Page 24 of Queen of Sherwood

A shudder ran through me.

It wasn’t even Initiate Brandt’s blood or death that struck me the most. Any death impacted me, of course, but this was different.

Because this time, I realized with hideous fascination . . . I enjoyed watching him die.

Chapter 7

Robin

“You’ve scrubbed enough, Robin. Anymore and you’ll scour the damn skin off your knuckles.”

I blinked and shook my head, staring down at my hands. We had found a pond nearby, deeper in the woods away from the village. While I madly washed my bloody hands, lost in a horrific cycle of regret and shame, Will dragged Initiate Brandt’s body deeper into the woods with us, grunting the whole time.

He hid the corpse in a thicket of bushes. Left Brandt there like a dog, where no one would find him—at least not until we were hopefully gone from Ravenshead.

My hands shivered, glistening in the early afternoon sun from the wetness. They were red-raw, yet no longer red from blood. The clear water in the pond where I kneeled had turned brown and murky.

I looked up blankly at Will standing over me, his arms folded. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing, just sniffling and returning to my despair.

He was right. The blood was gone. I was clean, yet my spirit felt so tarnished and tainted.

What happened to me back there? I wondered. I didn’t mean the death—that had been a matter of self-defense, far as I was concerned. The quicker I could convince my heart of that, the better I’d be off.

No, I meant the sensation.

Where did it come from? And why?

Will crouched next to me at the bank of the pond, grunting and running his hands through the water. When I glanced over at him out the corner of my eye, I saw he was watching me.

There was no anger on his face. No sadness. His expressions were hard to read on the best of days, but I knew this one from months back.

Pity.

My most hated enemy.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I snapped, nudging my chin at his arched, helpless eyebrows.

He cleared his throat, shook his head, and washed his hands. A beat of silence passed between us. It only made the heavy pulse of my heartbeat in my ears sound louder.

“What happened to you back there, little thorn?” he asked at last, quietly.

“What are you talking about?” I shot back, too swiftly.

Will chewed his bottom lip. He never chewed his lip, because he never had a reason to feel nervous or confused. He was as bullheaded as I was, yet twice as confident. Once he had an idea in his mind, he waylaid into it—no regrets, no second-guesses. I envied that about him.

This was different. He seemed hesitant to say more, as if tiptoeing across ice.

I couldn’t have that. Not with my mates. They needed to speak their minds to me, so we never sent mixed signals or lost each other.

I pressed again, turning to face him fully. “Will? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sighing, brow creasing together. “You had a smile on your face as that man died, Robin.”

“I . . .” I swallowed, my throat dry again. Needing something to do to gather myself, I cupped water from the pond—from a non-murky part—and sipped it to wet my throat. “I don’t know, either,” I admitted. There was no use denying it. He saw it, I felt it. “I’m not sure what came over me. All I know is it was frightening once I snapped out of it.”

He grunted, nodding slowly. Stared down at his reflection in the pond. “Perhaps you should talk to Tuck? He’s, erm, good with these kinds of things.”

“What things?”

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