She’d taken two steps away before he recovered his senses enough to speak. “Don’t leave me.”
The shine in her eyes wavered, tears that threatened but didn’t fall. “I will try very hard not to.”
Desperation swelled inside him, shoved him forward. Only Little John’s large hand on his arm held him back, kept him from grabbing Marian, holding on to her as if he could shield her from the fate he knew was coming. “You don’t understand. Please, go back to the glen, wait there, hide there. Little John will take you. Please, there’s something in the woods. I can feel—”
“Not something. Someone. I know.”
Robin thrust himself forward, but Little John tightened his grip, held him in place. “Who? Who is it?”
Marian didn’t look away from his face, but her body grew still. That wonderfully expressive face told him that whoever was waiting for her, that person frightened her. And that scared him even more.
“I will tell you if you promise not to follow after the tournament. If you promise me you will run far away from here. If I can, I will find you when it’s over.”
Robin shook his head, anger chasing away the fear and the lingering pleasure of her kiss, of his vision. “I will never run from you again.”
A tiny smile curled the corner of her mouth, but was gone before it could spread. “If you love me, sionnach beag, you will run.”
Sionnach beag. Little fox. Robin’s knees trembled and suddenly Little John was supporting his weight, that hand on his arm the only solid thing in the world. Marian turned away, took her place in line without looking back. Robin stared after her. That same cobweb feeling of being watched slid over his skin and he turned.
The sheriff was watching him.
And he was still smiling.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Marian tightened her fingers on the arrow, stared down the shaft at the target thirty yards away. The bright white circles of the bullseye blurred and danced before her, mocking her. Beads of moisture collected on the nape of her neck as she drew a shaky breath, let it out slowly, and released the arrow.
The arrow split the line that separated the bullseye from the next ring. A technical bullseye. Pathetic.
Pull yourself together, Marian.
She lowered the bow, sliding her thumb back and forth across the sleek wooden curve as she waited for the next archer to take his shot and cursed the nerves threatening to rattle her brains.
“The time to make your choice approaches.”
A choice. That’s what the witch had said. She was going to have a choice.
The skin on the back of her neck itched with the sensation of being watched. He was out there. Waiting. Without the spelled oil, she had no way to hide from him.
I will have a choice. I will have a choice.
You will be a slave.
The next archer’s shot cut through the voices in her head, forced her back to the present. Robin’s arrow whistled through the air, landed with a sharp thunk in the dead center of the bullseye. She pressed her lips together and stared at him, hoping her face was as expressive as he claimed it was. He jutted his chin out, a defiant light shining from his eyes.
“You’re going to sign the land over to me anyway,” she muttered under her breath. She wiped a sweat-soaked curl from her forehead, tried to regain her composure. “Why are you doing this?”
Robin looked down at his bow, pretended to study the upper curve where the string was fastened as if concerned about the tension. “I am giving you time to come to your senses and run away. I can glamour you, hide you so you can return to the glen. Will and Little John will go with you—”
“Your glamour cannot hide me anymore.” She spit the words, too busy trying not to fall apart to soften them with sentiment. “Not from who waits for me now.”
“It can. I am the best—”
“You cannot hide me from him.”
Robin froze, green eyes sliding up, away from the arrow to fix on her with a skin-tingling intensity. “Him?”
Marian drew another arrow, using it as an excuse to look away. She ran a finger over the grey feathers, tracing the black lines that cut across them in horizontal stripes. The green-eyed monster was snacking on the green-eyed sidhe and to her ever-lasting horror, there was a small part of her that was pleased by that. A very small part. The part that even now was basking in the afterglow of their last kiss, already planning the next one.
The next one won’t happen if he dies. If that dream comes true. Or if the witch was wrong.
She shook herself, planting her feet more firmly and nocking the arrow in her bow. “Damn your eyes, just listen to me. I will explain everything—everything—to you later, but you have to leave now.”
“Explain everything to me now.” His voice dropped, tightened until he could have strung a bow with it. “Who is he?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him. The spell was broken, speaking of it now wouldn’t do any more harm.
To her.
But if she told him who waited for her, or even what she was, that would mean putting his life in danger. It would mean if something went wrong, if the witch had been wrong about her having a choice, then Robin would come for her and he would more than likely die in the process.
“Robin, don’t do this. Please, I’m…I’m begging you. Trust me. Let me do this, just give me until sundown. Go back to the glen until I can return to you.”
“If you can return to me.”
Lie to him, lie to him, promise you’ll be there, swear it! She swallowed hard. “Yes. If.”
He drew another arrow from his quiver, turned his gaze to study the bullseye. “I am staying until you can promise me that ‘if’ is a ‘when.’ Until I know who this man is that you must see without me.”
“Do you think I don’t want to promise you that?” She gripped the bow so hard her knuckles turned white. “I am doing what I have to do so I can come back to you. Don’t you understand that?”
Suddenly he was in front of her. His bow and arrow lay on the ground, and his hands were wrapped so tightly around her biceps that she dropped her own bow to lie next to his, too shocked to recover her grip.
“Tell me you love me.”
Her jaw fell open. She would have dismissed it for a joke, an ill-timed jest. But there was nothing teasing in his green eyes, nothing light-hearted about the way his fingers dug into her flesh, desperation vibrating in every tremble of his hands.
“Robin, this is not the time—”
“Tell me you love me, or I will glue myself to your side. I will stay so close to you that my own mother would think we are one creature. Let your mysterious man meet you with me on your arm, allow me to dazzle him with the charm that won you over.”
“You can’t do that,” Marian sputtered. Her cheeks grew warm and she tried to look away, but something in his eyes stopped her. There was something there that she had never seen in him before, never thought she would ever see.
Vulnerability.
“Tell me you love me, you horrible, horrible liar. Let me look at that expressive face when you say it so I can see the truth of it for myself.” He dragged her closer, pressed her body against his until his heart beat against her chest, blending with her own racing pulse. “Tell me you love me, Marian.”
Her heart swelled as if trying to reach through her chest to merge with the heartbeat thudding against her breast. If the witch was wrong, or if some force beyond her control determined that this would be her last day of freedom, if her nightmares came to pass, she wanted this moment. She would have this moment. “I love you.”
He pulled her closer, so close that every seam of his vest imprinted itself on her skin even through her dress. “Make me believe you.”
She turned her head, the heat in her cheeks rising faster. “Robin—”
“I am not leaving until I’m sure. Until I know that you won’t leave me for this other man, until I am absolutely certain that you will do everything in your power
to come back to me.”
Marian’s skin crawled with the painful awareness that they were not alone. Half the archers had already been eliminated, but at least a hundred people still remained, still milled about the sidelines or stood in crooked lines behind the targets awaiting their turn. Robin was making a scene, giving them something to watch while they waited, and he didn’t seem to care. Didn’t care who saw, didn’t care about anything beyond his desire, beyond being true to himself.
And wasn’t that just like him?
A dam burst in her mind to release a torrent of emotions she’d intended to feel only after her freedom was assured. A strangled sob scratched her throat and she let her head drop, buried her face in Robin’s chest. He released her arms, held her close, one hand trailing up and down her back, pressing hard as if memorizing every bump in her spine.
When she spoke her voice was muffled, but strong. “I love you because you will never be less than yourself. You will never settle for a life you don’t want, you will never stop seeking happiness, excitement. I love you because when I’m with you, the world is a sea of possibilities, a thousand chances to be happy. I love you because you live by your own rules, and you have set higher standards for yourself than many others would have set for you. Because you do only what makes you happy, and yet what you do brings so much happiness to others. I love you because…because I can no longer imagine my life without you.”
It wasn’t a pretty speech by any means. There was nothing poetic in it, and she felt more like she had rambled and repeated herself until she made no sense at all. And she had no idea if she’d said the right things, only that she’d meant what she said.
Robin pressed his lips to her hair. The scent of saltwater tickled her nose and she blinked as she realized they were not her tears this time.
They were his.
She pulled back to look into his eyes, needing to see him to believe what her senses were telling her. He smiled, letting her look, not bothering to hide his tears. She followed one crystalline droplet as it slid down his cheek, dripped off the smooth line of his jaw.
“And I love you, Marian.” He stroked her hair back from her face, cupped her face in his hands. “I love you for your ferocity, your hunger for life. I love you because you’ve carried so much pain for so long, but it hasn’t poisoned you as it would have so many others. Because the more I’m with you, the more I see of the real you. And the more I realize that I don’t ever want to let you go.”
He leaned down and kissed her then, a sweet, long, slow kiss that left her head reeling and her skin buzzing with an energy that made her feel as though she could fly.
Then he was gone.
Something wrenched at her guts, as though someone had tied a string inside her and attached it to Robin. It threatened to pull her insides from her body, trail them after him like so much meat. Her knees wobbled and she knelt on the ground, groping for her bow and arrow, grateful for something to concentrate on, a reason to hide her face from the stares of shocked onlookers.
Robin’s bow was gone. He’d had time to pick it up before he left. Had he really moved that fast? Had he used glamour to hide his retreat? Or had that final kiss, that final confession, so addled her brain that she had just remained clouded in some sort of limbo, oblivious to his leaving?
“Lady Marian?”
The man’s voice was cautious, the tone of a man who knew how dangerous it could be to startle a woman with a bow and arrow in her hands. Especially when that woman was currently trying to win back the land she was in jeopardy of losing because she’d killed a man with said bow. She let out a breath and forced herself to stand, to look at her surroundings.
No one was staring at her.
She blinked. The man who had spoken smiled at her and she recognized him as Tom, the town’s blacksmith. Lines spread from the corners of his eyes, the creases deep from years of greeting anyone who came to his shop with the same warm smile. His thick black beard moved with the expression and he scratched under his chin as he gestured at the target with his head.
“It’s your turn, Lady Marian.”
“Thank you.” It sounded more like a question than a statement, the breathy quality of her voice reminding everyone in earshot of the kiss responsible for said breathiness. But again, no one was staring at her, no one was watching.
“Good luck,” Tom whispered.
Marian’s eyebrows rose as he stepped behind her and she realized he was holding a bow and arrow too. He was a contestant. And he was wishing her good luck.
“Thank you,” she said dumbly.
Yes, very poetic, Marian, good show. Now just shoot the arrow before you embarrass yourself any further.
The rest of the archery contest passed in a blur. After every shot she took, she turned, expecting to find Robin once again at her side, once again staring at her with those glittering green eyes and that cursed smile that promised everything would be all right even when he knew full well it wasn’t true. She missed that smile.
And every time she looked, all her questing eyes found was the sheriff.
The dark-haired man stood at the edge of the meadow next to the tree on which he’d posted his wretched proclamation offering up her home as the prize. Whenever he noticed her looking at him, the corner of his mouth would rise and he would salute her with a rolled up piece of parchment clutched in his fist.
The deed to her land.
“It will be mine soon enough,” she muttered under her breath. Her latest arrow flew straight and true, hitting the bullseye with a satisfying thunk. She started to nod her satisfaction, but something tickled at the back of her mind. She’d been doing very well—far better than anyone else—sans Robin who had now disappeared. Finishing the tournament was a mere technicality at this point.
So why was the sheriff so happy?
She looked at him again, not bothering with subtlety—they were far beyond that, surely. The sheriff saluted her again, but this time she ignored his smile, ignored the parchment in his grasp, the notice by his side. This time she looked at the sheriff himself.
His eyes were shining like wet obsidian, as if a fever had hold of him, his forehead glistening with sweat. What’s more, his stare lacked that unnerving, piercing quality she’d come to associate with him. He didn’t look at her as though he were reading her mind, seeing all the secrets she wanted to hide. In fact, he looked at her as though he didn’t recognize her at all. As if she were no more than faceless prey, a rabbit like any other rabbit in the eyes of a wolf. There was no focus in his stare, as if he weren’t seeing the present, but rather letting his mind wander to the future, or perhaps watching a fantasy play out in his imagination.
When an animal went feral, there was no predicting its behavior. And that made them more dangerous than teeth and claws combined. Marian knew the signs when she saw them, and her stomach bottomed out.
The sheriff was feral.
It doesn’t matter. He is not your problem, he could never be your problem. Not when he waits for you.
Even in her mind, she didn’t dare say his name, or think upon his face. If she allowed herself to truly dwell on what waited for her, she would lose her nerve. And she had to see this through.
I will have a choice. I will have a choice. I will have a choice.
By the time she loosed her final arrow, her nerves were one massive knot in her chest, tangling up her throat until she could barely draw breath. The cheers of her fellow contestants fell on dead ears, only the tiniest part of her brain registering the fact that they’d wanted her to win. That they’d supported her, recognized the injustice of the game and wanted her to get her land back. She shambled forward to claim her prize like a disoriented corpse stumbling from its grave. A fresh flood of confusion pulled her eyebrows together as a man with light brown hair and green eyes put the deed to her home in her open palm.
“You aren’t the sheriff.”
The man raised an eyebrow at her, but he was smiling. “No. He had to leave
to see to official business.”
Bile coated the back of her throat. Nothing could be more important to the sheriff than Robin. Thanks to her connection to him, she was a close second. Which meant that if the sheriff had left her…
A violent tremor seized her muscles, threatened to rattle her until her teeth shattered. She slammed the deed down on the small table, snatched up the quill that had been put there to add the winner’s name to the document, and quickly scratched out her signature, then a small note, then Ermentrude’s name. She spun around, searching the crowd. Ermentrude would be here. There’s no way the woman would have stayed away with her precious garden on the line.
There.
The gardener was seated on one of the few benches that had survived being swallowed by the reaching wild grass, chatting excitedly with a woman Marian thought she recognized as the baker. Ermentrude spotted Marian when she was roughly twenty feet away and a broad smile spread across her face. Then she got a good look at Marian’s face and the smile died.
“What’s wrong?”
Marian grabbed her hand, pressed the deed into her palm, noticing with a swell of bittersweet emotion the dirt permanently embedded under Ermentrude’s fingernails. She realized with a twist in her heart that she was going to miss her. A lot.
The gardener stared down at the parchment in her hand, blinking. Then her eyes widened and she looked up at Marian with her mouth hanging open. Speechless, for the first time in her life.
“No one cares as much for that land as you do.” Marian put her other hand over the deed, holding it in Ermentrude’s grip as the gardener tried to push it toward her, started to shake her head. “Please, Ermentrude. My parents would want you to have it.”
“No, they want you to have it.” Her eyes welled up with tears and she shook her head stubbornly. “Lady Marian, I couldn’t—”
Marian couldn’t help it. She threw her arms around the older woman, hugged her as tightly as her shaky muscles would allow. Ermentrude stood frozen for half a heartbeat, and then she was hugging her back, just as ferociously.
The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) Page 28
