Seeing it all from within, seeing the entire castle from her new perspective, she shuddered to think of Robin’s original plans to come tomorrow. It took staggering naiveté to think they would have been successful, but such was her life only a few short weeks ago. If nothing else, she could take solace in the knowledge that she had saved their lives. Sir Amon had carried her message to stay away. All their old futile tactics of pounding their heads against unforgiving stone walls were, appropriately, left behind now.

“Robin.”

She said his name aloud, better than to keep all the regret and grief within.

Again, noise from far off, of brief hushed voices and movement, riding the wind. Even if it was only her imagination, there would be no returning to sleep for her. No matter how many hours away daylight waited, she wouldn’t spend them staring at the arched stone ceiling again. She settled on the hairbrush, as she often did. At least it was something, anything, to do. William had promised to fetch some of her personal belongings from her residence in Sheffield, but had yet to do so.

William de Wendenal, the man to whom she would be married. That was not yet something to which she had acclimated.

These were not the circumstances by which she hoped to marry, to say the least. But there were things that could be controlled, and others that could not. Her grandfather once told her to never worry herself with the latter. Her father, however, had said the exact opposite. That was something of a habit of men, their need to give advice in succinct little sentences that sound like great worldwide truths. Marion preferred her mother’s counsel, which was to treat advice as you would a stranger’s soup—taken in small, cautious sips.

She wondered what her family would think of her if they knew everything. About Marion’s Men. About her upcoming marriage. About every consequence of the things she had done with—and for—power. Her grandfather warned that power is a poison, while her father claimed it is an illusion. She imagined she could say that power is quite like anything at all, and it would sound equally witty. Power is a sunrise. Power is an old horse. Power is a borrowed hairbrush.

She had learned the real truth. In a world full of unforgiving stone walls, power was a doorway.

Her quiet was broken by the sudden opening of her room’s door, and Marion gasped at the dull face in a leather coif that pushed itself in to stare at her. She scrambled to close her gown as the face apologized and disappeared, only to return a moment later. “Sorry. I didn’t know if you were awake.”

“You could very well have knocked.”