Lady Thief: A Scarlet Novel (30 page)

Winchester turned and met the sword of de Clare, and a
vengeful part of me hoped Winchester at least left him something to remember, if not killed him whole.

John got close enough to Robin, catching Rob’s eye while tossing his sword to him. I watched the flash of the steel in the sky, and Rob reached out and caught it.

My heart leapt, and then I saw Rob’s horror-filled, fallen face. I looked back.

I turned my head just as Prince John pulled his sword from John’s stretched-wide middle. Blood flung out with the sword, and for a moment, John were still. His arms were still up, like he were still throwing the sword to Rob. Then they dropped, and his knees buckled. Like someone took a stick to his legs they fell from under him, and he crashed into the snow.

His face rolled to me. His arm were out, toward me, and he coughed, meeting my eyes. I knew I were screaming; I knew only because my chest hurt like I were screaming, like I were screaming so hard I couldn’t bear to breathe. His cough made blood spatter his mouth, and the snow, and his cheek. His lips moved.
Bess
.

I shattered. My legs couldn’t hold me, my chest ached for screaming, my eyes poured so much water I were sure at some point it had to turn to blood. The guards held me up by my waist, and that were it, that were all that were real.

The fighting stopped at some point, and I waited for the guards to let me go, let me go to John, but they didn’t. Rob and Much knelt by his side, but John were still, the second set of dead eyes to fix me in their gaze that morning.

Much stared at me, wide eyed and wild, saying something, but I couldn’t hear it. They put irons on me and made me kneel in the snow, and I fought, desperate, trying to get to John, to Much, to Rob, to my family that had just been broken.

A knight pressed his sword to my throat, and it scraped along my chin before I felt it, before I stopped moving.

Prince John stood before me, but I were senseless. He waved the sword away, but if he were speaking, I couldn’t hear it.

His hand cracked across my face. “Mark me!” he growled.

My neck felt boneless, but I looked up at him, trying to hear what he were saying.

“As a traitor, I will bring you to London,” he ordered. “You will confess to your motives for trying to assassinate a prince of England, and when I’m satisfied with your confession, you will meet your death.”

He were lying. He didn’t dare kill me. Rob he would have killed here in the snow, just like he’d done John, but me Eleanor would never forgive. Me he couldn’t afford to kill.

Yet at the moment, watching John die on the ground because of me, I wished for death.

“Let me see him,” I said, my voice raw and strange, and water started in my eyes fresh. “Let me go to him!”

“Your Highness,” Winchester said, coming beside Prince John. “What’s the harm in it? She’s in chains.”

Prince John’s eyes never left me. “You can never trust a thief, Winchester. Or a traitor.”

“Sheriff,” said a soft voice.

Everyone turned to look, and I saw Eleanor standing there, her pale face mottled with pink, her eyes wide. “Yes, your Highness,” Rob said.

“There should be a carriage in the lowest bailey that is suitable for securing a prisoner,” she said, gravel in her voice. “Perhaps you can see her down to it.”

“Not yet,” the prince said, and he grabbed my arm, dragging me back to the door to the gauntlet. I let him—I didn’t have a bone in my body to stop him, my eyes fixed on John’s body in the snow, watching as my soaked skirts skidded over the snow, edging close to his blood. A corner of it caught his blood and spread an ever-lightening red streak in the white snow. Fresh sobs burst through my chest.

He pushed me through the door, grabbing my head and forcing me to look at Gisbourne’s body. “Admit it,” he growled. “Admit you killed him!”

I kept my mouth shut.

“Admit it!” he bellowed.

“You know I didn’t,” I said, sniffing back more tears. “You alone know how he died.”

He let me drop so he could raise his hand to me again, but it never came down.

“Stop this immediately,” Winchester hissed, the only other soul who dared cross the threshold. “There are many things I will watch you do, but strike a woman in chains is not one of them. The sheriff and I will see her to the carriage, but this is finished.
Your Highness
.”

Winchester did not even wait for Prince John’s response. He knelt to me and took my hand and waist, helping me up gentle.

“Step aside, Winchester!” the prince snapped.

Winchester did not turn, did not move. “You would do well to remember, my prince, that you are not the king, your nephew is the heir to your brother’s throne, and that you are not so much higher than an earl. You are by no means untouchable to me.”

Rob came down the gauntlet, and he stood beside me but didn’t touch me. His eyes met mine, heavy and dark and blank. His hand reached up, open, to guide me down the gauntlet, and my body jerked. His hands were covered in John’s blood.

By the time we reached the second bailey, the world had changed. We made it through the door, and Winchester shut it, and I stared at Rob. “I’m sorry,” I said fast. The tears rushed again. “I didn’t mean for him to be hurt, Rob, I didn’t—how could he—it’s my—it’s my—”

I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t stop crying. John were dead. Happy John, finally contented John. And Bess knew nothing of it. Bess were alone, and with child, and the sword that run her husband through may as well have been in my hand.

My knees hit the snow-slick stone and Rob were before me. His hands were wet and freezing with snow, but they were clean of blood. They clasped my face. “This is not your fault, Scar.” Tears shot out from his eyes. “This is not my fault.” His head pressed mine and I knew he felt it like I did, our awful gift to take on pain like greedy children.

“John—
Bess
—” I cried.

“I will take care of her. Of them both.”

“Don’t come after me, Rob.”

He pulled back, looking at me. “Scar, I will have you out within a
week
.”

“No. Not at the expense of Nottinghamshire, of being sheriff. Eleanor will protect me as best she can. You know she will. He won’t kill me.”

“
Scarlet
,” he said, and his voice rough running over my skin. “I can’t leave you there.”

“Yes, you can. Until I find a way.”

“Until we both find a way,” he told me, staring into my eyes. “And if he harms you, I will deal with the devil himself to get you out of there.” He looked up, at Winchester. “Swear to me, Quincy. Swear that you’ll watch over her. Keep me informed.
Swear
.”

“I swear.”

Robin pulled me forward and kissed me. He tugged me up, holding me still, kissing me again and again, quick desperate things. He held me close and we began walking. We crossed the second bailey and went down to the lowest one. The carriage were already brought forward, which didn’t much surprise—word traveled faster amongst the servants than by any other way. There were guards there too, and knights, and I didn’t want to find out who were on my side, and who not. I didn’t dare cause another soul to be hurt.

Winchester threaded the chains through the bolt in the
floor. He helped me into the seat, and he locked the chains to the bolt with a sorry look to me.

Rob stepped inside the carriage and kissed me, hard and fierce till the tears on our faces touched. Our lips broke but he stayed there still, breathing into me.

I nudged my nose to his cheek. “Last night, Rob—I know we’re not meant for much happiness in this awful world, but I will tell myself that last night were the night I married you, and I’ll be happy every time I think of it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Rob said. “I will marry you. And I will count the sunsets until I do.”

I shut my eyes and cried. I nodded, but I couldn’t say another word.

When Rob left, Winchester shut the door and I couldn’t mark the time. We started to move sometime after, and the tiny slit of a window showed me snow, and forest, and dark.

I hated it. And I cried. My marriage were over, and the rich shine of being free of Gisbourne were tarnished by everything else I had lost along with it. My home. My love. My friend.

My hope.

But that weren’t really the way of it, and that were the worst part. I still had hope. Cruel, bitter, steadfast hope crushed my chest that still hurt for breath; I didn’t want it. I wanted to give up, to leave my mind and heart in a bailey in Nottingham Castle as my body went south. I wanted to feel nothing but the
blanket of pain and hate swallow me up. I wanted to run backward and lay on the snow with John and stay there, still and frozen and never moving forward again. That would be easy, and lovely, and dark, like the cold woods of Sherwood at night.

The awful thing were faith. Because with everything gone, after a day of horror and hurt, after years of horrors and hurts, the thing I couldn’t shake were faith.

I remembered a story that I had heard about the Angevins when I was a girl, and I shut my eyes, trying to remember the pieces of it. It weren’t just some legend of the king now, it were a story about my father. About my family.

Richard loved to boast of his devil’s blood, begat when one of his ancestors had unknowingly wed a serpent. She bore him eight ugly children, and his curiosity got the better of him. He followed his wife into her weekly bath where he had promised never to disturb her, and found her secret form revealed.

When he confronted her, her heart broke, and she transformed into a dragon and flew above the castle she had built for her husband with her magic. She clung to the spires with her talons and shrieked until the skies grew dark and rained down the tears that she couldn’t cry.

For all time she stayed atop the tower, screaming and trembling the earth when the Angevins were born or died, never resting, never failing. Protecting her blood.

That were my blood. The blood of a dragon, a beast, a devil. A woman with supernatural abilities to continue on in the face of pain and betrayal.

The blood that led my father, the Lionheart, to the Holy Land to wage a war for his faith—his vengeance. Vengeance were the darkest side of faith, the thing that claimed violence and fury as holy arrows.

I were lionhearted too. My faith were just as strong.

And I would learn this new side of faith that Eleanor and Richard and the rest of the royal lions claimed. My faith would bring me back to Nottingham. My faith would bring Prince John to his knees before me.

As the carriage pitched and tossed, and the place I were promised to protect faded and the man I loved disappeared, I prayed for faith.

And I vowed vengeance.

Writing a sequel is equal parts evil and exhilaration, and there are many people without whom
Lady Thief
would never have made it over the finish line. First, to my agent, Minju Chang, you’re SO amazing. Thank you so much for helping me through the frustrations and difficulties, and always being there to cheer me on. I always feel like we are a team, and that means a lot to me.

Thank you to the entire team at Walker Books. To my editor, Emily Easton—I am so grateful for your insights and for your keen editorial eye. Thank you for making Scarlet who she is today. Thank you to Mary Kate Castellani, for jumping in when needed and providing another very thoughtful perspective on
Lady Thief
. To Laura Whitaker, Beth Eller, Katy Hershberger, Bridget Hartzler, Erica Barmash, and all the people at Bloomsbury/Walker who have championed
Scarlet
and allowed her adventures to continue in
Lady Thief
—I am so grateful. Thank you for all that you’ve done and continue to do.

The weirdest thing about a debut novel is that it goes from being this somewhat manic dialogue between you and a computer, and becomes this public commodity that so many people experience. It’s amazing and it never ceases to astound me, so thank you to the bloggers who helped get my secret little
novel out to the world, to the readers who are so passionate about Scar and the idea of a strong girl in fiction, and to the librarians who continue to pass my book to their readers. There wouldn’t be a Book Two without you!

Debut year was a crazy thing, but in getting
Scarlet
out there and writing
Lady Thief
I’ve met some of the people I consider most dear and most crucial to the act of continuing to write. Thank you to the Class of 2k12 and allll of the Apocalypsies, but I have to say there are a few people who need more thanks. Cory Jackson, thank you for reading a super-early draft of
LT
and jump-starting me when I was stuck. Tiffany Schmidt, I owe you my firstborn child for the comments you gave me on a later draft that wasn’t working. To Katy Longshore, your books are inspiring and your friendship is more so. To Gina Damico, Gina Rosati, Diana Renn, Kate Burak, and Lynda Mullaly Hunt, for being my Boston authors crew and making visits of all kinds easier. To Hilary Graham for being so cool and being the best partner in crime I could ask for.