter of Robin Hood and the son of the Sheriff of Nottingham would be here like this—bloodied, exhausted, victorious—and somehow be perfect together?
I still didn’t know what the future would bring.
But whatever it was, I knew exactly who I wanted at my side.
Baron.
Always Baron.