Chapter 29 #3
‘I’ll always find you,’ he answers. His thumb strokes her bottom lip, the faintest tremor betraying the war he fought with his fury. ‘Even if Sherwood falls to dust, I will claw through the grit and find the shape of you in whatever’s left behind.’
Her heart stutters. ‘You sound like you mean to follow me past death.’
‘I would,’ he says without hesitation. ‘But tonight, I would rather keep you here.’
The kiss is gentler, though no less consuming. His hand cradles the nape of her neck as if she is something sacred, not a woman broken open by violence. And when she gasps, he drinks it in as if her breath itself is sacrament.
They move carefully at first, as if testing the strength of a bridge they’ve just built. Between one breath and the next, relief turns to heat.
Clothes peel away. His palms travel reverently over her skin, tracing each scar, each curve, until she feels rewritten.
He kisses down her chest and when his tongue brushes across her breast, she cries out, not only from the pleasure but from the surge of light that bursts outward in response.
Plant stalks around them quiver, leaves unfurling open in response.
‘Do you feel it?’ Marian groans into him. ‘How the world blooms when we do?’
‘Yes,’ he pants, rocking against her, every nerve a live wire. ‘We are two parts of the same wild heart.’ He leans in, his teeth grazing her throat. ‘I hold everything above, and you . . .’ His hips roll against her in a maddening tease. ‘You hold everything below.’
His hand slides beneath the torn silk. She opens beneath his touch, legs tangling with his, pulling him closer. The moss cushions their weight, and when she moans, the trees around them sway.
The thin golden veins that flickered before flash like a fired cannon. She closes her eyes and sees them everywhere: braided through the moss, pulsing in the blackened soil, streaking the trunks of trees.
When Lox sinks into her, the world explodes in light.
They move together, slow and inexorable; he thrusts inside her like roots plunging deeper into soil.
The forest answers. Leaves ripple overhead, though no wind stirs. Vines unfurl, tendrils pushing free of soot, stretching toward the source. Each stroke of his body within hers is echoed by a pulse beneath them, as if the land is remembering how to breathe, how to grow, because of their union.
‘I choose you,’ he moans, forehead pressed to hers, sweat beading on his temples. ‘Marian Hallomere. Heartkeeper. Little fox. Every name you will ever bear; I will choose you until the stars burn out.’
Her eyes sting. ‘You’re my hearth. My haven. My home.’ A brittle cry echoes out of her when he buries the entirety of himself between her legs. ‘If I am the heart, then you are the pulse it beats for. You are the promise that even when my heart stills, the echo will find its way back to you.’
They move with the slow surety of tide and shore. Where once their joining felt like a spark struck in dry tinder, now the fire between them unrolls into every corner, light seeping under every sill. They do not just make love; they graft themselves into Sherwood.
When she comes apart, the forest erupts in a cacophony of light.
A cascade of luminous spores drifts down from the canopy like stars shaken loose from the sky.
Her cry echoes through the roots, her pleasure carved into the bark itself.
Lox follows with a roar, the ground beneath them quaking with the force of release.
They collapse together, skin damp and slick, bodies still bound as if unwilling to part. His mouth trails salt-sweet kisses along her brow, her cheeks, the corner of her swollen lips.
For a long while, there is only silence. Her spirit feels stretched, as if something vast has settled inside her without hollowing her out.
Finally, Marian whispers, stomach knotting, ‘He’ll come for us again.’
Lox stiffens but doesn’t release her. His voice is dark velvet, frayed at the edges. ‘The Sheriff?’
She nods and swallows, turning her face into the curve of his throat. ‘Men like him don’t stop. They hunger until they choke. He’ll come for us, again and again. And if not him, another in his place.’
‘Let them come. We’ll meet them.’
She shakes her head faintly, then pulls back to search his gaze.
‘Not just meet them. Outwit them. Strip them. Bleed them of coin and power until they starve on their own greed. If he steals from us, we’ll steal from him – his coffers, his soldiers, his people.
’ She takes Lox’s hand, presses it to her cheek.
‘And not just for the fae, but for the humans who suffer under his levies too. I want to be the Heartkeeper for all of them.’
A slow, dangerous smile unfurls across his mouth. ‘You would rob the Sheriff? Strip his purse to feed both sides of the forest?’
Her lips curve with a wicked fierceness. ‘Steal from the rich and give back to the forgotten. Not for glory, but for balance.’
Lox kisses her as if sealing a vow. ‘That sounds like a tale that will live longer than we do, little fox.’
‘One can only hope,’ she murmurs, flicking her tongue against the tip of his nose playfully.
The forest swells around them in agreement, damp and reborn, as if revelling in the birth of a legend.