Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The arrow screams through the morning. It strikes the web and the lattice shatters like glass struck by a hammer.
Threads of light recoil and die, sparks raining down in a furious hiss.
The shaft doesn’t stop. It drives clean into the Sheriff’s thigh, punching through muscle and sinew with a sickening squelch.
He howls, dropping his blade and staggering sideways.
Blood spreads dark and fast on his beige trousers.
Lox surges forward, golden power rushing back into his body with the force of floodwater breaching a dam. His chest heaves for several breaths before he roars. The ground answers. Roots explode from the soil, thick and furious, tearing across the slope in a writhing tide.
They slam into the Sheriff, wrapping his torso, his limbs, his throat. He thrashes, spitting curses, but the roots only coil tighter. His eyes bulge as red foam flecks his lips. Every line of Lox’s body holds the promise of execution. He raises his hand, and the roots constrict.
Marian sees the hunger in him to rend and crush until nothing remains.
‘No!’
The cry rips Marian’s throat raw. Blood coats her tongue, filling the cracks at the edges of her lips. She staggers to her feet, body screaming in protest, palm pressed futilely to her gut. Her legs shake but she forces them to hold, every ounce of will funnelling into her voice.
‘You can’t kill him,’ she wheezes. Her vision swims, breath coming in short bursts.
Lox’s head whips toward her, roots frozen mid-strangle, their knots trembling with his wrath. Golden light blazes down his antlers, painting him as an unearthly saviour and executioner.
Ichor trickles between Marian’s fingers, streaking the torn silk of her dress, but her eyes never leave his.
‘If you do this,’ she gasps, voice shaking, ‘all of England will see Sherwood as nothing more than a burrow of beasts to be purged.’ She coughs, the taste of copper searing her tastebuds, but she pushes the words out.
‘They will come for all of you, and any peace you’d ever hoped for will be drowned in fire and iron.
That is what he wants, Lox. His victory will come not in the form of your death, but damnation for all fae. ’
Lox’s chest heaves, breath ragged, gaze seared with fury and grief.
The roots pulse at his command, eager to break bone, to pulp flesh.
His voice rumbles low, guttural. ‘He would have gutted me and then ravaged you, or worse.’ His jaw tightens, teeth bared.
‘He deserves to rot in the earth until worms choke on him.’
‘Yes, but not like this. Not by your hand, as a martyr.’ Marian sways, blood hot beneath her palm, but she doesn’t break his gaze. Her voice is splintered and weak, but sharpened with everything she has left. ‘If you kill him now, he wins – you’ll become the monster he paints you to be.’
The roots cinch tighter for a heartbeat, the Sheriff’s strangled cries muffled in the twisting coils. Lox’s breath comes ragged, his antlers blazing gold like torches at dusk. Every inch of him screams for release, for violence, for the brutal satisfaction of ending it here.
But her plea manages to wriggle through his surly resolve, fracturing his steely demeanour.
His hand quivers as though he’s wrestling his own magic into submission.
Slowly, and with great visible effort, the roots groan, then shift.
They drag the Sheriff deeper into the soil until his chest sinks below the dirt, up to his armpits, his limbs splayed and pinned, every joint bound tight by living wood.
Vines bite into his jaw, silencing anything besides angry grunts, leaving only his hate-consumed eyes above the writhing knots.
Lox stalks forward with barely contained wrath. He stops above his captive.
‘You call us beasts, a plague upon your world,’ he fumes, voice cold with the timbre of judgment, ‘but it is you who poisons the earth, you who scours the marrow of all that lives. Men like you don’t fear monsters. You make them because you need them to feel like bigger, better, men.’
The Sheriff growls, muffled against the roots, but Lox only tilts his head, golden eyes blazing.
‘When you think of today, remember that a baron’s daughter and a fae mongrel are the only reason you’re still breathing.
’ He takes a step back. ‘But know this: if you lift a hand toward me or mine again, I will make sure the forest swallows you so clean that not even your shadow will find its way back. Sherwood keeps a ledger, and the roots remember every debt.’
With the ruthless simplicity of a verdict, Lox’s boot snaps forward, brutal and clean. The leather meets the Sheriff’s cheekbone with a crack. His eyes roll back until only the whites can be seen. Silence descends upon the field, broken only by the hiss of Marian’s thin, ragged breaths.
Her knees finally give way.
Marian’s vision rims in black. The world banks and drops out from under her like a trapdoor. Her palm falls from her waist and fresh warmth leaks down her front, sticky and hot. She hits the grass hard, breath bursting, dress blooming red.
‘Marian!’ Lox drops beside her with a thud. Every trace of wrath in his face is replaced by terror within the space of a blink. His hands hover at first, as if touching her might shatter Marian completely. When he finally presses against her wound in an attempt to staunch the tide, she screams.
A terrified whimper slips out of him. He’s not the Verdant Guardian now, nor the unshakable force of Sherwood, but a man unravelling. ‘No, no, no. Stay with me, little fox.’ Liquid seeps between his fingers as he compresses harder.
‘I meant what I said.’ Marian tries to smile but it turns into a grimace. ‘I’ll find you in this lifetime o-o-or the next.’ She coughs, blood spurting from her lips. It splatters on his face but he doesn’t even flinch.
Her world is nothing but the bite of pain and the smell of freshly turned soil.
‘Look at me!’ Lox cups her face, thumbs streaking mud over her cheeks as if he could paint the colour back into them.
‘You do not leave me to finish this alone.’ He presses his forehead to hers, breath shaking.
‘I choose you, Marian Hallomere. I choose you now and each morning after. Don’t you dare go somewhere I can’t follow! ’
A wet sound escapes her, half-gasp, half-groan. ‘Robin—’ Her body shudders, her eyelids fluttering. ‘Promise you won’t let them seal my body in stone.’ Her hand rests against his chest, his heart thudding beneath her fingers. ‘Bury me here so I can rise wild through your ribs.’
‘No.’ The denial is a snarl, feral in his throat. ‘This is not how this ends!’ His eyes wrinkle at the edges of the thought. ‘Marian, I need you to look at me.’
Her gaze drags toward him, foggy with pain, and she’s surprise when she sees hope flickering behind his stare.
‘I know how you feel about magic,’ he whimpers. ‘And I swore I would never use it on you without your leave. But Marian . . . I can’t save you without it. Will you let me try?’
She squints. Magic. The thought chills her blood faster than the wound spilling it.
‘I . . .’ Her voice crackles.
The old stories claw up from memory. Tales of spells that unspool the mind until you don’t know your own name; enchantments that hollow you out and leave only hunger and the shape someone else carved into you. Only days ago, she willingly drank fae wine, but this is different.
She thinks about the Severing, about how she felt an almost literal thread being cut from within. Her fingers clutch at his wrist, slick with her own blood. ‘What if I lose myself?’ she rasps.
Lox’s gaze sears into hers, green-gold and fierce as fire caught in leaves. ‘You won’t. I swear it on my antlers, on my oath to Sherwood.’ His hand tightens, not crushing but anchoring, grounding her to him. ‘I will stitch you to this world even if it tears my soul in half.’
Her chest heaves. She wants to believe him, to trust that he could hold her together when she feels herself spilling apart at the seams. ‘But if it changes me—’
‘Then let it change me too,’ he cuts in, fierce as wildfire. ‘If you burn, I will burn with you. If you rise, I will rise beside you. If your soul splinters, mine will catch the shards. That is my bond. That is my vow. You do not walk this path alone.’
Her lungs fight for air, but Lox’s vow cuts through her panic. The fear digging claws into her ribs loosens – not because she believes in safety, but because she believes in him.
The last of her resistance folds. Her chin dips in a frail nod that costs more than any oath she’s ever made. He exhales and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead.
‘Thank you,’ he whispers.
He doesn’t waste a moment. His palm, still slick with her blood, picks up a fistful of damp soil and flattens it against her belly, spreading it across her wounds like medicine.
A wretched wet cry tumbles out of her as he presses deeper.
The earth hisses under his hand, magic surging through her body hot and fast. Beneath her, the roots stir as though they, too, wish to pour their strength into her body.
Golden light ripples down Lox’s arms, funnels into the wound, and threads through the soil to weave a crude seal.
For a heartbeat, Marian’s bleeding slows.
Then the soil sours black, heat and iron pushing back, and the blood wells anew.
‘No!’ His voice is jagged. He doubles the pressure, chanting low in the old tongue until his teeth rattle.
The forest answers, a hum in the marrow of the hill.
But each surge only staunches the pour for a breath, before the wound gapes again, unrelenting.
The light in his eyes stutters and dies, leaving only heat and the unbearable press of his hands trying to hold her life inside her.
Lox’s roar shreds the morning silence. ‘It’s t-t-too deep,’ he admits, horror dawning in the hollow of his chest. ‘It’s too deep,’ he repeats, ‘I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to save you.’