Chapter 1 #2
Her pulse stutters. The bowstring digs into the pad of her finger as she draws it taut.
‘Run,’ Marian hisses.
Tilda tenses behind her. ‘Not without—’
‘Now!’
Tilda flees down the slope, swallowed almost at once by fog.
Marian inhales a slow, deep breath through her nose, every sense strung tight as wire. The shadow’s edges blur until she can’t tell where gloom ends and creature begins. The gleam of those eyes follows her – unblinking, unhurried, as though certain she will falter before it does.
Her arm trembles under the strain of the bowstring as she raises it.
The figure shifts forward a step. Just one. But that’s all Marian needs.
The snap of the bow cracks against her ear, the arrow a streak as it flies toward its target. It slices through the air and lands with a thick, wet sound. A guttural snarl cleaves the quiet in half. The fae’s massive shape staggers as the shaft buries itself deep into its leg.
Marian’s heart kicks hard enough that she nearly drops the bow. She sees it only for a heartbeat: the dark body twisting, clawed hand clutching the arrow jutting from its thigh, those unfathomable green eyes blazing brighter with fury instead of curiosity.
Not willing to wait and see if it gets back up, she spins around on her heel and barrels forward to catch up to her handmaiden. Branches whip against her cheeks and brambles claw at her hems, but she doesn’t look back. The earth is slick, every root a snare, every stone a trap.
Tilda’s copper curls come into view a few paces ahead of her, but it’s not until the canopy thins and the first sliver of unfettered sunlight spills across her face that either of them slows.
Hunched over, hand pressed to her chest, Marian staggers to a halt, gulping air that drags along her throat.
‘Are you all right?’ Marian wheezes.
‘Do I bloody look all right?!’ Tilda crows, arms thrown up in the air before immediately clutching her side. Her burnt-orange braid’s half-unravelled and her face is flushed deep pink. Bits of twig cling to her cloak and there’s a streak of mud across her cheek.
‘You look like a tavern brawler after a rough night,’ Marian manages between gasps, bending over to brace her palms on her knees.
Tilda chuckles. ‘Remind me to return the favour when your father asks why his daughter’s hem is torn to ribbons, or why she smells like the underside of a horse’s arse.’
A laugh wheezes out of them both. Tilda had been at the manor since before Marian could walk.
She was her mother’s favourite attendant, turned unwilling chaperone after Isadora’s death.
Over the years, she’d become something more than servant and less than kin: a stubborn, surly sort of aunt who fussed over Marian’s meals, patched her torn sleeves, and scolded her like a stray pup caught rolling in mud.
Though, for all the trouble her ward caused, Tilda loved Marian with a sigh, a glare, and a hand always ready to steady her when she fell.
Marian straightens as the tension in her spine loosens by a few degrees.
She glances back where the forest looms tall and ancient, trees clawing skyward like hungry fingers.
The sound of her arrow sinking through fae flesh with such ease twists her gut.
She pulls another bolt from her quiver and taps her finger against its tip.
She should feel relief knowing that her design for the fusion of fae ore mined from the depths of Sherwood and cold mortal iron would render its magic inert.
Instead, all she’s left with is a sour knot in her stomach.
Her eyes swing across the land, stopping at the forge below the manor. Despite the early hour, the furnaces are already going, firelight flickering through the windows, belching smoke into the awakening sky.
Marian’s brow furrows as she and Tilda move toward the forge’s entrance, the acrid scent of coal and molten metal curling around them. Heat rolls off the walls in waves; the sound of metal on metal pangs sharp in her chest, too rhythmic for a standard run of horseshoes or scythe heads.
This is weapons work.
She angles her body tighter to the stone, peering between the slats of the supply shed where the glow bleeds brightest, and watches one of the smiths stoke the coals.
She used to sneak down to check on the progress of her designs as they were being smelted; she spent sleepless nights perfecting those sketches, each curve and mechanism twisted from her thoughts like threads from a spindle.
But mostly, she came for Rowan.
He’d been her father’s youngest smith, barely a year older than her, all broad shoulders and soot-streaked hands.
His calloused fingers traced steel as if every blade he made was a confession.
And when the rest of the manor slept, she’d slip down to meet him behind the slag heaps, where they’d kissed the way a spark catches tinder – sudden and consuming.
Their bodies had met with the unthinking hunger of youth.
For those stolen moments, she wasn’t Eamon Hallomere’s daughter or the ghost of her mother’s grief.
She was simply Marian, and he looked at her like that was enough.
But nothing that burns stays hidden for long.
Her father’s eyes had filled with a rage that mirrored the burning forge behind them at the sight of Rowan’s shirt half-undone alongside Marian’s ripped skirts and swollen lips.
She’d managed to come between her father’s blade and Rowan’s gut, getting sliced along her side in the process, as Lord Hallomere roared at the boy for daring to touch what was his.
The next morning, Rowan was gone and Marian hadn’t set foot inside the forge again.
But the pull never faded. The forge had once been a place where her ideas came alive, where her heart did too; now it was a tomb.
Her father claimed it was mercy that made him spare the boy’s life. Marian knew better. Mercy had nothing to do with it. He had done it to remind Marian that anything she dared want could be ruined in an instant.
That obedience was a collar Eamon Hallomere made sure she’d never stopped wearing.