“You’re a thief.”
He clenched his hands into fists. “I am a hero.”
“Depends on who you ask, doesn’t it?”
Robin exhaled slowly through his nose. “You owe me four hundred pounds. Now, you can earn that money working in your fields, struggling to increase production enough to allow for significantly more savings—work that will take the better part of a year and keep you from your precious hunts. Or, you can join me and my allies in fighting against the tyranny that sees fat men profiting from the labor of those unfortunate enough to be born outside the nobility. The choice is yours.”
Marian didn’t lose the stubborn set to her jaw, and he could practically hear the insult she no doubt had readied on her tongue. But she bit it back, kept her silence as she stared off into the forest, eyes unfocused.
“Work in the fields can be very rewarding, I’m sure.” He stepped closer to her, careful to watch her body for any signs of intended attack. “Certainly it is much safer than prowling the woods with me, seeking prey, fleecing them of their ill-gotten wealth. Men who feel such entitlement, who think nothing of taking food from the mouths of the less-fortunate, often fight with single-minded ferocity. They are not used to giving up what they so foolishly believe is theirs, and there is always a certain danger in challenging them.”
He chose his words carefully, plucking at the part of Marian he’d seen before he’d ever revealed himself to her. That hunger, that determination, the absolute joy she found in the hunt. He dropped his voice deeper into his chest. “And of course there’s always a chance of bloodshed.”
Slowly, she turned to look at him, green eyes meeting his. “What would be the measure of my time, then? For how long would I need to help you to repay my debt?”
Robin watched her face, disappointed she was still thinking so clearly even in the face of the temptation he offered her. “Six months.”
“One.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Done. Come to the same place, at the meeting of the ash, the rowan, and the birch, tomorrow evening. I will be waiting for you.”
He didn’t wait for any further response, didn’t want to give her the opportunity to come to her senses, to change her mind. He hefted the unconscious man into his arms, careful to jostle him as little as possible, and tapped into the sea of memories that fed his glamour. Wrapping the energy around himself like a cloak, he hid himself from her view and fled into the night.
Chapter Thirteen
A full moon burned like a sphere of mercury in the night sky, a blanket of stars glittering around it. The air was cool, a welcome relief against skin flushed with the heat of adrenaline-laced blood. She prowled through the forest, relishing the soft give of the earth beneath her bare feet, the caress of leaves across her face.
Up ahead, a shrill scream broke the silence.
Marian opened a mouth full of sharp teeth and howled, a long, piercing cry. Her call was followed by another shriek from up ahead, couched in the snapping of twigs, the panicked rustling of leaves, and the unmistakable thud of frantic footsteps running pell-mell in the opposite direction.
The hunt was on.
Muscles bunched, tensed, and she sprang forward. Claws dug into the soft earth, launching her forward faster, farther, and she sailed through the air over fallen logs, uprooted trees, high-arcing roots. Her mind held a single thought, a single purpose.
Catch the prey.
Marian pressed her lips together, forehead furrowing as she tossed her head on her pillow. The dream held on, wrapped her in its unwanted embrace, held her so tight she could scarcely draw a breath. She flung out her hands, dug her fingers into her mattress to reassure herself she was in bed, not outside in the wild woods. Reassuring herself that she was alone.
Because in the dream she was not alone. In the dream, she was surrounded, one body in a seething mob. She didn’t look around in her dream, didn’t take her attention off the prey that was fleeing for its life. But if she had, if she’d turned her head even an inch, she would have seen the others. Wicked claws and open maws, saliva glistening on lips pulled back in macabre smiles. Grunts and growls, panting and howling. They moved forward in a ferocious parade of nightmares, all of them running.
Chasing.
Hunting.
Suddenly a voice whispered in her ear, a low, masculine voice that sent heat of another nature pouring into her blood.
“Join with me.”
Green eyes in a pale face of inhuman beauty. Hair the color of sunlight on snow. A smile that made promises of a carnal nature. Just the thought of him twisted things low in her body. He reached for her, fingers dancing just above her skin.
“Let me see you. Show me what you are.”
Something hard and flat slammed into her body, cracking against her head with enough force to make stars explode behind her closed eyelids. Marian tried to shriek in surprise, but she had no breath, all the air forced from her lungs by the impact. She lay there, unable to do more than blink, and found herself staring up at her bedroom ceiling.
She was on the floor, her bed sheets wrapped around her body so tightly she was momentarily overwhelmed by claustrophobia. She had a moment of sheer panic as she tried to flail around and failed, her body held immobile by her lungs’ inability to draw breath. A scream echoed in her mind and she squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself to calm, to let her breath return.
Bit by bit, her lungs expanded, returning control over her limbs. The dying sunlight cast a feeble light through her windows. After trying most of the day to find something productive to do despite her preoccupation with what the evening would bring, she’d eventually been forced to acknowledge defeat. To the shock and outrage of Ermentrude, she’d crawled into bed in late afternoon, determined to hide from her fate in the land of dreams.
“Join with me.”
The words echoed back at her from the dream, but they hadn’t been just a dream. He’d spoken those words to her, the sounds filtering through the haze of adrenaline-induced ecstasy left over from…
She tasted blood. A barrage of sensory images battered her consciousness. Soft flesh in her teeth. Screams and then silence. Bodies…
She turned her head just in time to avoid being sick all over herself, the contents of her stomach upended onto a pool of bed sheets. Her skull ached, slivers of pain lancing through her head to pierce her eyes. Her stomach rolled, tormented by the gruesome images her mind all too eagerly supplied.
“What have I done?”
Drool pooled in her mouth as she spoke and she gagged again, spit out more bile onto the sheets. She closed her eyes, breathing through her mouth to avoid the bitter scent and very slowly and carefully extricated herself from the ruined sheets.
For a few precious minutes, her brain allowed itself to be distracted by the task of cleaning up. She balled up the soiled sheets and put them in a basket to be burned later—washing them was out of the question, the fabric ruined by the memory as much as the filth. She staggered to the wash basin, her body clumsy as if she still hadn’t fully awoken from the nightmare. She washed her face and neck, scrubbed her arms and her hands as well. There was blood under her nails that wouldn't come clean. It would take a great deal more scrubbing before she was rid of it. She swallowed back another surge of bile and quickly rinsed her mouth with a fresh gulp of water from the pitcher.
Her hands shook too violently to manage a brush without beating herself senseless, so she pulled her hair back and tied it with a ribbon, knotting it tightly as if she could somehow strangle her emotions as easily as her wild red waves. Now she just needed a fresh change of clothes.
The handles of her wardrobe creaked in protest as she jerked them open with unnecessary force. She held on to them for awhile, willing her body to cease its trembling.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
She chose a crimson dress and a white blouse. The dress had no buttons and minimal lacing, nothing but the
ribbons that held the bodice together over the blouse. It was rather more of a challenge to dress than it should have been, but when she was finally done, she felt a little more normal and brave enough to look in the mirror.
“Get a grip, Marian,” she told her reflection.
The woman in the silver stared at her with eyes that held no trace of the misery she was feeling. Quite the contrary, there was a spark that had not been there yesterday, a certain…satisfaction. Despite her nausea, her face was not the pale, pasty white she’d expected, but rather a becoming flush of pink. She looked like a woman who’d been to a ball the night before, and had a rather grand time of it to boot. A little worse for wear physically, but mentally—
“No.”
Marian slammed her hands down on the vanity, rattling the bottles and brushes on its glossy surface. She jabbed a finger at her reflection. “You will not enjoy this. This is a disaster, a nightmare. You are a damn fool!”
She spun around, pacing her room in long, agitated strides. “Join with me. What was I thinking? Sure, I’ll just join a band of bandits, shall I? What could go wrong there?”
She stopped and faced the mirror again. The woman reflected there still didn’t look nearly as ashamed as she should. In point of fact, she looked rather excited. Marian crossed her arms and gave her reflection the best glare she could drum up.
“You’re going to be sorry. You know how this will end.”
Her reflection flickered, and she imagined that some of the satisfaction leeched from its eyes. “Yes, you see? Now you’re thinking.” She threw herself into pacing again, every footstep thudding against the floor to punctuate the harsh realizations attacking her like angry birds.
Thud, thud, thud. Thud muffled by rug, thud muffled by rug, thud muffled by rug. Thud, thud, thud.
“And even if you do manage to keep a grip on yourself, there’s always the sheriff. You shot his cousin, you don’t think he’s just going to let that go, do you?” She faltered, frowned. “True he didn’t seem terribly upset by the loss. Seemed rather satisfied at the idea of claiming his cousin’s lands, now that I think about it. Rather more interested in his inheritance than any grief.” She shook her head and resumed pacing. “Still, that’s not the point. He wants Robi—the fey. He wants the fey and he’ll want him even more now that that idiot’s gone and shot him. Pretended to shoot him.”
The memory of kneeling in the snow digging for scattered coins flared up in her memory and her hands ached with remembered bone-numbing cold. Somehow “pretended” just didn’t feel like a strong enough word for what that fey could do with glamour.
She pivoted again and caught her toe on the edge of the thick carpet in the center of the room. She stumbled, but recovered before she fell over, glaring at the offending rug. It wasn’t until she raised her eyes again that she noticed the door to her bedroom was open. A servant stood in the doorway, her brown eyes wide, body frozen. She held a basket of clean linens in her arms.
Marian pointed at her. “We don’t have an extra four hundred pounds lying around, do we?”
The girl trembled, fingers digging into the basket, the blood draining from her face. “N-no?”
“No, we don’t. And how long do you suppose it takes to earn that sort of money? Extra, mind you, not the money already claimed by the needs of this property and its inhabitants.”
“I-I don’t know?”
Marian crossed her arms and drummed her fingers against her biceps. “More than a year, I’d imagine. Maybe more than two.” She narrowed her eyes and chewed absent-mindedly at her lip. “Perhaps this is not a complete disaster. After all, letting this place go to ruin would hardly be the way to honor my parents, now would it?”
Now the maid looked really frightened, not just in an “I’ve interrupted the lady of the house having a mental breakdown” way but in a “there’s serious trouble that might mean I’m out of work and out on the streets” way. The basket almost slid from her suddenly limp arms and she scrambled to regain her hold, her eyes locked on Marian’s. “Are we in trouble, then, Lady Marian?”
Marian waved a hand at her, annoyed at the interruption. “No, no, we will be fine.” She pressed her lips into a firm line and nodded. “More than fine. I’ll take care of everything.”
Her confidence lasted as long as it took to walk to the meeting of the three trees. Robin lounged in the same place he’d been when she’d first laid eyes on him, cradled against the trunk of the rowan with bow in hand, an arrow following something in the sky. His pale hair caressed the ground, her view from the side giving her a perfect look at his profile, the cut line of his jaw and the gentle slope of his nose. He had cheekbones typical of the sidhe, high and sculpted as if by a master.
“Join with me.”
“Let me make you happy.”
His words whispered through her mind, caressing her body from the inside out. Her fingers itched with the urge to touch those cheekbones, trace those fine lines, follow his jaw to his lips. The memory of those lips on hers, the sweetness of that first kiss and the passion of the second… What a tempting fate you are. Damn you.
“Trying to sneak up on me?”
His voice broke over her like a sudden wave, catching her off guard and startling her out of the daydream she’d been dangerously close to enjoying. She blinked, surprised to find he was right. She was crouched down, bow in hand, following the treeline while staying in the shadows. He turned his head, grayish-green eyes meeting hers. He winked.
The blush that warmed her cheeks was as sudden as it was unwanted. Marian tightened her grip on her recurve bow, barely resisting a childish urge to shoot him just for embarrassing her.
He surprised her again when he didn’t follow up on his little flirtation. Rather than making a suggestive comment, or giving her body the once-over she was becoming scandalously accustomed to, he eased the arrow from his bow and rolled into a sitting position. “Ready?”
“For what?” she asked automatically, preoccupied with convincing herself she was certainly not admiring the subtle bunch of his muscles as he hunched over, strong fingers still wrapped around the riser of the bow.
“You’ll see. Let’s go.”
He stood, stretching out his tall, lean form, the moonlight spilling over him at the perfect angle to make his eyes glow. It should have made him look alien, it should have reminded her that he wasn’t human, that he was everything she’d avoided for as long as she could remember. But somehow, those shining eyes seemed…right.
She blinked, realizing she’d been staring, her body held in place by her preoccupation with the fey’s visage. Worse, he seemed to have noticed she was staring. His smile slid a little farther across his face, and he was no longer facing the direction he’d been about to lead her in. Rather, he was facing her. She had the ridiculous thought that his positioning was an offer, a hint that if she wanted to linger here with him, he would oblige her…
“Quit staring at me,” she snapped. She pivoted on her heel and marched off in the direction he’d initially indicated, firmly ignoring the amusement in his perfectly arched blond eyebrow.
He let her lead until she was forced to stop in acknowledgement that she didn’t know where they were going. Another maddening smile and he sauntered ahead of her, leading her out of the trees and up the smooth green slope of a hill. The night breeze caressed her warm cheeks, offering some relief and helping to clear some of the cobwebs from her head. She took a deep breath of the sweet-smelling air and felt a little better.
As they crested the hill, Marian faltered and stopped. Robin’s companions were waiting there, the same two men who had been with him at that first meeting.
The bear shifter wore a plain green shirt the color of dried pine needles and pants of a matching shade. Dark lines flowed from the collar of the shirt to the edge of the sleeves, and from the sleeves down to the bottom hem. The pants were lined on either side with similar creases and it took Marian a moment to realize they were laces.
Clever. That way when he shifts, the clothes tear at the laces and can be repaired.
She was still appreciating the concept when the bulky man in question lurched into motion. He moved faster than she would have given a man that size credit for, and suddenly he was invading her personal space, leaning over her own not inconsiderable height. She opened her mouth to warn him off, already reaching for her bow, when he leaned in…and sniffed her.
A second later he stumbled back, a sneeze exploding from him with enough force that she thought she may get to see his laces in action. He wrinkled his nose and waved a hand at her as if to ward off an offensive scent.
“Still just rosemary,” he told Robin, his voice thick as if another sneeze were threatening.
The spriggan fell to the ground in a fit of hysterical giggles, arms and legs akimbo, high-pitched laugh sending a chill down Marian’s spine. She angled her body in his direction without meaning to, her bow rising slightly, right hand flexing, ready to draw an arrow. Some primal part of her wanting that sound to stop—now.
“Now, now, Marian, don’t waste your ammunition on my friends.” Robin’s voice was soothing, as if he were used to people having that reaction to his companion’s laugh. He stepped between Marian and Will. “I’ve brought you something much more fun for tonight.”
The spriggan stopped laughing, but fixed Marian with those sickly yellow eyes, too-wide smile turning her stomach with the wrongness of it. A chest covered in a green shirt and darker green vest blocked her view as Robin slid in front of her, his position farther up the hill letting him tower over Marian even though he wasn’t that much taller. He gestured at something on the ground and she tore her gaze from the spriggan to see what he wanted to show her.
It was a wine cask. Marian furrowed her brows, looked harder at the cask. The flourish with which Robin gestured at it had made it seem like there was some significance to the thing, but for all she could see it was just a plain brown barrel with perfectly ordinary metal rings holding the planks together. There was a faint whiff of fermented grapes that promised her it was indeed a wine cask.
The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) Page 14