“Rob wouldn’t never raise his hand to me. Rob wouldn’t never hurt me,” I said, my mug hot and my blood running fast. “Rob loves me more than he loves his self.” It were all I could manage to say the words clear and true.

My eyes set to leaking and I went for the door, near knocking a servant with a tray of ale. I passed her and bare made it another bend in the hall before my mug burst with water. I ran.

I ran through the snow. I made it to the gates, to the towering walls of stone what kept me from Sherwood, from Rob, from the forest that kept some shadow wraith of Scarlet while Marian were here and skirted and chained. And I stopped.

“My lady?” called a knight, coming close to me. “My lady, it’s freezing. Allow me to see you back,” he said.

He reached for my arm, and I whipped away from him. “Don’t touch me,” I told him.

Much’s words rang in my ears: you never give up. It seemed like a curse more than anything.

If it were true, and Gisbourne were set to be the winner before the competition even began, then I weren’t sure what I could do to stop him being sheriff. I didn’t have a plan, much less a second plan.

All I had were fear, and worry, and faith. Faith that when the time came, I would know what to do.

My feet were cold and heavy as they climbed back up through the baileys. When they stopped, I were in a dark, cold room of stone. I moved past the pews like a ghost and fell onto the kneelers by the dais in the old chapel.

It didn’t seem right to cry while you prayed. It seemed selfish to talk to God in such misery. My only sister had died so long ago. My band were in a forest that didn’t feel like mine anymore. My love were kept from me by an awful ring on my finger, and it seemed God were the only one left to cry to.

Chapter Eight

I went back to Gisbourne’s room after night fell. He weren’t there; I had passed the main hall and knew most of the gathered court were there to feast with the prince. I felt like a shadow in the halls, and it weren’t something I could stand.

I searched the room for my knives, but I couldn’t find where the lady servant hid them. I reckoned Gisbourne had a hand in that. Course, it weren’t hard to figure out where he kept his money, either, and I took a fair bit of that and stashed it behind the shutter where the lady servant couldn’t strip it from me.

Fetching new linen wrappings from the dry storage, I peeled the old ones off my hand and tossed them in the fire. It were bleeding a fair bit, the stick that had set it broken. I used the fire poke to hack off a bit of a fireplace log and set that in its place. My hand were double-thick and raw and sore as anything. Cradling it to me, I curled up in the chair by the fire with one of the furs from the bed and went to sleep. He were a loon if he thought I’d be sleeping in the bed with him.

Gisbourne slammed into the room late and well drunk. I woke but didn’t open my eyes none. I stayed quiet and still as I felt him loom over me, blotting into dark the light of the fire.

He didn’t touch me. I heard noises, and him moving away, then the bed creaked and the curtains rushed over the bar.

I opened my eyes. His clothes were strewn on the floor, and the bed were covered over with drapes. I shut my eyes again, clutching my hand to my heart, trying to remember what all this hurt were for.

Waking early seemed the best way to skirt round him. I tried to put on my own things but it were damn difficult and I had to call for the lady servant. I bid her hush and do it quiet, and she obeyed me.

It would be a few hours yet before Gisbourne rose, and it felt like the closest I’d get to freedom for a long stretch. I retrieved the purse and went for the marketplace.

Even the market had changed. Nobles were still arriving, trailing behind the prince in a progress, and with them came merchants and sellers of every sort. The market were jostling and full, and slipping into the people put me at ease.

I bought knives from a merchant I liked that most days were up in Leicester. I got two sets of cheap ones for the coin I’d filched, and as I were paying and the merchant turned, I caught a wrist with his fingers around a blade hilt.

“Don’t,” I warned soft, my eyes flicking up to the man who owned the wrist.

His face flickered into a grin, and with a quick twist from him I were a step away from the merchant’s shop, held tight against the thief.

“Can’t you let me have my fun?” he asked, his Irish brogue low in my ear as I aimed my knife to drive in his thigh. “Scarlet?”

I stopped before I stabbed him, wriggling out of his paws. I turned and looked at him—tall and shift-footed, with too-long hair and too-bright eyes—not a lick of which were known to me. “I don’t know you.”

He swept into an awful proper bow. “Allan a Dale, my lady thief.”

Tucking my new knives into their proper places, I frowned at him. “You know me?”

“I came up in London behind your legend. And still it grows,” he told me, tossing me an apple from a stand. He waved me forward. “Walk with me?”

“Dangerous prospect,” I said, but I did, and I bit the apple. “I miss London every now and a bit.”

“Filthy, pest-ridden, hard-scrabble, beautiful city,” he said, grinning.

“But how did you know me?”

He looked cut. “A knife-wielding lady who cut off her own hair to fight a thief taker? There aren’t many of you in the world, my lady.”

I snorted. “Don’t have to call me lady, Allan.”