Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Night in Elswyth is a soft thing.
It doesn’t descend so much as it unspools like pulled threads of dusk-coloured silk.
Moonlight slips through the leaves in quiet beams, casting dappled silver across all of Sherwood and over buds that only open after sundown.
Laughter rises from the village’s lower boughs, where fae still share wine and songs and stories that never seem to end.
Marian squats on the low windowsill of her small room.
One leg is tucked beneath her, the other bare to the thigh and dangling off the ledge, catching what little breath of wind the forest offers.
Her auburn curls, still wet from her bath, fall in wild tangles down her back.
Her chemise clings damply to her skin, fabric nearly translucent with the humidity, the neckline slipping off one shoulder.
Thunder rumbles in her stomach. A grimace scrunches her face as she forces herself to take another bite of the bitter tuber she pulled from the riverbed a few days prior. Silt coats the back of her tongue, but she swallows it down.
Another sharp pang coils through her gut.
She presses a palm to her belly, glaring down at it like that might shame her hunger into silence.
In the distance, she can see the village gathering at the base of Elswyth’s heart tree in solemn clusters.
Fae walk in single-file lines, carrying clay urns filled with the ashes of those lost in the past year.
With each name spoken aloud, a hand reaches into the urn, fingers streaked grey as they scatter a thin trail into the soil beneath the tree.
The air shimmers faintly wherever the ash falls as they chant, ‘What was taken is returned so that the dead may nourish the living.’
‘Everything in Sherwood serves a purpose,’ she mutters, echoing Lox’s words from earlier.
Marian drags the charcoal across the page in long, decisive strokes and slowly the gathering fae take shape. The hollow cheeks sunken with grief, the greying temples and tear-streaked faces.
The smell of roasted vegetables and meat drifts up to her window, crueller than she thought possible. She swallows the last of her meagre meal, desperate to ignore the ache in her stomach.
Her lines grow frantic, smudging at the edges.
Every curve of her hand is a rebellion against the gnawing in her belly.
If she draws fast enough, maybe she can outpace it.
She taps her bare foot against the sill in a restless rhythm.
A curl of hair sticks to her neck with sweat, and she brushes it away with the back of her wrist, leaving a smear of black against her skin.
A knock at the door startles her. It reverberates through the thin walls of the chamber, pulling her head up from the sketch. She freezes, charcoal suspended in her hand.
Another knock follows, harder this time, a command rather than a request, causing her to jump.
The small basket of foraged fare on her lap spills across the floor.
She hops off the ledge and gathers it instinctively, clutching the useless collection of mint leaves, wild nuts, and willow bark to her chest like a shield, her hunger-addled body trembling with the effort.
The third knock doesn’t come.
Instead, the door flies open, wood rattling in its frame as Lox strides inside without pause.
His antlers brush the lintel as he steps over the threshold.
He’s changed clothes since they last saw each other; clad in a dark shirt that’s unlaced at the throat and rolled to his forearms, vine-like markings sprawling down to his wrists.
It’s tucked into trousers of deep-green, tight enough to show the powerful line of his legs, boots laced high and streaked with dust.
A tray balances in one of his hands. Steam curls off a slab of roasted venison flanked by mash and green beans slick with oil. A clay cup rests beside it, water beading cold on its sides. The scent fills the chamber instantly, rich and warm, drowning the faint bitterness of her fossicked scraps.
The gold in his eyes gleams brighter. It lands not on the sketchpad in her lap, or on her rumpled state of dress, but on the pitiful collection in her arms.
‘The fae don’t believe in knocking?’ Marian quips, shame heating her cheeks.
‘I did,’ Lox huffs. ‘You didn’t answer.’
‘That’s generally an invitation to leave a person alone, not barge into their room unannounced.’
He shuts the door behind him with a gentle press of his foot and strides further inside, setting the tray of food on the small table.
She eyes the offering. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Even if I could ignore your grumbling gut, I wouldn’t be able to disregard the rest of you,’ Lox says quietly, the usual edge in his voice dulled by something close to worry.
Marian forces herself to her feet, ignoring the way her legs quiver. ‘I told you, I’m not hungry.’
Lox’s nostrils flare as though catching her weakness on the air.
‘The light in your eyes has dimmed, and you move as if the ground’s about to give way beneath you.
’ His gaze drifts down, lingering on the way her chemise hangs loose where it once clung.
‘You won’t last another week if you keep this up. ’
The words strike closer to concern than command, which unsettles her more than if he’d shouted.
Silence stretches, taut as a bowstring. His golden-green eyes pin her in place.
They linger on the pout of her full lips, the way her tunic clings damply to the swell of her breasts.
His expression shifts, just slightly, but enough for her to feel it.
‘You nearly collapsed at the healing bough,’ he continues.
His tone is clipped as he forces himself to look elsewhere.
Her mouth goes dry. ‘It was nothing,’ she lies, chin lifting.
‘It was not nothing,’ Lox growls, though the sound is tempered, caught halfway between decree and confession. He doesn’t move closer, but his presence fills the room all the same, pressing at the air until Marian feels cornered despite the open window at her back.
‘You think me a fool?’ She levels her gaze at him, even as heat dances between her ribs. ‘One taste, and I’ll forget my name. One swallow, and the woods will never let me leave. I won’t fall into your trap because you don’t like the sound of an empty stomach,’ she seethes.
Lox exhales through his nose, slowly, like he’s counting against his temper.
He takes a step closer, the lamplight carving gold into his cheekbones. ‘This is not survival, Mare.’
Her cheeks flare hot. She wants to claw that quiet certainty from his expression. ‘You don’t get to say it like that,’ she grinds out.
‘Like what?’
‘Like you care.’
The words hang between them, hot as an ember.
‘You mistake vigilance for sentiment,’ he answers flatly. ‘The forest charged me with your safety. If you starve, then I have failed my oath.’
‘I don’t need saving. I just need—’ Her voice breaks.
He tilts his head, antlers catching the light. ‘What is it you need?’
‘I need to make my own choices. To eat when I choose. To starve if I desire. To wander where I want.’
He studies her a long moment, expression unreadable. Then his expression softens with resignation.
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ he sighs. ‘Eat tonight, and tomorrow . . . I’ll take you hunting.’
Her heart stutters. ‘Hunting?’ she echoes. ‘You expect me to believe you’d arm your captive?’
Lox’s lips quirk at the challenge. ‘You’ll track the game and loose the arrow yourself; dress and cook it. Nothing will touch your tongue that doesn’t first touch your hands.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then you can continue gnawing willow bark and pride.’ His gaze flicks to the basket in her arms. ‘I doubt you’ll last much longer.’
‘I’ve lasted longer on less.’
His head tilts, antlers striking a lattice of lamplight across the ceiling. ‘You mistake stubbornness for strength.’
It’s a lifeline. An olive branch.
But Marian knows better than to make a fae bargain. ‘You think I’ll stumble blind into whatever spell you’ve spun across that tray? Eat, and wake to find myself bound to you?’
His jaw hardens, pride bristling. ‘Unlike mortal men, I don’t need trickery to bind my women. If I wanted you tethered, little fox, you’d already be tied by the roots beneath this floor.’
The words crackle in the air, dangerous and intimate all at once. Marian’s pulse leaps traitorously, but Lox breaks the tension with a flick of his gaze toward the tray. ‘Eat tonight, and tomorrow I’ll take you to the Eastern Ridge. No glamour. No games. That’s the deal.’
She chews at her bottom lip. It’s been almost a week since she’d last drunk the tonic her mother swore would guard her from fae magic. Is there a chance its protections still linger in her tissue?
Deals with the fae are death warrants, but the aching in her stomach has become a second heartbeat. Her mind scours for loopholes, for protections. Finally, she straightens, forcing her voice to steady. ‘Swear on Sherwood Forest that the food is untainted, and that it won’t change me.’
Lox stills. The lamp flame catches along the curve of his cheek as his mouth twists to the side, as if ruminating on her offer. Then, to her surprise, the faintest glint of approval warms his eyes.
‘Clever of you to ask for the only oath that carries weight with us.’ He sets his palm flat to the small table beside the tray, fingers splayed until the rivulets within the wood begin to glow.
‘On Shéruel, who remembers the first breath of the green, and on Wodenna, who keeps the old bones of the world, I swear that any food I bring you will be free of glamour or binding. It will not twist your mind or your marrow. It will not claim you. It will feed you and that is all.’ His mouth tilts a fraction.
‘The only change you risk is becoming less irritating.’
Relief moves through her body in a slow, reluctant thaw, and she hates that he can see it. She sets the sad handful of forage on the sill and crosses to the table. He steps aside, though he does not retreat far.