Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Late afternoon drapes Elswyth in the colour of tarnished coin. It’s neither daylight nor dusk, only that gauzy hush between. The village hums with the sounds of preparation for tonight’s Ashen rite.
Marian keeps her head bowed beneath the burden of folded linens, the basket balanced on one hip. From a distance, she must look perfectly obedient, merely another laundress on another errand. Up close, her steps are measured, deliberate, always angling a little too far from where she should be.
No one stops her. No one looks twice.
Allen had said the rite would begin when the sun burned itself down on the horizon, that the fae would gather at the river to sing for the dead.
‘A night of remembrance,’ he’d called it. ‘A night when even the trees bow their heads.’
Perfect. Let them bow.
Marian’s sketchpad rests flat at the bottom of the basket, hidden beneath the folded tunics.
Each step takes her further along the map she’s been building for days.
She follows the lines and marks rendered in charcoal smudges, little notations of ladders, bridges, guard posts, and rope spans. And now she tests what lies beyond.
Lanterns begin to brighten high in the canopy, one by one. Around her, fae string garlands of ash-grey blossoms, their petals falling like thin flakes of snow.
She cuts left at a narrow span of rope bridge that winds through a tangle of trees. When the path forks, she takes the steeper climb that she marked with a faint X days ago, where the ropes thin and no light crystals burn.
The boardwalk narrows, rising and falling like the bones of a spine. Her heart keeps its own pace, quiet but insistent, as she crosses into the western quarter, where the walkways lose their polish. Moss creeps over the planks. The air grows cooler, stiller, as the village falls away.
Marian sets the basket down to stretch her sore arms and flips the linen back just enough to reveal her sketchpad. Her own scrawled notes meet her: Western ridge, roots exposed, no guard post. Possible descent beyond outer wards.
She presses on. The last of the lamps vanish behind her, swallowed by the trees.
Her steps grow careful, almost soundless.
Bark curls like old parchment along the rails.
A wind moves through the treeline, but it isn’t the playful sort that tousles hair.
It brushes over her neck like the exhale of something watching.
Every few paces she pauses to scratch a mark on the edge of her map: a split trunk here, a vine ladder there. Her pulse quickens when her charcoal begins to skip. Whatever magic veils Elswyth makes her hand shake. She tightens her grip until the lines even out again.
She descends a crooked staircase that twists around the base of an enormous oak, where roots braid into the hillside, and the forest floor meets her at last. The path before her is barely a trail, more suggestion than structure, the planks half-eaten by dirt.
The hum of the village fades into a heartbeat’s echo, leaving only the creak of her basket handle and the sound of her own breath.
This is the furthest Marian’s ever managed.
She moves carefully, testing each step before putting her weight down fully, expecting the wards to trigger and Little John to lumber from between a pair of trunks, or Will to rain daggers from a branch above.
But no such alarm comes. Only the trees standing sentinel, in a hush so deep that she can hear her pulse in her teeth.
Marian exhales slowly through her nose, tasting the bile of her own nerves. She shifts the basket higher on her hip and keeps moving.
A fallen branch cracks under her heel with a tiny, mutinous sound, stopping her mid-step.
She waits. Nothing.
Her heart quickens. She ducks beneath a curtain of hanging moss as the wooden walkways give way to soil. The ground is soft, wet enough that each step sighs beneath her boots. It’s darker here – the kind of dark that has weight.
The earth shudders.
Marian stops in her tracks, the basket sliding from her hip to land soundlessly at her feet. Ahead of her, the trees bend until their boughs knit together, as if a hand presses them down, until the last strip of sky is gone. The air shifts in a way that draws the hairs on her arms upright.
Roots surge from the earth, twisting over her boots before she can jump clear. They tighten and yank her ankle down until her balance fails. A strangled cry echoes as her knees hit the ground. A branch lowers from above, curling around her shoulders, pressing her back against the trunk.
‘Let me go!’ she snaps, wrenching against it, but it only tightens.
The trees creak as if in answer. The sound is low, almost human, tinged with a groan of disapproval.
Marian claws at the root binding her until her nails split, dirt caking beneath them. Another tendril wraps her wrist, not crushing but holding, as though the forest itself means to steady a frightened animal. Tears burn before she can stop them.
‘Please?’ She slams her fist against the trunk, bark scraping her knuckles. The plea tears something loose inside her. ‘I’m tired of being caged by men who smile when they lock the door,’ she whispers, breath shaking. ‘Tired of being told what to be. For once, I want to choose who I am.’
The grove hushes around her. Then the pressure at her shoulders eases a fraction, no longer forcing her down, but not freeing her either.
A shadow breaks through the lattice of branches.
Lox stands a few paces away, antlers haloed in the dim green light that slips through the canopy. His cloak is unfastened at the throat, the wind teasing the dark edge of his hair, and for a heartbeat neither of them speaks. The hush between them is heavier than any command.
Marian drags her sleeve across her face, though it does little to hide the wetness there. She can’t tell how long he’s been standing there – how much he’s heard. Of the begging. Of the breaking. Shame crawls slow and hot up her throat.
Lox’s voice slides through the quiet.
‘Bold of you to continue to test Sherwood’s patience with your wandering.’
‘I wasn’t wandering,’ she snaps. She forces herself to lift her chin. ‘I was looking for something to eat.’
The corner of his mouth curves, slow and razor-sharp. ‘Ah. It’s your pride that’s brought you to your knees before roots, begging the dirt for crumbs.’
‘Pride?’ she spits, twisting against the branches still coiled at her arm. ‘Is starvation a sin in your perfect forest? Forgive me for not munching on cursed leaves and feeding off the sun like the rest of you.’
‘You’ve been offered food.’
‘Fae food,’ she seethes.
Lox’s head tilts, the antlers glinting faintly. ‘The same food that keeps every living thing in this forest alive. The same bread you refuse out of superstition.’
‘I’ve heard what happens when mortals eat from fae tables.’
‘And I’ve heard mortals choke on their own arrogance,’ he replies evenly. ‘Tell me, how long do you plan to cling to your fallacies before you realize they’re what’s killing you, Mare?’
She grimaces at the use of her name, shortened, softened by his tongue. It sounds different there, dangerous in its intimacy. ‘Better starved and free than bound by your trickery.’
‘You call gnawing at bark and stealing berries like a rodent freedom?’
She meets his gaze and holds it. ‘At least my hunger is mine.’
Amusement flickers through his eyes. ‘Your stubbornness would almost be admirable if it weren’t so idiotic.’
She jerks against the root holding her ankle. ‘You think that if you starve me long enough, I’ll crawl back to your table, begging for scraps?’
‘I think,’ he says, closing the last few steps between them, ‘that your ignorance is louder than your hunger.’
Her breath catches as he crouches before her, one hand braced on his knee. The forest light pools around him, the kind that seems to come from no sun at all. Green and gold pulses faintly from the bark beneath his other palm. His eyes catch it, reflecting a colour that isn’t quite real.
‘Tell me, mortal, what exactly do you think happens when you eat our food?’
Her heart thuds. ‘You make us yours, binding us to your whims.’
‘And yet here you are, bound without ever taking a bite.’
The air between them tightens. Marian’s throat works, but the words don’t come.
Lox rises again, his shadow falling over her.
He raises both his hands and Marian shrinks instinctively, waiting for a blow that never comes.
The roots that pinned her quiver as if startled; bark sighs before loosening its grip.
The branch around her shoulders retreats, brushing her arm in what feels almost like an apology, before it slips away entirely.
Marian drags in a shaky breath, curling her freed fingers toward her chest. But when she glances up, the look on Lox’s face stills her tongue. Fury – sharp, cold, and precise – burns through the composure he wears like armour.
‘You’ve made your point,’ she bites out. ‘I won’t trespass again.’
Lox’s voice cuts through her attempt to flee. ‘Who did that to you?’
She blinks, thrown. ‘What?’
He steps closer, gaze fixed on her reaction, the way her shoulders have folded at the smallest motion of his hands.
‘Who made you cower like that?’ His tone is quiet, but it shakes the ground more than any shout.
Marian’s jaw tightens as she staggers to her feet.
‘You think yourself a saint because this forest obeys you?’ She reaches for the fallen basket, clutching it like a shield.
‘You’ve no right to demand answers from me.
You haven’t earned any of them.’ The basket slams against her hip as she strides past him, voice rising.
‘The audacity to kidnap me, keep me captive, and now you want to play at sympathy?’
‘Mare.’
She keeps walking, pace quickening, her words carrying through the trees. ‘If I’m such a burden, then let your blessed Sherwood keep me! I’ll find my own food, my own way, and you can—’
A hand closes over her mouth.