Chapter 10 #2
She jerks, the basket tumbling from her grip. Before she can draw breath to scream, Lox pulls her back against him, hard. His arm locks across her middle, her spine pressed to his chest. The warmth of him swallows her struggle.
‘Hush,’ he whispers against her ear.
His breath ghosts along her neck, the sound low enough to be mistaken for a growl. Marian stills, every nerve drawn taut. Fury flickers in her gut, knowing that the tremor running through her isn’t from fear.
She glares up at him, muffled protests dying against his palm. His grip is rough and warm. The pulse in his wrist beats against her cheek, unhurried and infuriatingly calm while her heart claws to escape her ribs.
Lox’s mouth brushes the shell of her ear. ‘Sherwood wasn’t caging you, Mare,’ he says quietly. ‘It was keeping you safe. You attract things far more dangerous than enchanted food.’
‘You’re lying,’ she grits out between his fingers.
‘If I were, you’d have been free to run,’ he whispers. ‘Sherwood wouldn’t have bothered stopping you. It only holds what it means to protect.’
‘I don’t want its protection.’ Marian tries to twist free, but the motion only makes him drags her closer. The scent of rain and sap clings to him.
‘Then you’ll have its teeth instead.’
Every inch of her tells her that she should fight him, that she wants to fight him, but her pulse betrays her, skittering wild beneath his touch.
‘Let. Go.’
Lox’s chest moves against her spine in a slow, measured breath. ‘If I do, you’ll bring it down on both of us.’
‘What exactly is it?’ she breathes.
A sound rises from the dark as if to answer her.
Lox’s hand eases from Marian’s mouth, but his palm hovers a breath from her jaw, ready to silence her again if she so much as inhales too sharply.
‘Don’t move,’ he murmurs.
The air tastes wrong. Like meat left too long in the sun. Her instincts scream to run, but Lox’s other arm pins her against him.
‘What does it want?’ she whispers.
‘You.’
Lox’s hand leaves her jaw to reach for the bow slung over his shoulder.
The motion is fluid, quiet as breath, and for the first time she notices the weapon in full.
It’s made of polished yew, an inlay of silver veined along its grip.
The string isn’t sinew or fibre; it looks as if threads of ambient amber light have been woven together.
Of course, the infuriating fae lord who embodies everything she’s sworn to hate would wield the same weapon that once felt like an extension of her own hand.
‘It can smell you,’ Lox says.
‘What can?’ she hisses through her teeth.
‘A Fellhart.’ Lox’s antlers glint as he turns his head toward the shadowed path. ‘One of the forest’s sentinels charged with discouraging mortals from wandering too deep.’
The darkness to their left shifts. A crack, like bone splitting, echoes through the grove, followed by the slow drag of weight over leaves. A branch bows under pressure and then releases with a whip-snap. Marian’s breath locks in her throat.
She glimpses a blur of something massive threading between trunks, catching faint shafts of green light. Between blinks, eyes glint back at her: too many, too bright, burning from the dark like scattered coals.
Lox shifts, placing himself between her and the sound.
For a long, aching moment, nothing moves.
Even the leaves seem to have forgotten how.
Marian feels the weight of it press against her lungs until every breath becomes an argument.
Her fingers twitch, aching for a weapon she doesn’t have.
Despite being in front of her, Lox’s arm remains iron around her waist, a wall of warmth and muscle that pins her in place while the dark beyond the trees shifts and hums with something ancient.
One heartbeat. Then another. Slowly, the smell of rot is replaced by the scent of freshly turned earth as the Fellhart’s presence recedes, coiling back into the deep.
Lox spins around to face her, barely a breath between them. His eyes narrow as they move over her expression, tight and sharp as a hawk’s.
‘It appears Sherwood’s in a generous mood tonight,’ he murmurs.
Marian still can’t move. Her pulse is a snare drum in her throat. ‘Generous?’ she hisses. ‘That thing was going to tear me apart.’
He steps closer, his voice quiet. ‘But it didn’t.’
‘Why?’
His expression tightens, but there’s a flicker of amusement in his eyes. ‘Why indeed . . . A Fellhart hasn’t spared a mortal in decades.’
Marian glares, breath still ragged. ‘Apologies for disappointing your expectations.’
The corner of his mouth almost lifts. Almost. But those sharp, burning green eyes stay fixed on her, narrowing, as though she’s a riddle that refuses to solve itself.
There’s a tension in him she hasn’t seen before, a restlessness that doesn’t suit his usual control.
He looks at her like she’s an equation that won’t balance, and the failure of it needles him.
She wants to say something cutting – wants to wound him with words – but the closeness unravels her tongue. His chest is inches from hers. The heat coming off him is disorienting; it smells of pine sap and rain, wild and clean, nothing like the stench that lingers in the creature’s wake.
‘Why didn’t you kill it?’ she asks finally, her voice small but edged.
Lox’s attention drifts to the dark. ‘Because everything in Sherwood serves a purpose. Even its monsters.’
‘A purpose?’ she repeats, half-disbelieving. ‘That thing wanted to eat me.’
‘It wanted to know you,’ he corrects softly, still watching the trees.
He exhales and the air stirs the stray hairs against her temple. She can feel the pulse under his skin where his hand still rests near her waist, the faint quiver of muscles that haven’t yet decided to stand down. Every inch of him is tension barely leashed.
The forest feels suddenly smaller, the space between them smaller still.
‘Sherwood intervened to safeguard you.’ His mouth tilts, not quite a smile. ‘It thought you’d listen to its warning if you couldn’t run from it.’
Something in his tone unsettles her. She folds her arms to hide the trembling in her fingers.
‘I could have protected myself.’ The words come out barely above a whisper.
‘I believe you,’ he murmurs. ‘But I don’t plan to test it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Sherwood would never forgive me if I let you die on its soil.’ The smirk deepens, but the warmth behind it is dangerous. ‘While you’re in my charge, I’ll not let harm come to you. I’ll drag you back to Elswyth myself if that’s what it takes to keep you breathing.’
The arrogance of him – quiet, assured, wrapped in that calm that only makes her want to shake him – snaps what’s left of her composure. She steps closer, chin tilted up until the barest movement would bring her mouth to his throat.
‘You don’t own me,’ she says.
‘No,’ he answers, his voice low enough to vibrate through her ribs. ‘But I am responsible for you.’
Heat flares under her skin. ‘You think—’
‘I think you attract trouble faster than I can shoot it,’ he finishes, fingers tightening against his bow.
‘Perhaps you should shoot faster.’
His breath catches, a laugh half-formed, roughened at the edges. For a moment she sees what he might look like unguarded: wild, bright, dangerous in a different way. The thought scorches through her before she can stop it.
Without another word, she spins on her heel and starts down the path back to Elswyth, each step loud against the hush.
The forest seems to bend around her steps, leaves shifting in her wake. Her heart pounds too hard, her throat tight with the heat of words she refuses to say.
Behind her, Lox calls out, ‘You can storm off all you like. Sherwood will still find you.’
She doesn’t turn around. ‘Then maybe it should learn to mind its own roots.’
The forest answers with a rustle that could almost be laughter.