Dreamer of Briarfell: A Retelling of Sleeping Beauty (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 7)

by Lucy Tempest

Agnë’s eyes filled with tears, and Meira’s breath caught in what suspiciously sounded like a sob. Then they both surged up, attempting to hug me. They ended up bumping into each other through my phantom form.

  Pushing away from each other, their indignant exclamations were so ridiculous, I just had to laugh. After a stunned moment, they joined me.

  When we finally sobered, Agnë cleared her throat. “You shouldn’t be upset with Robin Hood over his, um, ears either. He did save me, after all.”

  Robin!

  Renewed alarm burst inside me as I swept around and floated away.

  Meira rushed to intercept me. “Where are you going?”

  “I need to see him! His wounds looked terrible!”

  Agnë came to flank me from the other side. “The healers will take care of him. And we’ve been assured we’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “Leander once told me the Summer Court has the longest days in the realms of Faerie. Tomorrow could be next week for these people, and I can’t wait that long.”

  “But they said they allow no one into patients’ rooms,” Agnë protested. “They must have them guarded or warded or both. They’re probably guarding our quarters, too.”

  “Good thing I won’t be going through any doors, then.”

  “But…”

  I didn’t wait to hear more of their misgivings. Gritting my teeth against my aversion to walking through anything, I went through the wall behind one of the beds.

  I walked through all the rooms in the hall, managing to avoid most occupants’ notice, but startling a couple. It took some investigation, but I eventually found where they were keeping Robin.

  There were guards at the door, and the healers were still with him. I waited, my mind storming with worries and questions. Once they left, I went in through the wall of the adjacent room.

  Then I saw him, lying there on the bed unmoving, and shirtless, and forgot everything.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I tried to remember. What I’d come here for. Where here even was. But it was impossible to think at all.

  It was also impossible not to look. I had to keep looking, after all, to be sure that his chest rose and fell. If I happened to notice how wide and defined it was—or how the variety of scars over his muscled shoulders and thick arms and sparse abdomen, told many stories—that was unavoidable.

  His head injury seemed to have been sealed, as if the torn flesh and scraped bone had been reformed, leaving a narrow, angry line down his temple and cheek. His other injuries were hidden beneath faintly glowing bandages. His skin had lost its pallor, its tan warm, and uniform, like he had labored under the sun, possibly during the war, digging trenches and setting up tents.

  The thought of a man sweaty and dirty from work, with his skin altered by the sun, should have been repulsive to me. But as I approached him with bated breath, the hammering of my heart had nothing to do with aversion. And that was before his face captured my focus to the exclusion of all else.

  A face thousands had speculated about over the years, wondering what this infamous man looked like under that hood—if he even existed at all.

  Yet here he now was, right before me, asleep, and with a face not even the most gifted of painters could imagine.

  His face was a canvas of singular structures, filled with the finest details I’d ever seen in a man. Arched, dense eyebrows gracing a leonine forehead and a ridged brow, and shadowing thick lashes that brushed prominent cheekbones. A slim, proud nose covered in a dusting of freckles residing over sculpted lips split by a thin, healed cut, and a wide, triangular jaw stubbled with gold. All in proportions my drawing tutors would have called a “golden ratio.”

  Not even the pointed ears could upset the balance of beauty in this man. In fact, as much as I hated to admit it, they may have accentuated it.

  Enraptured, I leaned over to take a closer look, committing his face to memory—and realized something.

  I’d already seen enough fairies, including Bonnie, with their perfect faces and forms, but there was a quality to him that neither they nor humans possessed. It was as if the best in each species had gathered in those entrancing features. Also, his skin differed from the fey’s pearlescent sheen…

  His eyes flew open, instantly alert and slamming into mine.

  The deepest, most vivid forest-green—like his hooded cloak.

  My mortified recoil had me floating away, my gaze still captured in his.

  He said nothing, until I began to worry he couldn’t speak, that the healers only fixed his flesh, but his brain was damaged…

  “Of all the ways to get unmasked, this had to be the least exciting option.”

  I gaped at him. He’d spoken. But his voice… It was clearer, more sonorous than it had been with his hood on. Then what he’d said registered.

  “Least exciting?” I exclaimed. “You could have died!”

  He tried sitting up, hissing with pain until he settled back, head propped up by the pillows. “I always thought it would be along the lines of being captured while performing a legendary heist, and taken to the throne room, where I’d have the pleasure of spitting in Prince Jon’s eye.”

  “And get your head chopped off?”

  “Better than getting it bitten off.” He felt his head with a grimace. “The teeth on those things, never saw anything like them.”

  I shuddered. “I’ve now seen enough of them to last me three lifetimes.”

  His dark-pink lips spread in a dazzling grin before the cut on his bottom one reopened. He caught it in his teeth with a wince, licking it soothingly, before smirking. “So—what do you think? Am I what you expected?”

  “I’m not sure what I was expecting. But it definitely wasn’t you being a fairy.”

  He touched the tip of his ear, huffing in tired amusement. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m half-human.”

  That explained my earlier observation, of him looking the best of both worlds. Also why he had freckles, like my Arborean blood making me susceptible to sunburns. “Which half is fairy?”

  “My mother.”

  Like Bonnie, then. How common was it for human men to marry fairy women? And was it of their own free will, or were they influenced by their magic?

  “What’s with the face?”

  “What face?”

  He wrinkled his nose and curled down his mouth. “You look like you just smelled rotten food, a foreign experience to someone like you. Then again, where did a castle-bred courtier see flesh-eating demons?”

  “I…um.” I grappled for a good lie, but found none.

  Ghouls were native to hot, sandy lands only, dwelling underground away from the scorching sun, digging tunnels to reach burial grounds, and feasting on the rotting flesh of the dead. But, as I knew all too well, they wouldn’t turn down fresh meat.

  I’d already told him my mother was a foreigner, but if I mentioned I’d seen them in Cahraman that would be another dot for him to connect…

  “Running out of lies, huh?”

  If I could sweat, my scalp would be drenched now. “Lies? What did I lie about?”

  “Do you prefer omitting the truth? About what you were doing in that tower, about why a fairy queen of all people cursed you, and what you need with King Theseus now?” He counted on his fingers, their tips white with callouses. Bowstring scars. “Not to mention, about your identity?”

  “Like you’re not?”

  “Who I was doesn’t matter anymore, so, no, I’m not. As of five years ago, I am no one else but Robin Hood.”

  “So who do you think I really am—a peasant playing at being highborn?”

  “Actually, I think it’s the other way around.”

  “I never said I was a commoner.”

  “But you’re not the Minister of Agriculture’s daughter either, because I’ve met Lord Weatherly, and he’s a pasty redhead.”

  “And his red hair discredits me as his daughter, how?”

  “It does, because I also know his wife, whose fa
ther was a landed knight, and definitely not foreign. Your foreign blood is as plain as the ears on my head.”

  Offense sprayed in my chest like the corrosive venom of a desert lizard. “That is in no way comparable!”

  “How so? We’re both the products of mixed-marriages.”

  I couldn’t hold back the infuriated squawk. “My parents may be from different lands, but they’re both human. That is not the same as you being a…”

  I trailed off, holding my tongue in time.

  One brow rose challengingly. “Finish that sentence.”

  I shook my head.

  “Finish it. Tell me—what am I?”

  Affront dissipated under a flood of mortification, as I remembered Leander’s arguments with our mother about Bonnie. She’d called her a half-breed, and willfully equated her to the genies and fairies she hated, not to mention the witches that murdered her own mother. She completely disregarded that Bonnie had saved her firstborn, and the dozens who were subjected to his curse.

  This kind of indiscriminating prejudice was what had made the Spring Queen curse us in the first place. Whatever terrible experience Mother had had with magical beings, and whether they’d been totally in the wrong as she’d always claimed, she’d ignored her job as queen, of being political and pragmatic. She’d burned any goodwill the queen had had left for Father, the man who’d jilted her, calling Queen Etheline a monster, and threatening her with iron in front of hundreds of guests. It had made Etheline do monstrous things in retaliation.

  And I was here to fulfill the deal my mother had rejected, to free myself by marrying a fairy royal, as Queen Etheline had initially demanded in return for peace.

  But whatever I felt towards fairies, and how they might still end up damning me to a fate worse than death, it wasn’t Robin’s fault that his mother was one. Just like it wasn’t my fault Zomoroda Shamash was mine.

  “Let’s hear you say it, Briar.”

  I shook my head again. “I’m so wound up and stressed, I almost took my anger at fairies out on you, and it’s not fair—especially when I came here to thank you for saving Agnë’s life, at the risk of your own—so, thank you.”

  Robin bowed his head, seeming to accept my apology or thanks, or both.

  And I blurted out, “Why did you do that?”

  He blinked at me. “Do what?”

  “Throw yourself into the ghouls’ midst?”

  He seemed even more perplexed. “Because if I hadn’t, your friend would be being digested in a dozen separate stomachs as we speak.”

  “Why put yourself at risk of the same fate, then?”

  “Briar, I fought on the frontlines, then spent years courting the ire of powerful men by disrupting their corruption. I’m used to being in danger. And I came to this place to rescue a girl taken by beasts. It would be contrary to everything I stand for if I didn’t try to rescue anyone in similar danger.”

  “You’re quite honorable for an outlaw.”

  “Dealing with dishonor is what made me an outlaw. I see injustice that everyone turns a blind eye to, and I deal with it myself, even if I get a price on my head for it.”

  I bit my lip, trying to imagine what it must have been like for him. “That’s a miserable, thankless existence to choose.”

  He smiled, and winced again, licking his own lip. “It’s not, if I’m lessening the misery around me. And it would be thankless if I had no impact. The good results are thanks enough.”

  He’d said something to the same effect before. Words worthy of chivalric oaths, of men worth following into battle, and being immortalized in song. Ideals I hadn’t expected Robin Hood of all people to spout.

  I hadn’t believed them when he’d first said them. But now, after I’d seen the evidence of his chivalry with my own eyes?

  “You would have made a great knight,” I murmured.

  He exhaled. “That was the dream before it all fell apart. My father was a knight in his youth.”

  “You can still achieve it, once this is all over and done with.” If I returned to Arbore whole, I would see to it that my father absolved whatever charges my uncle made against Robin, and knighted him. “Saving Agnë alone would be worth acknowledgement from the king.”

  He sagged back. “I didn’t do it expecting acknowledgement. And I would have done it even if I was certain I would die.”

  “But why?”

  He let out a weary chuckle. “Because I can’t help myself. Ever since the first time I helped someone, I haven’t been able to stop.”

  “You’re compelled to help? Is that some sort of curse?”

  That busted a harsh laugh out of him, before he stopped as abruptly, touching his bandaged side with a hiss. “Don’t make me laugh. The healers said to let their magic set till tomorrow.” He shook his head as he relaxed back. “You sound like Will. He likes to help in general, but thinks I have a problem. But my only problem is that I don’t pick and choose what’s worth my intervention. Whenever I see someone who can’t help themselves, I have to do something.”

  “Even if it kills you?”

  “It hasn’t yet.”

  “But it so easily can! If not for the fairy healers, it might have this time!”

  “Briar, if I don’t do it, no one else will. And I can’t live with knowing that something preventable had come to pass, just because I didn’t stop it.”

  He’d also said something similar before, and I’d waved it off as a criminal justifying his wrongdoing, or trying to convince himself he was good. But seeing his face now, he was genuine. He felt an inordinate amount of responsibility towards the common man, something not even my father felt that passionately, and he was the nominal Father of the Realm.

  “So that’s why you took me with you? Not for any gift of gratitude from my influential father, or pardon I can negotiate for you?”

  “I don’t need a pardon,” he dismissed. “I did nothing wrong.”

  “The law says you did.”

  “Being against the law is not synonymous with being evil,” he said, a fervent note entering his melodic voice. “Lots of laws are unjust to begin with, or easily exploitable by people with bad intentions. The law did nothing while people’s rights were trampled upon, while due process and judiciary courts were bypassed, and summary judgements and sentences were passed by Prince Jon and his lackeys. It proved it wasn’t worthy of being followed.”

  This was far more intellectual and reasoned than I could have expected him to be. But then it was clear by now everything I’d heard of Robin Hood had been greatly misinterpreted and misreported.

  “Sounds like you want to quit being a green bandit, and go into law reform.”

  “Just the ones involved with ‘internal affairs.’ But I can’t, so I have no choice but to act outside them.” He flashed me a smug grin. “And I prefer ‘verdant vigilante.’ ”

  A laugh escaped me, and I rushed to cover my mouth. “Alliterative. Alan should add it to one of his songs.”

  “He’s made enough ballads about my escapades. At this point, they can fill a book.”

  “Could they be condensed into a play?” I suggested, excited by the idea. I’d often fantasized about adapting the larger-than-life events in my family’s lives, and now my own, to the stage, even knowing it would never come to pass. But with ballads already written about him, and his exploits and character having all the hallmarks of great entertainment, it wasn’t so impossible in his case. “The Verdant Vigilante would be quite popular as either an opera or a play.”

  “How about they meet in a middle ground and become a musical?”

  “A musical?”

  “Never heard of musical theater?” I shook my head, and he sat up, looking more animated. “It’s a new art form we saw in towns along the frontline. Halfway between a play and an opera, with the singing being less about vocal acrobatics and more about memorable tunes and lyrics. And, well, more about understanding what you hear, rather than being assaulted by singers competing over who could
be the loudest.”

  To be fair, loudness served a purpose when theaters weren’t built to prioritize acoustics. Now, it had become a pointless, competitive requirement that I resented.

  “How come I’ve never heard of musical theater?”

  “Probably because it was made for those who can’t afford opera houses. It’s the natural evolution of folk songs and ballads.”

  I sighed dreamily. “I’d love to find out what those musicals are like. As much as tainting traditions is reviled in my circles, some change does turn out to be for the better.”

  Like how much easier it had been for me to move around without a hoop-skirt and a corset after my return from Cahraman. Mother had informed me she’d heard that people were mocking me for wearing “fancy undergarments” or “scullery maid” fashion. I hadn’t cared. Opulence and propriety had nearly gotten me killed in Mount Alborz. And I hadn’t wanted to spend what could be my last days suffocating in their confines. Good thing, too. If I’d been in one of those contraptions when I slept, my spirit would be wading in one now.

  Robin grinned. “See? Now you agree with my methods.”

  “I wouldn’t say I agree with your thieving, just that your heart appears to be in the right place. But there are better ways to go about reform.”

  “Ways that are out of my reach.” He mimed grabbing at thin air, before sitting back with a sigh. “Then again, most things are.”

  “Is that the reason behind your love of projectile weaponry?”

  His eyebrows shot up, before he grinned. “It just might be. It’s also a good way to avoid being stabbed in sword fights, and scare opponents from a safe distance.”

  “What an ironic strategy. You use arrows to avoid being stabbed, but you throw yourself where you can get your head literally bitten off.”

  “And this is precisely why my army captain made me a marksman and not a strategist.”

  “Apart from that notable incident, from what I’ve seen so far, there’s nothing wrong with your strategies.”

  He seemed surprised, and pleased, at my commendation. “My plans are not always the best, but they do eventually hit their mark.” His grin melted into a frown. “Which might explain my inadvisable compulsion to help everyone, no matter how detrimental to other goals it is.”