CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE NO MAN’S PROPERTY
D uncan lunged toward Euan with the broken silver spearhead raised.
It was not brave.
Marion knew bravery when she saw it. Tavish bleeding and still standing before Georgie. Lorna lifting a stolen spear with shaking hands. Morna holding her cut arm and swearing at death as if it were an unruly patient. Euan kneeling on poisoned roots and offering strength instead of command.
That was bravery.
Duncan was not brave.
He was humiliated.
There was a difference.
He came at Euan because Euan was wounded. Because Euan had just risen from poison and old silver and bloodline pain. Because striking a weakened man from the side allowed Duncan to pretend he had chosen the largest threat when truly he had chosen the one he thought could not stop him fast enough.
Unfortunately for Duncan, Marion had become quite tired of men mistaking wounded for helpless.
She moved before Euan did.
The bond shouted with his alarm, but she ignored it. Her body crossed the snow in a blur of woman and wolf. Her injured palm still burned from Aldrich’s blade. Her forearm ached from Duncan’s earlier cut. Her feet were bare, her shift torn, her hair half wild around her face.
None of that mattered.
Duncan saw her too late.
His eyes widened.
Marion caught his wrist.
The silver spearhead stopped less than a hand’s breadth from Euan’s chest.
For one heartbeat the whole Grove seemed to hold still around them. Duncan’s breath came harsh through his teeth. His hand shook against hers. The broken weapon trembled between them, its silver edge smoking where her light touched it.
He stared at her as if she had wronged him by being stronger than expected.
“Let go,” he spat.
Marion tightened her grip.
The bones in his wrist shifted.
Duncan gasped.
“No,” she said.
It was such a small word. One syllable. A thing she should have said years ago with the cottage door open and neighbors watching. A thing she had said softly in kitchens, in her own head, under her breath, but never with enough witnesses for it to matter.
Now the Sacred Grove heard it.
The wolves heard it.
The Crown soldiers heard it.
Euan heard it.
Georgie heard it.
Duncan’s face twisted. “You have no right.”
Marion almost laughed. It came out as a breath instead. “You are still saying that?”
He tried to wrench free.
She did not move.
The wolf inside her was very still now. Not lunging. Not snarling. Waiting. That frightened Duncan more than claws would have. She saw it in the way his eyes flicked to her mouth, her hands, the light under her skin.
“You were meant to come home,” he said, and there it was again. That awful conviction. “You were meant to stand before a court. Answer for what you did. Answer for what you brought into our family.”
“Our family?” Marion repeated.
His mouth tightened. “My brother’s name is on you.”
A sound came from Euan.
Marion did not look back. If she looked at him, she might soften. Or worse, she might let his rage become hers, and this was hers already.
“No,” she said. “Your brother’s name was given to me in marriage. It did not make me livestock.”
“You dishonor him.”
“You use him.”
The words struck.
Duncan flinched.
For the first time since she had known him, Marion saw real grief pass through his face.
It was quick and ugly and buried almost instantly under pride, but it had been there.
Perhaps he had loved his brother in some narrow way.
Perhaps grief had soured into entitlement because entitlement was easier than sorrow.
It did not excuse him.
Nothing excused the knife at Georgie’s throat.
“You think this beast loves you?” Duncan asked, voice shaking now. “You think he sees a woman? He marked you. He changed you. He made you into something no decent world can hold.”
Euan moved behind her.
Marion lifted her free hand.
He stopped.
She felt how hard it was for him. Felt the tremor in the bond, the fury pressing against his skin. But he stopped. That mattered. It mattered more than Duncan could ever understand.
Marion looked into Duncan’s eyes.
“You still do not understand,” she said. “Euan did not make me difficult to own. I was always that.”
Duncan’s face went red.
“Do not speak his name to me like you know anything of him.”
“I know enough. He left ruin behind him. He brought the Crown to your door. He dragged you into wolf filth. Your child now burns like a witch and you stand here glowing like a corpse candle and call it freedom.”
Georgie made a small sound from behind Rhona.
That decided Marion.
Not the insult to herself. Not even the insult to Euan. She had expected those. Duncan had always been predictable when anger scraped off the polish.
But Georgie.
He did not get to put shame in her daughter’s blood and call it concern.
Marion twisted Duncan’s wrist.
The broken spearhead dropped into the snow.
He cried out and fell to one knee.
She did not release him.
“Look at me.”
He refused.
She bent closer. “Duncan.”
His head jerked up.
There was fear in his eyes now. Proper fear. Not of the wolves around him. Not of Euan. Of her.
Good.
“You will hear this once,” she said. “My daughter is not cursed. My blood is not yours to name. My body is not yours to judge. My magic is not yours to condemn. My widowhood is not a door you may keep trying to enter.”
He breathed hard, hatred trembling through him.
“You are nothing,” he said.
Marion smiled then.
It was not kind.
“No,” she said. “I was nothing to you unless I could be made useful. A cottage. A child. A woman alone. A name you could take from your dead brother’s grave and use as a key.”
His face crumpled, then hardened again.
“Do not speak of him.”
“Then stop wearing him like armor.”
Duncan lunged with his free hand.
He had another blade.
Of course he did.
A small knife slid from his sleeve, thin as a needle, its edge blackened. Marion caught the motion but not fast enough. He slashed across her side, not deep, but silver burned through the torn fabric and into skin.
She hissed.
Euan roared.
Duncan’s eyes brightened with triumph.
Then Marion’s light rose.
The silver wound burned once, hard and cruel, then answered her. Gold wrapped the black poison. Silver followed. The cut sealed slowly, angrily, leaving a line of blood down her side but nothing more.
Duncan stared.
The triumph drained from him.
“No,” he whispered.
Marion looked down at the healed wound, then back at him. “You are running out of knives.”
He shoved away from her with a panicked strength, scrambled backward, slipped in the snow and nearly fell. His eyes darted to the Crown soldiers.
“Help me,” he shouted.
No one moved.
The nearest soldier looked toward Aldrich.
Aldrich was not looking at Duncan at all.
He was looking at Marion’s side, where the silver wound had failed to spread.
Duncan saw it.
Something in him cracked.
“You promised me,” he shouted at Aldrich.
Aldrich’s gaze finally moved to him, and even Marion felt the chill in it.
“I promised you usefulness,” he said. “You seem determined to spend the last of it poorly.”
Duncan’s mouth opened.
No sound came.
For a second Marion almost pitied him again. It was a dangerous habit of hers, pity. It had put soup in the hands of men who did not deserve bowls. It had made her explain herself to people who had already decided not to hear.
Not this time.
Duncan turned back to her.
His eyes were wet now, but there was no softness in it. Only rage made damp by defeat.
“You will regret this,” he said.
Marion sighed. She was suddenly, terribly tired. “I have regretted many things in my life. Refusing you has never been one of them.”
He surged up with a raw cry and ran at her.
No weapon this time.
Just hands.
That frightened her more, somehow. The honesty of it. The truth at the end of all his laws. He had always wanted his hands on what would not obey.
Marion shifted aside and caught his coat. She used his own momentum to throw him down into the snow between the torn guardianship papers, the fallen spearhead and the little silver blade he had carried like holy proof.
He struck the ground hard.
Before he could rise, she planted one bare foot on his wrist.
Not enough to break it.
Enough.
“Stay,” she said.
He froze.
Tavish, who was still on one knee near Georgie, muttered, “I enjoy when she says that to other people.”
Morna snapped, “Then learn from it.”
Georgie gave a watery giggle.
The sound nearly undid Marion.
She looked toward her daughter.
Georgie stood tucked between Rhona and Lorna, her face streaked with tears and soot, her little chin lifted. The faint gold light in her hands had dimmed, but not vanished. She watched Marion with fear, yes, but not of her.
For her.
That was different.
Marion’s heart hurt.
“I am all right,” she told her.
Georgie sniffed. “You are bleeding.”
“I am often untidy.”
“You say that about my room.”
“Then we both must improve.”
Euan made a low sound behind her. It might have been the beginning of laughter or the end of fury. With him, today, it was probably both.
Duncan twisted under Marion’s foot. “You let the child see this? What kind of mother are you?”
Marion looked down at him.
“A living one,” she said.
His mouth shut.
The words struck her too.
A living one.
After the altar. After the Blood Moon. After the silver axe. After all the ways the world had expected her to be quiet, dead, grateful, owned.
She was still here.
The wolves around the Grove had begun to close in. Not to attack Duncan. Not yet. To witness.
Aodh came forward with the old axe in both hands. The blade no longer looked like execution to Marion. It looked like history, heavy and capable of being wrong.
“Marion,” he said quietly.
She glanced at him.
The old Grove Keeper’s eyes moved to Duncan. “Your claim?”
She understood what he asked.
Not permission.
Judgment.
Her foot remained on Duncan’s wrist. He glared up at her with all the ruined pride he had left.