“I don’t drink,” she said finally.
Robin’s grin widened and he lifted the cask. His muscles bunched, flexing as though the cask had weight to it, but there was no strain on his face to suggest he found it heavy. Perhaps it was empty, or only partially full. As Marian watched, he unscrewed the spigot, leaving a small hole in the wood. The scent of wine grew stronger and Robin shook the barrel with two hard jerks.
Something tumbled out of the cask—not a liquid, but…
Marian’s jaw dropped as what had appeared as no more than a small wadded up rag grew into a creature the size of a small child. It tumbled to the grass, a floppy brown hat falling over its eyes and hiding most of its face. Its clothes were brown, wet in spots and reeking of the wine that must have filled the cask at some point. Before Marian could react, the creature jerked into a sitting position and a flow of the most foul language she’d ever heard poured from its lips.
“This is Collin,” Robin informed her, speaking loudly to be heard over the creature’s swearing. “He’s a cluricaune.” He dropped the cask and wagged a finger at the cluricaune. “He’s been quite naughty, taking up lodging in the homes of those too poor to afford his rather gluttonous appetites. Not to mention the poor maids have had enough beatings to keep them limping for a year thanks to their inability to live up to his unreasonably high standards.” His attention slid back to Marian, a spark of mischief in his eyes. “I thought perhaps it might give him a bit of perspective if he found out what it was like to face judgment on his own.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong!” the cluricaune bellowed.
He shot to his feet only to lurch to the side and flail about before keeling over. The scent of wine wafted off of him in a fog thick enough to choke a horse and Marian clapped her free hand over her mouth and scurried back a few paces.
Robin flowed to her side, his limbs all sinewy, serpentine grace. He leaned closer to speak with his mouth only a few inches from her ear. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s drunk, yes, but he’s got a much stronger constitution than he’s pretending. He’ll be off like a shot if you take your eyes off him.” He winked at the cluricaune. “Not that it’ll do you any good. She’s faster than she looks too.”
The fumes from the booze-infused fey made Marian’s eyes water, and she wasn’t convinced it wasn’t affecting her brain as well. It had to be. Robin couldn’t possibly be so stupid, so completely oblivious to reality, that he’d actually brought the cluricaune to their meeting tonight like some sort of fox to be cast off in one of those mockeries of a hunt the richer members of the county liked to put on. Her temper flickered inside her, but she tamped it down, drew in deep breaths through her nose, remembered the pungent fey, and breathed through her mouth instead.
“I am here as I agreed to be,” she said, her voice thickened by her attempts not to breathe in through her nose. “Whatever you intend for me to help with, let’s be getting on with it. I’ve no time for games.”
The bear shifter—Little John, Robin had called him—glanced at Robin and there was some sort of warning in his eyes. Robin ignored him and gestured at the cluricaune.
“This is what I intend for you to help me with. Collin here has been eating the Flannerys out of house and home and drinking most of the wine merchant’s profits. They’ve been trying to oust him for years, but he keeps coming back, always manages to tag along even when they moved across the county eight months ago.” He looked at her and there was an eager light in his eyes, a thick expectation in his voice. “It’s time he was punished—just like those men from last night.”
Her voice abandoned her, burnt away by the surge of fury that exploded like an inferno from that one spark of temper she’d tried so hard to smother. Her mouth opened and closed, the words swirling in her brain, trying to find a way out. The spriggan—Will—slowly sat up, rose to crouch on the balls of his feet. His amber eyes flickered with interest, and tension wove through his muscles as he seemed to sense the change in her.
Attention narrowed on Marian, Little John’s fingers curled and uncurled, the muscles in his legs flexing as he shifted from side to side, finding his balance, staying loose in preparation for a leap.
Only Robin was oblivious. The archer was fairly bouncing in place, eager for the hunt he’d obviously been expecting. With a wheeze and a slight choking sound, Marian’s voice finally escaped.
“You listen to me, you man-sized child. I am not here for your amusement. I am not here to prance about the county while you stare at me like a wolf watching a fifty pound rabbit, trying to figure out what ‘secret’ that insufferable witch was referring to.”
Some of the amusement leaked away from Robin’s face, his brows dipping slightly as if confused. She took a trembling step toward him and only sheer force of will kept her from braining him with her precious bow. The cluricaune lay on the ground, very still as if even in his drunken state, he knew it would be best to go unnoticed. Will swayed slightly in his crouch, a strange smile plucking at the corners of his mouth. Little John took another uneasy step closer to Robin too, though his eyes remained rooted on Marian.
“You and all your talk about the poor, about what a hero you are to them, how you’ve dedicated your time to improving the quality of their lives while worthless nobles like me prance around contributing nothing to society. Well where are those noble intentions now? Gone, flown straight from your mind as soon as you sensed an opportunity to torment me instead, to feed your infuriating need for amusement. Your own entertainment is more important to you than helping anyone.”
“Why does everyone think those two things are mutually exclusive?” Robin muttered. His voice was harder now, bitter with no hint of the amusement that had soaked his features a moment before. He crossed his arms and faced Marian down, daringly dismissive of the threat she posed in her riled state. “What is this obsession you have with misery?”
“I am not obsessed with you.”
He blinked, then his eyes narrowed. “Well that wasn’t very nice.” He drummed his fingers against his biceps, studying her as if he’d never seen her before. “I don’t understand you. I’m giving you a chance to have fun and do something good for people all in one go. You act like I’ve cast ink on your best dress just to see the pretty patterns.”
“You didn’t bring that thing here to do good for the Flannerys, you brought him here to make me chase him down in some pathetic attempt to reveal this other nature you’re so certain I have.”
“Oh, I’m the pathetic one?” Robin’s mouth flattened into a cold line. “Am I the one hiding from who—and what—I really am? Am I the one who feels guilt for every moment of pleasure, who thinks I can’t possibly be doing something productive, something beneficial to others, if I’m also enjoying myself? Is misery the only way to be a valued member of society? Is that the lesson you gleaned from your foster parents?”
Pain spiked through Marian’s heart and she poured more anger onto the wound, cauterizing it. “Don’t you dare speak of them. Don’t you ever speak of them again.”
“Did they only love you when you were in the fields, only love you when you pretended to be human? Is that it? Is that why misery is tied so permanently to love for you? Why you treat it like a disease and run away from anyone who shows the slightest interest in you as a person?”
Little John paused, his bulk hesitating before taking a slow and deliberate step back. He jabbed a thick finger at Will then pointed behind him to the shadows of the forest. Will flicked his gaze over Robin and Marian, hesitating for only a second before rising to his feet and slinking off after the retreating shifter. The cluricaune was gone, vanished as if he’d never been there.
Marian was aware of all of that, saw it from her peripheral vision, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered but the boiling brew of emotions in her stomach, rising like bile to coat her mouth and burn the back of her eyes. Robin closed the space between them, stood so close a hard breath would have brought their bodies together. “Let me
in, Marian. Let me show you what it’s like to be valued for who you are, celebrated for what you are. If you would just let me, I could show you how to be happy.”
He reached up to draw the back of his fingers across her cheek, something similar to pity coloring his eyes.
The cauldron boiled over.
Chapter Fourteen
She’s…running.
The crimson of Marian’s dress flew like a sail behind her, darkened by the dim moonlight into a bloody shadow as she bolted into the forest. His cheek itched, as if his skin itself were confused, wondering at the absence of the slap he’d felt coming. That was her trademark, wasn’t it? Violence in response to emotional spikes? That’s what it had always meant before when her eyes darkened like that, when her face pinched with the emotions she seemed so averse to.
But she didn’t hit me. She ran.
It was a change, a deviation—a clue. And yet the excitement such a tidbit should have brought was absent. Unease rolled in Robin’s stomach on an oily tide. He was moving before he’d made the conscious decision to go after her. He let his senses spread, the awareness that was his heritage as sidhe guiding him through the tree trunks, over gnarled roots, around sprawling limbs. The energy of the forest pressed closer, buzzed against his skin, invigorated his muscles, soothed aches he hadn’t been aware he had. He ran faster, leaning forward as he searched for signs of his quarry.
A cacophony of snapping wood ahead of him drew his brows together. She was crashing through the brush like an injured boar. This was not the woman he’d seen last night, the one who had exhibited such grace, who had flowed through the forest with all the silence of a shadow, all the confidence of a sidhe.
“I broke her,” he murmured.
“You might have,” a deep voice agreed.
Robin didn’t bother to look at Little John as the shifter fell into pace beside him. The bear of a man didn’t share Robin’s sidhe heritage, but he knew these woods like no one else, and his ursine muscles made up for in power what they might have lacked in agility. In a flat race, Robin would have left him far behind, but here in the forest, the shifter easily kept pace.
“I just wanted to see her in action. I was so close last night—she was so close.” He clenched his hands into fists, frustration pulling his muscles taut. “I thought if I could recreate the circumstances…”
They leapt together over a particularly thick tree trunk, the wood turned to brittle black by the lightning that had felled it. Ahead, a flock of birds erupted from their perches, screaming in indignation as Marian barreled through their hiding place. He and Little John veered in that direction.
“You dug deep, but what you found wasn’t a creature, it was a woman,” Little John observed.
Robin didn’t take his eyes from Marian, nor slow down to commit to a longer conversation. She was still running, with no sign of slowing down. Her shape was a dark blur, only glimpsed here and there through the spindly trunks of rowans and the sprawling limbs of willows. Frustration plucked at Robin’s nerves. He needed to see her face, her wonderfully expressive face.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Robin spared Little John a half-smile. “I always know what I’m doing.”
His voice fell flat even to his own ears. He looked away quickly, not wanting to see Little John’s stern features tighten with an expression that screamed “I told you so.”
Leaves rustled as if something heavy had disturbed them. “She’s heading toward the encampment.” Will’s voice came from somewhere above them, falling on them like a handful of rotting walnuts. He flickered into sight several yards ahead and fell into pace beside them as they passed. “And she’s upset.”
“That encampment will be occupied,” Little John growled. “I saw five hunters headed there two nights ago, they’ll still be there. We can’t let her rampage through them in the state she’s in.” His voice was finally strained with the effort of speaking under physical exertion, but his disapproval came through loud and clear. He gave Robin a dark look, thick brown eyebrows meeting on his forehead. “Especially when we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“We’ll head her off. Will, get ahead of her, try to divert her path. Little John go right. I’ll go left.”
Will vanished abruptly, falling through a pool of shadows as if it were a giant gopher hole. He popped up again twenty paces ahead in another pool of shadows, the moonlight that reached him painting pale spots on his papery skin, highlighting the curl of his ears. He fell into pace with them again. “Can’t you just glamour something ahead of her? Make her think there’s something in her way to herd her back this direction?”
“Everyone’s an expert,” Robin muttered.
He slowed, unable to carry on the conversation anymore without a decent breath. Will and Little John stopped with him, the bear shifter’s massive chest rising and falling with labored breaths while the spriggan was scarcely winded.
“No, I can’t. She’s too emotional right now, she’s running blind. I doubt she’s aware of where she’s going, where she is. She’s not paying attention enough for a glamour to take hold. I could make her see something, but her other senses are too sharp, they wouldn’t be fooled without her mind to convince them.”
“So you want me to put myself in front of a we-don’t-know-what, who’s too emotional to think straight?” Will grinned, eyes shining with a not-quite-sane sheen. “Sounds like fun.”
“Well, be quick about it then.” Little John swiped out a paw-sized hand and cuffed the back of Will's head.
The spriggan squeaked out a laugh and leapt headfirst into a fresh puddle of shadows, bare feet kicking out before vanishing into the darkness. Robin and Little John stood motionless, both of them listening for Marian’s reaction. There was a sound somewhere between a shriek and a snarl and Robin’s heart skipped a beat. Will’s cackle echoed into the night, but cut off abruptly after only a few seconds. Robin and Little John shared a glance. The crashing sounds of someone fleeing through the woods continued, thankfully moving away from the hunting cabins.
Little John shook his head as they both began running again, slower than before, each scanning their surroundings, watching the shadows for some sign of their friend.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Robin said aloud, more for himself than for Little John.
The shifter didn’t respond, just ran faster, branching off to the right to intercept Marian.
Robin went left, relieved when he heard the chaos of Marian’s rampage go the same direction. He poured on a burst of speed, following a flash of a white blouse, lit up by a shaft of moonlight. He broke through a thick copse of trees just as Marian was darting through a small clearing. She passed him and he caught a glimpse of her face.
Shock seized his muscles, almost sent him sprawling headfirst into the rotting arms of an old cypress.
Her eyes were glowing red. Not a candy red, or a Yuletide crimson, but the kind of red you only found in the embers of a great bonfire, the kind of red that blackened your skin just to look at it. She was hunched forward slightly as if her center of balance had shifted, but no matter how hard he looked, he could see no other change in her form beyond her eyes. Her red hair flowed down her back, moving about her like bloody froth against a ship sailing through murderous waters.
Deadly beauty.
“We have to stop her.”
Little John’s voice broke into Robin’s reverie, shattering his concentration. He stumbled, his foot catching against the root of a tree, and only Little John’s grip on the back of his vest kept him from sprawling onto the forest floor. The pressure of the vest against his chest squeezed more air from his lungs and he gasped, lungs straining to recover. The shifter slowed to a stop, holding Robin as if he weighed nothing.
When he’d recovered his balance and what was left of his dignity, Robin scanned the forest, searching for a flash of the huntress. Red flickered between the dark tree trunks and he tensed, ready to take off after her again
. A large hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“She’s running in circles. Wait, she’ll come back around.”
Robin raised his eyebrows. Little John was right. Now that he listened, he could hear the path Marian was taking. She was running in circles—or rather, a spiral. She seemed to be getting farther and farther with every lap, but she was most definitely circling back around. A voice in his head whispered something too quietly for him to hear, leaving him with the nagging sensation that he was missing something that was right in front of his face.
“Eventually she’s going to run into someone. These woods aren’t abandoned, Robin, there’s more than just the hunting lodges. There’s a road not far from here, a path that—”
“I know these woods too, Little John.” Annoyance sharpened his tone more than he’d intended, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to apologize. He was feeling a rather troubling urge to defend Marian. And an even more troubling suspicion that somehow he’d set in motion events that were now well out of his control. I didn’t make her run. I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. “We don’t know that she’s dangerous right now.”
“So it’s just me she takes offense to then?”
Robin and Little John both looked up at the sound of Will’s voice to find the spriggan crouching on a thick branch above them. It was too dark in the boughs to make out much more than his glowing yellow eyes and the faint white outline of his teeth through parted lips. He gave a bounce on the limb he was standing on, a high pitched giggle preceding a leap from his perch. He landed on the ground with his legs bowed out like a frog, his face tilted up to catch the moonlight. Little John hissed.
The left side of Will’s face was a red ruin. Four deep furrows ran from his hairline to his jaw, the open gashes lined with torn flaps of skin and oozing blackish red blood. The spriggan was still grinning, a sharp curve splitting his face from ear to ear with rows of jagged white teeth stained pink with his own blood.
The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) Page 15
