“Yes it can. Because we always have a choice, even when it feels like we don’t. Isn’t that what you’re torturing yourself over?”

Memories of Joanna bubbled up so hard in my throat I weren’t sure I could breathe, and they choked out as tears instead. “She were protecting me, Rob. She did awful things, things I should have stopped, to protect me. I didn’t protect her, and she needed me to.”

“Richard liked me. If I had said no, if I had refused, he might have listened. I might have saved those people.”

A hiccup jumped from my throat, and Rob twisted me somehow so I were tucked against his big chest, restrained like a dog. He held tight, painful tight, my breath rushing out over my teeth, and I wondered if it were me holding him or him holding me. I wanted to tell him he were a fool and Richard wouldn’t never have listened to him, never gone back on his word or his orders for Rob. But he knew that. He knew, and it didn’t help. I knew it weren’t my fault Joanna were dead, but it didn’t help none at all.

Rob’s breath were pushing over my ear, his chest puffing up underneath me. His heart were beating so close to my own that it calmed me for sheer distraction.

“I have to help her,” I told him.

“I know. Let me help you.”

“Can’t. The plan I have is for one.”

“How are you going in?”

“Wall.”

“And out?”

“Wall.”

“She’ll be in no health to climb.”

“She’ll manage. I’ll carry her if I have to.”

“I’ll carry her. I’ll go to the wall with you and wait there. You send me a signal if you need me, and I’ll come.”

I swallowed. “We watch each others’ backs.”

He nodded. “Precisely.”

Standing up were strange. I stood first and looked down. I had been all tangled with him. He had been holding on to me. It felt like something changed before I stood up, but on my own two feet I didn’t want nothing to change. It felt like something had shivered loose inside me, and all I wanted to do were keep it in, keep it hidden and deep.

I pulled away from him. I could see John still sound asleep in the tree and it made it all the stranger. Rob and I grabbed some weapons from the cave and set off on foot.

There are many things that I never bothered to guess at. Things like weather, or farming, or feelings—I’m fair useless for those sorts. The one thing I know is sneaking—and knives, I reckon—and that night I focused on all I’m good for. We moved double-quick to the castle, and once there I told Rob where to wait.

On my own, everything gets clear. I don’t worry, I don’t think, I can just sneak. I fade right back into the black darkness and no one sees me. A guard can walk a foot from my mug and he won’t never know I’m there.

The hard bit were finding her room. There were so many in the residence that I knew it would take me most of the dark hours to look for her. I went through real careful, and I reckon it must have taken me hours, but I didn’t feel it none. It felt pure and simple. It were the only thing in life that were such.

I found her up on the top floor, sleeping. I swung into her window quiet, going to check the door before I woke her. I creaked it open a sliver and saw a guard blocking the doorway. Window it would be for escape. Just hoped she weren’t too rough off.

I went over to her, covering her mouth and pushing her a bit. Her eyes shot open and she screamed under my hand.

“Hush!” I hissed, squeezing her mouth. Had to make sure she minded me.

She stopped moving.

“You know me?” There were a fair bit of moonlight coming in; I could clap eyes on her, so she must have been able to do the same at me.

She nodded.

“You’ll hush?”

She nodded.

I let her go and sat back. “Are you all right?”

She nodded.

I swallowed, and my hand fell on hers like dead wood. “I’m so sorry, Ravenna. I should have gotten you both out last night.” The words rolled over one another. “I’m going to get you out of here right now.”

She shook her head. “I’m staying here.”

Not another one. Christ at the crossroads, not another one.

“They won’t hurt your family. We can get all of you out of Edwinstowe, Ravenna, I promise.”

She ripped her hand back. “You promised to get us out last night.”

If all were fair and good in the world, I would have told her that I never promised nothing to her last night. I said “have faith,” and it were only because I couldn’t explain the full plan to get them out today. As it were, her words cut like the truth anyhow. “This is different. We’ll move your whole family if we have to.”.

She shook her head. “I have another plan. I told the sheriff if he wanted me, he had to marry me. And he said he would.” She pushed her hair off to show me the gold necklace like a shiny collar round her white neck. “He gave me a betrothal gift and he’s calling for my father in the morning. In a month’s time, I’ll be the Lady of Nottingham, and my family won’t just be safe, they’ll be nobles.”

I felt like stone. “But Ravenna, to marry him?”

“You may live like an outlaw, Scarlet, but to save yourself from shame you let everyone think you’re a boy.”

My mouth gaped.

“Of course I knew—don’t be stupid. You’re too pretty by half for a lad. But I’m not like you, and I don’t have those sorts of choices. I was going to be married anyway, and my father was fishing high, so it might as well be him.”