The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) (30 page)

“Not just because I spied on you.” He slowed his pace, pleased when she slowed to match him. “Also because we are more alike than I think you want to admit.”

“We are both archers and so we are alike?” She rolled the stem of her leaf between her thumb and forefinger, watching it twirl with an unnecessary level of concentration. “That is a rather shallow comparison.”

He bent and plucked a stick from the ground. If she was going to give her attention to an inanimate object, so would he. “I’m not sure how shallow that comparison would be.” He lifted the stick to eye level, staring down the length of it the way he would test an arrow for curves. “Archery is a skill that takes a great deal of time and effort to hone to the level we share. I would think that sort of dedication, that sort of passion for the art, would be a significant thing to have in common.” He glanced away from his stick. “However, that is not the comparison I was going to make. I refer rather to the fact that we are both foster children.”

“So you said before.” Marian kept walking, still twirling the damn leaf. “You said your birth mother wanted to change you and your foster mother took you as you were.”

“Simplified, perhaps, but yes.” He eyed the leaf between her fingers, debating drawing his bow and having a little target practice.

“And you don’t see that as your birth mother wanting more for you because you are her child? That perhaps she believed you were capable of being more whereas your foster mother encouraged you to settle, to—”

“Do allow me to stop you right there.” Robin dropped his stick and plucked the leaf from her grasp. He let it float to the ground and took her hands in his, holding them, forcing her to stop walking and meet his eyes. Brown orbs gazed at him from a face that didn’t belong on his huntress and he pressed his lips together, banishing her glamour with a thought. The return of her green eyes and red hair soothed his soul, settled a part of him that had bristled at making his huntress into something she wasn’t.

“Marian, loyalty is a grand thing. Your loyalty to your foster parents is awe-inspiring, and I say that without a trace of condescension, please believe me.” He raised their hands, cradled them against his chest. “But I do not understand why you are so convinced the life they wanted for you is better than the life you want for yourself? Why can’t you see that the lives are just different, one is not better than the other?”

She tried to pull her hands free from his grasp, her murky green eyes falling away from his. He held tight, dipped his head to keep looking at her face. He’d asked the question to make her think, to show her the error of her ways, but he suddenly found himself with a burning need to know the answer. To understand her.

“Marian, back at the Thorntons, you had a vision for yourself. You saw yourself out in the forest that you love, hunting, free and wild as you were meant to be. In your vision, you had purpose, a new purpose but one intimately connected with your own pleasures, your own skills. I saw the happiness there, the joy, the
hope.
Now tell me, is that vision so much less than what your parents wanted for you?”

For a long minute, he thought she wouldn’t answer. Her hands tensed in his, the will to pull away from him there in the stiffness in her shoulders. Then she let out a slow breath. Finally she met his eyes.

“Think of your hidden glen.”

Robin frowned, thrown off by the abrupt change in topic, but he nodded. “All right. What about it?”

“You need that glen, don’t you? You need that hiding place. You go about the forest doing…doing good, and helping people.” She smiled, but it wasn’t an expression of happiness. “But you have to go back to the glen eventually, have to go back to hiding.”

“And that is what this other life is for you, your life in the manor and the fields that makes you so miserable. That is your hiding place?”

Her eyes fell to their hands, still pressed against his chest. She extended one finger, gently rubbing the rough material of his vest. A thrill traveled down his spine and he was at once intrigued and dismayed that he should have such a strong reaction to such a minor touch. A small step brought them closer and he held his breath, waiting to see if she would take advantage, touch him again.

“Yes. That is my glamour, my secret glen. I need it if I’m to allow myself even my brief freedom in the woods.”

It took him a minute to remember the question he’d asked to get that response, distracted as he was by the back and forth brush of her finger. “I would share my glen with you, Marian. You could hide with me.”

He listened to the words coming out of his mouth and heard them as if someone else had spoken. Certainly he hadn’t meant to say that. Not that Marian wasn’t welcome in his camp—he’d insisted she stay after all. But the invitation coming out of his mouth now had a ring of permanence, a suggestion that her stay may not be temporary. It was an offer he had made only twice before—and never this quickly.

Never to a woman.

He waited for a surge of panic, a rampant desire to take back the words he’d spoken so carelessly. But it didn’t come.

I meant it. Strange.

Marian’s eyes darkened from a light spring green to a deep, shadowed forest. “I’m sorry. I can’t stay.”

Her words slid into his chest with the sharp pressure of a blade. A flicker of desperation drove him forward to band his arms about her waist, hold her against him as if he could stop the horrible distance spreading between them even though neither had moved away. “I would let you keep your secret. I would stop spying on you, let you have your mystique.” He tried to lighten his voice at the end, give it the feel of a teasing reminder, but there was no denying the urgency in his voice. No pretending he didn’t care very much that she stay.

Her eyes glistened, but no tears fell. She raised her hands to cup his face, fluttering her thumbs over his cheekbones. “No, you wouldn’t. You are an enthusiastic, curious, and infuriatingly persistent man. You might let it go for awhile—might try to let it go completely. But you and I both know that the need to solve the mystery would eat at you and eventually you would pursue it.”

“I want to know your secret, I won’t lie and say I don’t.” He put his hands over hers, holding her closer to his face. “But I would let it go, for you. If you would stay.”

Marian gave him a sad smile. “No. Even if you could resist the urge, I would never want you to. To deny yourself the thrill of solving the mystery, to repress your curiosity…it would make you less you. It would rob you of that wonderful, impossible…
life
that infuses every part of you.” She swallowed hard, pausing a moment as if collecting herself. “I’ve had a lot of unkind things to say about you since we met. But now I think…I think I would never forgive myself if I changed you.”

A lump rose in his throat, and he was disturbed to feel the burn of tears. “Marian, I—”

She pulled a hand from his to put a finger on his lips. A cool wash of relief flowed over him. He wasn’t sure of what he’d been about to say, but he was fairly certain neither of them were ready to find out.

“Thank you for these three days,” she said quietly. “I will relish every second as it happens, and when they’re over, I will always treasure them.”

She backed away then and he let her go. But a realization was dawning inside him, a soul-crushing realization that scared him more than he’d ever been scared in his life.

Three days he’d asked for. Three days and he would let her walk away.

And a
sidhe
never broke his word.

Chapter Twenty

“Sheriff, are you certain this is…legal?”

The quill in Mac’s hand snapped, splattering ink over the notice he’d been drafting so carefully. He kept his gaze on the broken writing instrument, not trusting what would show on his face if he looked up now. A droplet of ink slid down the shaft of the quill, beading at the fracture until it grew too heavy. It landed with a plop on the parchment, just one of many blots that now ruined the announcement.

He closed his eyes to block it out, but shutting them made the buzzing in his ears all the worse for lack of distraction. Louder and louder, he could feel the vibration in his ears, feel it spreading over his body until he was no more than one large nerve throbbing under the wretched drone of iron.

The guard held his body at attention for a full two minutes before he started to squirm, shifting from foot to foot. His leather armor creaked, the sound louder than it should have been thanks to the near-perfect silence. An image roared into Mac’s brain, a vision of him shoving his chair back, of leaping over the desk and falling on the man like a ravaging wolf, teeth bared, lips curled back in a snarl. The image was so vivid he felt flesh in his mouth, tasted the blood that would drip down his jaws. Adrenaline spiked and his eyes flew open.

Glen fell back a step, blue-grey eyes bulging. His hand fell to the sword at his side, muscles bunching in his arms as he fought not to draw it on his superior. His panic pleased Mac, soothed his frazzled nerves. He held Glen’s gaze, keeping the man frozen in place. It was right that the guard should be afraid of him. Wasn’t it?

No. No, this…this isn’t right.
Mac drew in a deep breath, forced himself to fill his lungs, hold the air in for the count of three. He willed his heartbeat to slow, willed the burn of adrenaline to ease, to release its stranglehold on his nerves. The ringing in his ears made it difficult to gather his thoughts, to remember what he’d been doing.
The ruined parchment…the announcement… Ah, yes.
When he thought he could speak without growling, he twisted his mouth into the closest he could manage to a reassuring smile.

“Lady Marian fled the county while she was being investigated for possible fraud. That makes her a fugitive, and a fugitive has…
limited
rights. Her abandonment of her home and her property is evidence that she feared the outcome of my investigation, suggesting that the four hundred pounds she so miraculously came up with was indeed stolen. Therefore, I am fully within my rights to put her property up for sale as a means of recouping the
eric
she still owes.”

He returned his attention to the ink splattered parchment, keeping an iron grip on his temper as he calmly put it aside and reached for a fresh sheet. He found a new quill in his desk drawer and dipped the quill in the ink, ready to draft the notice anew.

“But you aren’t putting it up for sale. You’re offering it as a prize in an archery contest.”

Mac put the quill down. In front of his desk, Glen clenched and unclenched his hand at his side, his other still on the hilt of his sword. He stared at the fresh parchment, letting Glen squirm while he tightened his hold on his temper. The past few days had been stressful, and the last thing he needed was to be questioned at every turn—especially when he was well within the boundaries of his power as sheriff. When he finally looked up at Glen, the guard snapped to attention, his eyes staring straight ahead. Mac guessed that was likely more out of an effort to avoid looking into his eyes than any sign of respect, but he let it go.

“Do you recall our conversation of a few days ago, Glen?”

Glen met his eyes for a brief second, then firmly locked them on the opposite wall. “Yes, sir.”

“Then you no doubt recall our conversation about the thief and the…special circumstances of this particular case?”

The guard glanced around the room, taking note of the few civilians milling about the courthouse. “Yes, I do.”

“Then you should understand me when I say Lady Marian has joined his band.”

The guard forgot himself for a moment, body going lax as he gaped at the sheriff. “Sir?”

Mac returned his attention to the parchment, resuming the task of writing out the notice that would alert the general population to the upcoming archery contest and its grand prize. “Yes. It would seem Lady Marian is not what she first appeared. I trust that addresses your concerns?”

“I… I suppose so.”

The quill scratched across the parchment, ink flowing behind it in smooth black lines. As the details of the contest decorated the page, the tension banding around Mac’s chest eased.

This will draw them out. Both of them. Wherever they’re hiding. If only those worthless dogs had—

A geyser of frustration shot up inside him, threatening to spill past his lips in a growl. He swallowed it back, fighting to keep the images of the wolves from his mind. The quill creaked in his grasp and he loosened his fingers quickly to avoid crushing it.

The miserable beasts had failed him. They’d not only lost Marian—
without
discovering Robin’s hiding place—but they’d gotten themselves lamed on top of it all. Shot with arrows of all things. The sight of them limping home, forelegs shedding a bloody trail, roared into his consciousness and he had to put the quill down before it shared the fate of its predecessor.

Worthless creatures. Protected from glamour and taken down with mere arrows. What good is having sharp senses if you can’t smell an enemy close enough to shoot you through a myriad of trees? He must have been right on top of them. And that trail of blood they left, ready to lead whatever manner of otherworldly miscreants to my very doorstep.

The buzzing in his ears grew louder and he pressed his fingers to his temples as if he could somehow smother the sound. The iron grew heavier around his neck, the piece of metal seeming to grow in size until his head drooped, weighted down by the medallion on its leather string. He wrapped his fingers around it, ready to remove it, but he stopped himself. No. No, he wouldn’t be caught without it again. Not when the stakes were so much higher now.

He smoothed his hands down his black vest, checking the laces were straight, patting the small pocket for the few coins he carried on him. Glen was still fidgeting in front of his desk, his hesitation, his
doubt
, a bitter tang on the air. Mac stood from his chair, abandoning the announcement for now. There was no sense trying to draft a public notice when he was this distracted by Glen’s naïve questions. He would finish it later, in private. Right now, he was in precisely the right mood to deal with the other monster.