Chapter 11 #2
Marian’s always been good at resisting. At turning desire into something sharp and deflective. But Lox doesn’t push or leer. He simply gestures toward the tray like an invitation to surrender, not to him, but to herself.
And she is so very tired of fighting the things her body needs.
The chair legs scrape softly over the wood as she sits. Heat rises from the plate in tiny ghosts that lick her face. Her fingers tremble when she picks up the knife. Self-respect wants her to pretend she is not desperate, but hunger does not care about pride.
She cuts a strip of venison, lifts it to her mouth, but pauses before it crosses the threshold of her lips. ‘Are you just going to stand there and watch me eat?’
His mouth tilts. ‘Someone has to ensure you keep your end of our bargain,’ he answers, tone dry. ‘You mortals are famed for your slippery vows.’
Marian says a silent prayer to the saints that her mother’s tonic still lingers and lifts the morsel to her mouth.
Her eyes never leave his as she bites. Salt and smoke spill across her tongue.
Fibres give under her teeth, the meat tender enough that the knife could have been a suggestion.
Fat slicks across her palate and something inside her loosens with a moan she can’t silence.
She swallows and the ache in her belly sharpens, eases, then returns, but smaller, like a fist unclenching one finger at a time.
Steam beads on her upper lip. Her hand tries to remember manners, slow and measured, but her appetite keeps urging her faster.
She fights for a rhythm that doesn’t look like desperation and loses steadily, bite by bite.
The mash is earthy and sweet; the greens crackle with oil and a kiss of vinegar.
Lox watches every motion like he’s cataloguing it.
Her eyes flick up between bites, grazing the line of his throat before drifting to the antlers crowning his head. Up close, she can see the tines are not smooth; they carry faint striations, pale where new growth has come, darker where age has set a deeper colour.
‘Enjoying the view?’ he asks, mildly amused.
Marian’s eyes fall to her plate. ‘I’m sorry. I-I-I didn’t mean to—’
He lifts a hand, cutting her apology short with an easy flick of his fingers. ‘Eat,’ he says, gentler than an order, firmer than a suggestion. ‘And look, if it pleases you. Curiosity is not a crime here. Ask what you like; most mortals never stand close enough to wonder.’
The invitation lands like a key she didn’t expect to fit any lock. Heat crawls up her throat, but she swallows it down with another mouthful. Each bite softens her edges, and brings her back into her own skin.
‘Have you always had them?’ she finally manages, mouth filled with mash.
Amusement skims his mouth. ‘They came the day the forest chose me to become a Verdant Guardian and take up the mantle of Rootkeeper.’ A shadow of memory flickers in his eyes.
‘The title belongs to the forest, as does the crown; they grew out of me like everything else within the bounds of Sherwood.’
She looks closer. The striations are not decoration, but mark seasons. Maturation and degeneration. ‘Do they hurt?’
He is slow to answer. ‘Growth does not ask permission. It merely arrives with its own expectations.’
The answer is not an answer, and yet it tells her what she needs to know. Marian rolls it in her mind like a stone between her fingers, feeling for the edges she can’t see. She takes another bite to buy time. The venison steadies her; the tremor in her hands fades to a faint quiver.
A pensive quiet passes between them. She stares at his profile, at the severe line of nose and jaw softened by the lamplight, and realizes how wrong her first impression of him might have been.
She had thought only of sharpness. While he has plenty of that, up close the sharp hides something softer, patient.
‘How old were you when it happened?’ she eventually asks.
‘Young enough that my arrogance survived the choosing. Old enough to know I would spend the rest of my years paying for it.’
Her attention slides back to his crown, without permission. She does not know what to do with a man who will be flippant one breath and hand her a truth like a blade the next.
He follows her look, the green in his eyes darkening. ‘Do they trouble you?’ he asks, tone even. ‘Or is it the reminder that I am not what you were taught to hate that unsettles you?’
She opens, then shuts her mouth. Honesty, tonight, feels safer than a lie. ‘Both.’
A beat passes as he studies her with that same unsettling composure.
Between blinks, a change moves through him.
He closes his eyes, breath deepening, and the lines of his shoulders gather.
The air in the room tightens with an unseen pressure.
His jaw locks until the tendons in his neck jump.
Then, like the sun melting into the horizon, the tines begin to withdraw.
They soften at their bases, edges melting inward the way frost withdraws from a windowpane.
A low, gravelly grunt slips out of him, raw and unfettered.
The sound catches in her, shameless and unwelcome, a note her body recognizes before her mind can scold it.
Fire spears down her spine so fast that she nearly drops the fork.
She looks away, cheeks burning, furious at herself for the way her breath stumbles.
By the time she forces her eyes up again, he’s straightened – and the room feels abruptly smaller without the antlers above him.
‘There,’ he says, voice steady again. ‘Better?’ He studies her face cautiously, as if he has removed a knife from the table and waits to see if she will breathe easier.
She doesn’t. If anything, the absence unsettles her more.
He looks wrong without them. Unfinished. Beautiful, yes, but altered. The dissonance worms under her skin.
‘You prefer me like this,’ he assumes, misreading the flush in her face.
‘No.’ The answer leaps out too fast. ‘I prefer honesty. If you are a storm, don’t pretend to be a drizzle. If you are antlered, be antlered.’
The grin that cuts his face is swift and private.
He closes his eyes. A breath. Then another.
The air swells again, and this time she watches on purpose.
The skin at his temples gleams faintly before the antlers return, as if grown from thought: first pressure, then ridge, then branching tines, each emergence a new edge of shadow on the wall.
A gentle grunt follows the soft exhale through his teeth as the last tip clears.
She glares at her empty plate to hide the curl of heat left by that second sound.
‘I must be off, but I’ll give you one more question,’ he offers, gathering up her tray. ‘Spend it well.’
Marian sits very still, her pulse a reckless bird in her throat. ‘Why bring the food yourself? You could have sent anyone.’
The words slip out sharper than she intends – too quick, too worried he might not answer.
He moves toward the door, but pauses at the threshold. The line of his back stays straight, the power in it too carefully leashed to be mistaken for indifference. Slowly, he turns his head, and the lamplight catches the green-gold in his eyes.
‘Because they would have left it at your door,’ he says. ‘And you would have let it spoil out of spite.’ Lox lets the silence stretch, then tips his head faintly. ‘I wanted to see if you’d eat when the choice was placed in your hands instead of forced down your throat.’
Marian wants to snap at him. Wants to fling something sharp enough to break that composure, to remind him she isn’t a caged bird fattened on his scraps. But the retort shrivels before it can reach her lips. Because he’s right. She would have let the food rot out of malice.
Something flickers in his expression. It’s quieter than triumph; it’s recognition. As if he sees not the mask she holds so carefully in place, but the strain beneath it.
Lox pulls open the door, eyes never leaving hers. ‘Sleep, little fox. You’ll need your wits sharper than your tongue if you mean to last here.’
He steps out with the same certainty with which he entered, antlers brushing the doorframe before he glances back over his shoulder. His teeth catch at the edge of his bottom lip as he looks her over one last time.
‘See you at dawn.’
Marian exhales, the sound shaky, too loud in the small room. She presses her face into her hands, the warmth of honesty still clinging to her skin.
And she hates that beneath the anger and the shame, a part of her had wanted him to stay.