Chapter 27 #2
He drew his bowstring back, locking his thumb in the familiar spot at the corner of his mouth, ignoring the tickling hairs of his newly acquired beard. He settled into his consistent stance, the one that ensured every shot was as identical as possible to the one prior.
Releasing his fingers, he let the arrow fly. It landed in the fourth ring, his poorest shot yet.
He dropped the lower tip of his bow to the toe of his shoe, giving Robin his full attention. He needed to settle the growing pain in his chest before he continued to compete.
She was still lining up her shot. Ian watched her old but familiar stance as she held the string taut, stilling every muscle, then exhaling like he did before she finally released the arrow. It landed in the center circle. A perfect shot.
She, too, rested her bow against her toe and looked up at him.
“I wrote to you,” Ian said. “Over and over, that whole goldenreign long.” He looked down, afraid to see her face as he spoke. “You never responded.”
When he finally looked back up at her, her eyes were wide with confusion. “You wrote to me?” she said.
Her eyes flickered past him, and Ian turned to see that most of the archers were stepping away from the line to signal that they had finished their six shots.
Robin took another arrow from her quiver.
The last thing they needed was to be under scrutiny because they were slower than everyone else. Someone might recognize them.
Lifting his own arrow, Ian fired off another shot. Center ring. Good. He needed to make it through to the next round.
He reached down for his final arrow. Robin had sounded surprised, as though she had never received his letters.
He let his final arrow fly. Center ring again. Hopefully that was good enough.
Robin landed her last two in the third ring and then the fifth. Ian was not sure if she was distracted or intentionally doing poorly.
He stepped back, standing away from the shooting line as the tally keeper walked down the field to mark their scores.
Robin also stepped back from the line, positioning herself close enough to Ian to continue speaking. “I wrote to you,” she said. “Three times. But you never responded. So I stopped.”
Ian looked down at her, unable to see her face past the side of her still-raised hood.
“I never received a letter,” he said, twisting his body forward to find her face.
She turned toward him then, a knot forming in the middle of her forehead. “I swear to you I sent them.” Her eyes were sincere, but her face was pained as she looked at him.
Ian looked down the field, watching the tally keeper and field marshal tapping against the arrows on each target. After each tally, they raised a black or red flag to indicate whether the archer would be moving forward to the next round.
He believed her. He believed that she had written.
It touched an old pain deep within him, one that he was not quite ready to face.
He had never understood why she had never written him back.
It did not make sense, and he had never been able to comprehend how she could have abandoned him so completely.
But she had not. She had written to him. He blinked, blurring the sight of the distant target.
But the letters had never reached him.
And his had never reached her.
He turned back toward her, his own forehead pinching in pain as he realized what had happened. “He stopped our letters.”
Robin nodded, her eyes searching his face. “I guessed as much.” She turned away, looking down the field.
Ian followed her gaze. Standing at his target, the marshal raised a red flag. He had successfully made it to the next round.
But there was no excitement at his accomplishment.
A familiar feeling of powerlessness washed over Ian, removing the brief balm that the knowledge of Robin’s letters had given him.
Once again, a decision that had affected his life so directly had not been his to make.
He had long ago accepted that the weight of his title meant that his life was not his own.
But the injustice of it felt overwhelmingly contradictory.
He had no power to make decisions for himself, yet he was expected to make decisions that would affect an entire kingdom and everyone in it.
The marshal raised a black flag next to Robin’s target. She had been eliminated.
Ian looked over at her, confused. That was no accident, as Robin could best every archer on this field. But only twelve archers in total made it to the next round, and Onric’s group had not even competed in this round yet.
The horn sounded again, signaling that it was safe for the archers to cross the line and retrieve their arrows.
Robin stepped forward, crossing the shooting line. “I was counting everyone’s score,” she explained as they walked across the field. “When I knew you were safe, I bowed out. We do not both need to speak with Onric.”
“But the final round of nobles have not even shot yet?” Ian asked.
Robin threw him a conspiratorial smile, a small piece of her confident self returning. “I have watched every one of the twelve archers shoot countless times. I know what they are capable of. Only two of them even had a chance of advancing to the final round.”
Ian shook his head. “Is Onric one of them?”
She nodded. “Onric will make it.”