The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3)

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done, everything you tried to do,” Marian whispered.

  “Lady Marian…”

  Ermentrude was crying, she could hear it in her voice. It was too much, too much emotion for her heart to process. She couldn’t bear anymore. Marian pivoted on her heel and bolted into the forest.

  It would have been nice if the tears in her eyes and the thickness in her throat over leaving Ermentrude would have stayed with her. If, as she ran toward what had been her greatest fear her entire life, her mind and heart had been fully occupied with the gardener who was somewhere behind her clinging to a piece of paper that would change her life forever. All that bittersweet emotion would have made a grand shield, a psychic armor of sorts.

  But the forest wiped it away. The first footstep past the rough trunks of cypress, the first glimpse of the glowing green moss-covered limbs of oaks, tore the thoughts of Ermentrude from her mind, flung them backward into the meadow. An icy chill slid down her spine, sending tendrils of frost out along her nerves, draining the warmth from her body and leaving her shivering as she crept forward with all the ferocious courage of a lame field mouse.

  His scent was everywhere. Musk, crushed greenery, and underneath it all, just a hint of blood. She had no conscious memories of him, had no reason to remember his scent so clearly, but she knew it was him. Would have known it was him even if she’d never been in his presence at all. He was woven into her spirit, a part of her.

  “Come.”

  The command fell on her like a rock cast into a still lake, sending a rush of emotions shooting up, a spray of images flooding through her. Joy, urgency, need. Images of running beasts, sharp weapons pointed into the darkness, screams of fright. Now she was no longer walking—she was running. Running toward him.

  Tears still welled in the corners of her eyes, but they were no longer for Ermentrude, no longer for a difficult goodbye. Her heart leapt into her throat and she ran faster, forcing her legs to work harder. He was here. She had to get to him.

  Everything would be all right.

  The curtain of leaves suddenly lifted, flinging Marian into a small clearing. The grass here was an almost perfect circle of cultivated green, surrounded by towering oaks, rowans, and cypress trees, all standing like wardens overlooking the small haven in the middle of the forest. A figure stood at the edge of the clearing opposite her, his back to the trees. Marian choked on a sound low in her throat, muscles tensing to fling herself to the ground at his side—

  Stop!

  Her arms and legs pin-wheeled, halting her forward momentum and dropping her to the grass in an undignified heap. The ground slammed into her side, bouncing her head off the packed earth. At least two of her arrows snapped inside her quiver, the jarring impact too much for their slender shafts. Dull pain throbbed in her shoulder and her head, but she forced herself to get up, to face the man who had called her so easily.

  Herne. Master of the Wild Hunt, King of the Sluagh. The greatest hunter man or fey had ever known.

  Her king.

  Her master.

  Herne stepped forward, the great antlers adorning his head brushing the leaves of the boughs that dipped low enough to touch him. Opaque black eyes stared at her, alien and unreadable. His skin was a smooth tan, with warmer tones that suggested he spent time in the sun despite his reputation for riding at night. His black hair was straight, dark slashes against the green of his cloak. He held no weapons in his hands, but there was a bow and arrow on his back, and a thick hunting knife sheathed at his side. The leather armor he wore didn’t make a sound as he moved and if Marian hadn’t been looking right at him, if she couldn’t smell him, she would never have known he was there.

  “Why do you stop? Come. Let me look at you.”

  His voice was deep, and she felt it more than heard it, a dull rumble in her bones. Marian dug her fingernails into her palms, the sharp pain a welcome distraction from the compulsion in his tone. His words drilled through her, down to a part of her she’d never acknowledged—didn’t want to acknowledge now. A part of her that wanted to run to him, let him welcome her home. A part that knew he was her home.

  “What do you want?” she bit out.

  Her voice shook so badly she wasn’t sure he’d understand a single word. The urge to draw her bow was nearly overwhelming, the desperation to have it in her hands, have some means of protecting herself, a maddening need. But drawing a weapon would not help her. Not now. Not against him. Better to let things proceed peacefully for as long as she could.

  Herne arched one slender black eyebrow. “What do I want?” He took another step, this one to the side. His head tilted as he studied her, took another step. Pacing around her in a mimicry of some sort of livestock inspection. “I want you, child. I want you to come home where you belong.”

  Marian’s fists trembled at her sides and she had to fight not to turn her head, to follow him as he took another step, still circling. “I am where I belong.”

  The great hunter passed out of her sight. She strained to listen, but he moved in complete silence. Not a rustle of grass, not a single disturbed leaf gave away his position. The perfect predator. The muscles in her neck ached with the need to turn, to look…

  “I have searched for you since the night I discovered you were missing.” His tone was light, conversational. Just a chat two friends might have over tea. “I was not aware that your mother had brought you with her to hunt that night. You were far too young for such things, and I’d expected her maternal instinct to be enough to keep her home with her babe.”

  A thread of anger warmed his voice. “Looking back, I should have known better. Your mother is a flighty thing, immature despite her years, unable to think of anything beyond her desire for the hunt. Still, when I learned that you had fallen off her back during the ride—that she’d left you behind instead of going back for you…”

  He stepped into her line of sight again and Marian’s eyes widened, her body pulling her back a step before she caught herself, stood her ground. Herne’s anger had changed him. It was subtle, not a flashing in his eyes, or a deepening in the lines of his face. It was more like the change one might experience after spotting a sleeping barguest, of creeping past the large predator, trying to get to safety, only to glance behind you to find the barguest has opened its eyes and is watching. She held her breath until Herne started moving again, resuming that maddening circle.

  “She was punished.”

  Marian had the vague thought that she should feel some emotion over that last statement, some fear for her mother, concern over what sort of punishment Herne had meted out. But she felt nothing. The woman who’d birthed her had never been her mother.

  Suddenly Herne stopped, angled his body to face her with only three feet separating them. His opaque black eyes were still unreadable, his face composed with too much care to give away his thoughts.

  “I have come so close to finding you over these past few decades. So many times I’ve caught your scent, followed it only to have it snatched away from me—wiped clean by a brush of magic. I could no more hold onto your scent than I could hold a breeze in my fist. I would find myself standing in the forest, lost, wondering what had drawn me there, all memory of you scrubbed from my consciousness.”

  His face hardened, frozen and cold as if a sudden touch of winter had turned him to ice. Marian’s breath froze in her lungs.

  “That does not happen. Not to me. Who cast that spell on you, and why?”

  Marian’s mouth opened and closed, but her words were trapped somewhere inside her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from that black-eyed gaze. A tiny voice inside her mewled for forgiveness, told her to fall to her knees, beg him to excuse her disobedience, to let her come back home. She clenched her teeth until a dull ache throbbed in her temples, forbidding herself to give in to the humiliating urge.

  “You must have felt the draw to return to me at some point. Why did you fight it? Why didn’t you break the spe
ll, come back to your rightful place in my court?”

  “I… I wanted a choice.”

  The sentence crawled from her throat, dragged itself forward by its fingernails. Herne tilted his head, his thick antlers cutting through the sunlight that soaked through the canopy, slashing the forest floor with shadows.

  “What do you mean ‘a choice?’”

  “I know what I am.” The words came more easily now, though her voice still had a thin, breathless quality that ground over her nerves. She dug her fingernails into her thighs, distracting her from the persistent urge to kneel. “I do not want to be an animal, ordered about and at your beck and call for all of my days. I want to choose my own life, my own path. Like any human.”

  The great hunter wrinkled his nose as if a foul smell had invaded the clearing. “Humans. You speak of them as if a life among them could compare in any way with what I offer you. It is no doubt the humans who raised you who instilled such fear in you, such disdain for your own people—for yourself.”

  He stepped forward, eating the distance between them, and Marian moved away, not wanting to be within arm’s reach.

  “Stay.”

  The command was barked at her, and that single word seized her body, held her immobile as surely as if he had grabbed her. Stomach acid washed against the back of her throat and she fought not to be sick over the display of control, the confirmation of what she had always feared, what she had spent her life running away from, hiding from.

  “Listen to me, girl. You are not a mere animal, a slave. You are a member of my court, and you would be treated with the utmost respect. You would have the same freedom there that you have now, the freedom to come and go, the freedom to shape your own life.”

  Again, she had the urge to fall down and beg forgiveness, to abase herself before her master and pray for his mercy. Her neck felt cold, and an image flared to life in her mind, an image of herself at Herne’s side, his large hand resting on the back of her neck, kneading the muscle there. He was not a cruel master. He would care for her. Marian’s knees grew weak, threatened to spill her to the ground. Had she been wrong? Had this lifetime of hiding been for nothing? Was the nightmare she’d imagined a lie?

  She pulled against the urge to kneel, grasping for a thread of thought that would distract her, help her remember why she had fought this, why she had to keep fighting this. “The stories I’ve heard of the Wild Hunt. Hunting down fugitives from the other courts at the behest of their queens, leaving a swath of chaos for the sake of chaos. What if I choose not to participate in such pursuits?”

  Herne blinked, his brows furrowed as if he had trouble processing the thought. “You do not know yourself overly well, it seems,” he said finally. “I believe you will find that once you are home, once you are encouraged to be who you are, you will participate with all due enthusiasm.”

  “Killing marks you… Too much killing will frighten away those who would do you good and attract those who will do you ill. In our line of work, it would be too easy to kill too many, too often and then…and then we wouldn’t be a force for good anymore.”

  Will’s words poured down her spine like liquid silver, hardened, helped her stand straighter. “And if I choose not to?” she pressed.

  A shadow fell over Herne’s face, darkening his skin, making the shine of his strange eyes stand out even more. “You are a member of my court. I am your king, and you are my soldier. I will not dictate the day to day details of your life, but when I command you to come, you will come, and when I give you an order, you will follow it.”

  “No. I won’t.” Every word that made it past her lips fed the strength growing inside her. The conviction. It didn’t matter what life waited for her in Herne’s court. She had the life she wanted. And she wasn’t leaving it behind. “For better or worse, I have found people here that need me. I have a purpose, something that will bring me joy and at the same time bring joy and great benefit to those around me.” She met his eyes, and this time, she stood straight, proud. “I have made my choice. I am staying here.”

  Herne stared at her as if she’d announced she was going to leap into the air, turn herself into a three-headed butterfly, and somersault over the horizon. Marian wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but the fact that Herne didn’t look angry fed the tiny flame of hope she’d thought was all but extinguished. She started to smile, her confidence blossoming.

  “This is about the sidhe, isn’t it?”

  Marian’s blood turned to ice, smile shattering and falling away from her lips. He knows about Robin.

  Herne rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Then the sheriff was not mistaken as I had hoped.” He let his hand fall and met Marian’s eyes, held them as if daring her to look away. “It was your little human sheriff who called me here. The wizard Casan was his intermediary, but I had the…unique experience of speaking with the man Mac Tyre.” He began pacing again, that slow, maddening circle around her, a wolf circling its prey. “He promised me a hunt, you know. A challenge such as I had never faced. A woman of mysterious heritage. I should have realized it was you.”

  He passed into her sight again, and he seemed larger somehow, more threatening. The antlers on top of his head loomed over her, making him seem much taller than his already considerable height. Or maybe she was shrinking.

  “He told me you were hidden by a sidhe’s unrivaled glamour. Robin Hood, I believe he called him.” A pained expression tightened the skin around his eyes. “It was futile of me to hope that he spoke of someone other than Robin Goodfellow. Gods know that sidhe is a pest I don’t need.”

  She swallowed back the whimper that tried to escape at the sound of Robin’s name on the hunter’s lips. Goddess, please, keep Robin from his path.

  “He told me of the relationship the two of you have developed these past few days. The good sheriff believes the sidhe has been quite a bad influence.” He faced her now with the stern, disapproving look of a father. “Robin Hood—Robin Goodfellow—is a self-involved brat whose mother should have taken him to task centuries ago. He is a very poor influence, and I don’t want you to have anything to do with him.”

  Marian tried to keep her emotions from her face, tried to school her features into what she imagined subservience must look like. Herne pressed his lips into a thin line and she knew she’d failed.

  “The sidhe is not like us, Marian. And do you know what the most important distinction is?”

  She couldn’t speak to answer, couldn’t even shake her head. Her mind was full of horrible, macabre images of Robin and what might happen to him if Herne turned his focus to the sidhe. If he willed it so, he could bring the entire Wild Hunt down on Robin Hood, on his friends. They wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Herne cupped her jaw in his hand, scratched under her chin. Marian wanted to bite him, wanted to scream at him to go away, to leave her alone. The fact that her body tried to tilt her head back, to give him better access to her throat, only infuriated her, bolstered her determination to give him nothing, to make him see that she would never be part of his court. Herne dropped his hand, but there was an anticipatory gleam in his eye that set off alarms in Marian’s head.

  “We are true predators, Marian. Robin Hood thinks himself a predator, thinks the rich and cruel of this kingdom are his prey, but there is a very big difference. A true predator knows that as soon as you let your prey steal all of your concentration, make you blind to everything else…you become the prey.”

  A shout punctuated his sentence. A man’s voice. A very familiar man’s voice. Horror blossomed in Marian’s chest, turning her ribs to icicles, stabbing at her lungs until it hurt to breathe.

  The sheriff appeared from behind one of the thick oak trees. The smile on his face had surpassed its previous intensity, painting his mouth in the broad sweeping lines of a jack o’ lantern. His eyes burned into her soul as he stared her down from behind the man he was using as a sort of human shield.

  Robin.

  The sidhe’s fa
ce was twisted with pain. The sheriff had his left arm bent behind his back, was using it as a handhold to force Robin forward. He took a hobbling step, his body arching up in an odd contortion that looked painful. The sheriff’s right hand hovered at Robin’s side and as Marian looked closer, her stomach rolled.

  The sheriff’s hand was covered in blood. Robin’s blood. It poured from a wound in his side in a crimson wash. There was something strapped to the sheriff’s hand, buried in Robin’s flesh. Marian raised her face, scented the air without thinking.

  Iron.

  He’d stabbed Robin with iron. The acrid scent of it scraped against her senses, added a sickening finality to the coppery perfume of Robin’s blood. Iron-inflicted wounds were immune to the enhanced healing of the fey. Robin would heal human slow. He wouldn’t bleed to death as quickly as a mortal, his fey healing would speed blood production even if it couldn’t heal the wound. But if the wound were serious enough…

  The muscles corded in her neck, rock hard knots under her skin. Her bow was in her hand, an arrow pulling the string taunt with a calming and familiar song. The sheriff’s face made a fine target, far bigger than she needed at this range.

  “Stay.”

  Herne’s voice cracked over her like a whip, banded around her like the unforgiving tentacles of some great beast. Her muscles locked into place, turning her to a statue ten feet away from Robin and the sheriff. She couldn’t release her arrow, couldn’t move at all. Strands of muscles groaned in protest as she fought against the strange compulsion. The force took on a razor’s edge, slicing into her with every attempt to pull away. A whimper gathered in her throat like a piece of sour candy and she ground her teeth, crushing it, swallowing it back.

  Robin’s eyes were wide, his skin covered in a sheen of sweat. He jerked away from the Sheriff, though it was a weak attempt, as though his strength to fight ebbed the longer he kept glancing between Marian and Herne. His attention sharpened to a fine point, piercing Herne. His emerald eyes were molten, like vats of boiling acid, their painful vibrancy a strange contrast to his paling face.