Marian blinked, absorbed in the familiar feeling of her lashes brushing the leather edges of her mask. She drew a long, careful breath. “I will disappear.”
Alan’s jaw tightened, and Elena glanced sideways at him for a moment before reaching for his hand and winding her fingers through his. Will, oblivious to the tension, protested. “But when will we meet again? We need a system, some way of letting each other know when the Sheriff gives up his pursuit and calls Gisborne off, so we know when to start planning our next move.”
“There isn’t going to be a next move.” Alan spoke quietly, watching Marian’s face intently, as though he was trying now to see through the mask to the face he knew lay beneath it. “That’s what Robin is trying to tell us.”
Will spluttered, and Little John gave a rumble of protest as he drew himself up. Marian drew a breath and raised her voice, risking the carrying sound in order to silence the others.
“Alan’s right.” Her sharp tone cut through the other voices and demanded attention. “Robin Hood has had his time—the risk grows with every move we make. Gisborne is too clever and has too many men at his disposal. That he’ll catch us, one or all of us, is inevitable if we continue.”
“You can’t vanish,” Will blurted angrily. “What about us? Alan’s pardoned, and he has the arrow to live off with Elena, but John and I are outlaws still. I’d rather die in your service than live like a criminal, stealing food from storerooms already near empty, no purpose but to persist.”
“And do you suppose Alan and I would be content to live quietly somewhere, knowing our friends face execution if they’re ever caught?” Elena’s eyes glowed in the firelight, her grip on Alan’s hand tight.
Marian’s temper, frayed already beyond snapping, disintegrated into tatters. “What did you think was going to happen?” she demanded. “That we’d continue merrily along, waylaying rich travelers and pulling ever more foolhardy stunts on the Sheriff and his men, until King Richard returns and pardons us all? It was always going to end, and better it ends with our lives intact than at the end of a hangman’s rope.”
Will opened his mouth to reply, his face so ingenuous that Marian knew her words had gone unheeded.
She threw down her bow, furious beyond what Will deserved, beyond what any of them deserved. She’d put on Robin’s cloak that first night so no one would know her, and had discovered a world without the heavy burden of expectation and duty. Now she was as trapped as ever, and all she could think of was Gisborne’s voice when he’d told her there were men starving in the Holy Land because Robin Hood had chosen the people of Nottingham over them.
“There is no pardon coming for us,” Marian said, sharp and hollow, before Will could speak. “Even if we could continue until the King returns, he won’t pardon us.”
“You don’t know that—”
“Will, enough. I do know it. Do you hear? I know it. We are traitors, all of us. King or no, if they find us, they will hang us.” Marian began to pace, trampling the freshly dug earth by the fireside. “Your best hope, all of you, is to scatter. Go home if you can, and hide if you cannot. Live quietly away from the light, and eventually, one day, the law will forget about Robin Hood, and stop looking for him and his men.”
“Our best hope,” echoed Elena. Her voice held a note of steel in it, a tone Marian had never heard. “What is yours?”
Marian’s lips pressed together until she could speak again. “You owe me nothing. None of you. I chose this folly, and the consequences are mine to face. I can bear them.” She paused, and had to harden her voice when it would have softened and broken. “But I cannot bear it if those consequences befall the rest of you, too.”
The fire crackled, punctuated by the soft sound of Jonquille slurping at a skin of rainwater not far from where John had left her. No one spoke for a few long breaths. Perspiration tickled at Marian’s brow beneath her mask, and her ear ached.
Much was holding a cudgel in one hand, and he looked down at it as he shifted his weight, a stick cracking underfoot and drawing everyone’s gaze in his direction. When he