Bluebeard and the Outlaw by Tara Grayce
Chapter 11
When I was ten, I spent many hours sitting at my father’s feet while he fletched arrow after arrow and instructed me on the ways of foresters and fae.
“The fae are strong, but our world weakens them. It binds them with the inability to lie and burns them with our iron.” My father never glanced up from his work, his hands always sure and strong and gentle. “But you must be wary. There are two ways a fae can evade these bindings.”
I leaned forward, my hands stilling on the child-sized bow I cradled in my lap. “How?”
“The first is through marriage to a human, though the human must enter into the union willingly. Many a fae has stolen away a bride, only to find his bride’s unwillingness denies him what he seeks.” If my father worried about telling such things to a ten-year-old, his face never showed it.
But I was a forester’s daughter, and I already knew that it was my duty to stand in the place between fae and human, their realm and ours, and guard it with my bow, my sword, and my life if necessary. “And the other?”
My father tied off the fletching, spinning the arrow in his fingers a moment before he looked at me. “The fae must spill a human’s blood in a deed so dark, so despicable, that the fae themselves will not speak of it. They will cast out their own kind who perform such things. Nor will that fae stop at one death. He will find he needs to kill again and again to keep the blood’s protection.”
I gave a shudder, the day seeming more shadowed than before. “Ick.”
My father placed his newly finished arrow in my hand, curling my fingers around it. “If you ever meet such a fae, little bird, then you must take up your bow and hope with all the breath in your body that your arrow flies straight and strikes true.”
* * *
Due to my horrible stance, dangling as I was, the bowstring slapped the inside of my left arm, stinging, though I had no breath to cry out.
The arrow sliced the magic-laden air and thudded into my target.
Duke Guy staggered from the impact of the arrow to his shoulder. He fell, the rope sliding from his fingers.
I dropped to the floor, gagging and staggering. I braced myself against the wall and managed to keep my feet beneath me, even as the room seemed to tilt. My chest was convulsing, blackness tunneling my vision.
But as I forced myself straighter, I came up with a second arrow in my hand. This time it was black fletching that tucked against my fingers as I nocked the arrow.
For the first time, Reinhault’s eyes widened, and he backed up a step. I had put iron into Duke Guy, deep into his blood and muscle, and now the fae magic of the bargain had been weakened. It would be a momentary weakness, but it was one I could exploit.
The fae held up his hands, as if he was prepared to beg. “No. No, you can’t kill me. If you do, all the wealth of this castle will disappear. And the monsters. Haven’t you wondered why there has been a lack of monster attacks in the past ten years? That has been my doing. They will come back if I’m killed, worse than ever. You don’t know what has been going on in the Fae Realm. Monsters have been pouring into there, and they will flood into here too if I’m not there to stop them.”
With my feet under me, I adjusted my stance, the bow wavering in my fading grip as I struggled to draw it back.
Reinhault backed up another step, fumbling behind him for the latch to the door. “And the weather. I caused the drought, and now that I’ve messed with your weather, everything is off balance. You’ll experience storms like you’ve never imagined. You need me. Bargain with me. I can give you gold. Riches. Anything your heart desires.”
I didn’t want gold or riches. If fae monsters came, we would handle them. Same with storms.
The broadhead lifted, the bow bending to the last of my strength. Forget splitting the duke’s arrow. This shot—with my vision black, my strength gone, my breath snuffed—was the impossible one.
Fly straight, I willed the arrow. Strike true.
I released.
The arrow hissed away, but I couldn’t see it. I let myself fall into the darkness, my bow slipping from my fingers.
Across the room there was a meaty thunk. A cry. A thud of a body hitting the ground.
Then I was on the stone floor, wracked with shudders. Perhaps it was me convulsing. Maybe it was the whole castle quaking and falling apart around me.
Guy’s deep voice shouted something far too close to my ear, and yet too distant for me to hear. Fingers clawed at the rope, and it took me a moment to process that they weren’t mine. I feebly fumbled to help, though I likely did nothing but get in the way.
The constriction eased, but for a moment, I couldn’t seem to get my lungs to function, my throat to open. It was as if my body, so long denied air, had forgotten how to breathe.
A heavy hand thumped my back, and I coughed, gagging and choking as the bile in my stomach threatened to come up even as I tried to gulp air down.
The noose was lifted over my head, then an arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me into a sitting position crushed against a firm, warm chest.
“You’re alive.” Duke Guy murmured, his shoulder shaking beneath me. With what emotion, exactly, I couldn’t have said. Fear or horror or relief. Maybe all of them. He murmured something more, but it was unintelligible as he pressed his face against my hair and gripped me tightly enough his arm dug into my spine.
If the last few moments had been terrible for me, they had been just as bad for him as he was unwillingly forced to hoist the rope himself. What torments had this man suffered these past years, trapped in a bargain with that sadistic fae and forced to commit unspeakable murders? How had he held himself together under the weight of the guilt of watching his hands perform the awful deeds again and again, even if it hadn’t been by his will?
All these years, I’d painted Duke Guy in the role of the villain when all along he’d been the hero, trapped by the true villain.
I wasn’t sure what that made me. The Hood wasn’t the hero, as I’d always believed. Neither was I the villain. In the end, I was the nuisance, low-level antagonist that made the hero’s life harder during his struggle with the story’s real villain.
Shakily, still gasping in lungfuls of precious air, I peeled my eyes open and pushed away from him, my left hand squishing in something warm and wet soaking the front of his shirt.
I glanced down to see the arrow I’d put in him still sticking out the upper right side of his chest. The wound bled, but the blood wasn’t spurting. I had missed the major blood vessels in his shoulder, as I had aimed to do.
The shaft bumped against my shoulder as I moved, and he sucked in a pained breath.
His arms eased from around me, as if he had just realized what he was doing. His gaze flicked up to mine before dropping. “I am sorry. So sorry.”
I wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for the almost hanging or the hug afterwards. Probably both. I had to swallow several times, pain shooting up my throat. When I spoke, my voice croaked and tears pricked my eyes with the ache. “Not your fault.”
Guy lifted his hand, his fingers coming close to brushing my neck and the bruises there. But he stopped short of touching me, dropping his hand after a long, strained moment. “We should summon the physician. You’re injured.”
“As are you.” Since I had no such compunction against touching him, I pressed a hand to his wound, warm blood dribbling between my fingers.
He gave a grunt, glancing down at my hand and the arrow still sticking from him. He shuddered as the tension left his shoulders, and when he spoke, it sounded much more like the Duke Guy who chased the Hood through the forest for so many years. “You shot me. You actually shot me.”
I pushed through the rasping pain in my throat and grinned. “You know I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. It is so satisfying to finally accomplish one of my goals in life.”
Guy’s deep eyes lifted to mine once again, not looking away this time. “And yet you didn’t kill me, and you’ve wanted to do that for a long time as well. Should I assume I’m alive because your shot went astray?”
I huffed and pressed my hand harder against the wound. “I put this arrow exactly where I wanted it. Just like I did that one.”
With my free hand, I gestured toward Reinhault’s body, my arrow buried so deeply in his heart that only the fletching was visible as it pierced through him.
Guy glanced in that direction, and he gave another, smaller shake. “I suppose I should be grateful that I find myself married to an outlaw.”
After all we’d been through in the past few minutes, I shouldn’t let that jab sting. He had a right to be hurt, after finding out his wife had deceived him and was secretly the outlaw he’d been hunting for years.
“Yes, you should. You should also be grateful I used a tiny little practice arrow on you.” Unlike the large, barbed and deadly broadhead I’d put into Reinhault. “I had to get iron into you somehow, and it will pull out easily enough, once the physician has a chance to look at you.”
He gave that noncommittal grunt and made no move to stand.
I wanted to stand and haul him to his feet after me, but I was still too shaky myself.
Bootsteps pounded outside the door a moment before it was flung open, slamming into Reinhault’s body hard enough to make it flop against the floor.
Will skidded to a halt, nearly tripping on the dead fae sprawled across the threshold. John, Tuck, Alan, Munch, and Marion crowded in behind him, all of them armed to the teeth and carrying death in their eyes.
Will’s gaze shot from the dead Reinhault up to me, his gaze focusing on my neck. His jaw hardened, eyes flashing as he drew his sword. “Get away from her, Bluebeard.”
“Will.” I croaked his name as I scrambled on my hands and knees to place myself between Guy and my avenging brothers. “Don’t hurt him.”
“He nearly killed you.” Will raised his sword, such murder in his face that I hardly knew my own brother.
I glanced past him to the others, but by the steel in their expressions, I knew they were all with Will on this.
I planted a hand on Guy’s shoulder and leveraged to my feet, swaying. When he moved to stand as well, I leaned harder on his shoulder, keeping him kneeling on the ground where he would look less threatening to my brothers. The pressure must have communicated more than simply an order to stay on the ground because Guy remained silent, making no attempt to defend himself.
With as deep a breath as I could manage, I rasped out, “This isn’t what you think. It isn’t what any of us thought. Duke Guy didn’t kill his wives. Reinhault did.”
That brought Will up so short that John ran into his back, causing Will to stumble a step before he regained his balance. When he straightened, Will searched my face. “Are you sure?”
Guy’s tortured guilt might argue with me on that, but he couldn’t be held responsible for something he was forced to do against his will. Yes, I still had a few questions, and I would have those out with Guy later.
For now, I pointed at my neck. “Yeah, pretty dead sure. Reinhault is the one responsible for all of this. Look at him. He’s fae.”
“What?” Will spun, but Munch, being the last one into the room, was the first to nudge Reinhault’s head with a boot, tipping it so that the hair parted and the tapered ear was visible.
Several of my brothers swore, before they glanced at me and snapped their mouths shut.
It was time to take charge of the situation. I could tell them the rest later. Such as how it had been Reinhault who had killed our parents and started this drought. Right now, we had more important things to deal with.
“John, Tuck, and Alan, take charge of Reinhault’s body. Don’t let it out of your sight. And I mean not even for a second. Cut off his head for good measure. I want to be absolutely sure he is dead and stays dead.” I finally relaxed my grip on the duke’s shoulder, taking a step forward to better boss around my brothers. “Munch and Marion, start getting a pyre ready in the main courtyard. If anyone gives you any trouble, tell them Lady Robin gave the order. If they still give you trouble, send them to me.”
The five of them nodded and straightened as they took my orders.
This was my merry band, and it ached inside me that this would likely be the last time we truly operated as an outlaw crew. After today, everything would change.
When I glanced over my shoulder, Duke Guy was still kneeling on the floor, a hand pressed to his wound, his fingers splayed around the arrow shaft. He hunched now, as if the pain of the arrow I’d put in him was finally catching up after the rush of a moment before.
Yes, everything would change. But that change would be for the better.
Will knelt, picked up my bow, and held it out to me. His gaze flicked from me to Guy and back before he exhaled a long sigh. “Really, Robin? Him?”
I took the bow, the wood smooth and familiar against my fingers. Yes, it was strange that, when I found myself attracted to a man, it would be my nemesis. “Yep, him.”
Will huffed out another sigh, shaking his head. “Fine. Then I’ll help you get him to the physician.”