Page 17 of The Wicked Prince

“Yes, yes, shelve the sappy goodbyes and heartfelt declarations. Let’s move this along.” John gestured with his hand. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Robin stood with her men as he started going through the pardons, a hand on Little Jon’s bicep—the height of her forehead—and the other on Will’s shoulder. He was the youngest along with her, and with similar coloring and height, had always been her decoy, and like a brother. Alan had been like an older brother while Little Jon had been like her father.

She still remembered how terrified she’d been of him at first when he’d come across her in the woods. How she’d only cried harder when he’d spoken because he sounded so rough and intimidating. She’d thought he was a troll about to eat her.

That was all she was thinking about as Prince John went through the official spiel for the pardons, one by one. It barely registered to her that she wasn’t given a pardon, but it had to be intentional. A way for Prince John to have some leverage over her. Instead, she was thinking about how Will had sat beside her the first night and told her he was like her. An orphan. The way Alan had reached over, mussing up their hair with his hands as he said they were all orphans in one way or another. How they had laughed when she’d told them to give her a bow and some arrows and she’d prove her worth. How after she’d split her own arrow in two, Little Jon had hoisted her up onto his shoulders and said they had a new bowman.

Robin didn’t stop reliving her memories as they left Lathe to take her men back to Ferren Forest before they were released from their chains and free to go. She certainly wasn’t going to stay in Lathe and give Prince John the chance to cross her. She was going to make sure he released her men without a scratch on them.

Robin was forced to ride beside Prince John on the trip, surrounded by a ridiculously large retinue of his soldiers. She watched her men as they walked, their wrists still restrained. She thought of when they’d heard King Richard had left to defend their borders from Esmea, and that he’d appointed Prince John as regent. Robin had chalked the bad feeling she had up to the winter and how the cold made old injuries ache. But then spring came, and so had the tax collectors. Their band hadn’t been outlaws at that point. They were just people who made a living from the forest by sticking together. Little Jon as a lumberjack, Alan as a minstrel turned hunter to try to win his sweetheart—the plan ultimately failing, but he was good at recreating animal calls to summon prey. Will’s parents had been foresters and friends of Little Jon’s and he had nimble fingers good for snares, and Robin? Robin had been their archer. When Alan or Will had gotten her prey, she shot it.

Until Prince John had declared any unlicensed hunters in Ferren Forest would be poachers and punished accordingly. Royal Decree Four Hundred and Eighty-Three.

They’d applied six times and were denied five. When they were finally approved on the sixth, they couldn’t afford the fees.

Then the tax collectors came more frequently to the city of Ferren and all the villages their crew traveled to looking for work now that theirs was no longer legal. The wagons got bigger. There was no work. People could barely feed themselves, much less offer anything as payment despite how badly they might need another set of hands.

Robin had been thirteen when she’d pulled the hood of her cloak up and gone back to Ferren Forest alone. She’d finally caught onto how Little Jon, Alan, and Will alternated between skipping their meager meals so she never had to. She didn’t need to be coddled.

When Robin had returned with a deer and several rabbits that would feed the whole village they were staying in, the whole air had changed. People ran out of their homes to greet her. As she’d passed out what she’d poached, mothers with hungry children embraced her and called her a hero.

Frankly… it had been the most intoxicating thing she’d ever experienced.

The only one who hadn’t been happy with her had been Little Jon. He’d grabbed her by the arm and hauled her off to a corner and said, “Do ye know what ye have just done? Ye know Prince John’s decree. Ye don’t have a license!”

“License,” Robin spat, shaking her head as she shifted her weight off her left leg. “Prince John can throw himself off the castle parapet for all I care about his decrees!”

“The Sheriff and his men are going to care! What were ye thinking? Poaching and putting yourself at risk like that!”

Robin had looked up at the man who had saved her life. She’d tightened her grip on her bow. “Better to poach than to starve.”

From that moment on, she’d been a criminal.

Little Jon had sighed and shaken his head before looking back at the whole village, gathering around fires as they cleaned and cooked the deer and rabbits. Smiling and laughing for the first time since their band had arrived looking for work. “If I tell ye to stop, ye won’t, will ye?”

Robin had looked back as well. When a woman with five children whose husband was off fighting for King Richard beamed at them and waved, and her children all waved shortly after, Robin’s decision had been made. Prince John’s decrees didn’t care whether they all starved or not.

“I can’t.”

Little Jon had let out a long sigh, shaken his head, and started back toward the rest of the village. He had looked over his shoulder at her and said, “Ye go back to that forest alone again, and there will be consequences.”

Robin had grinned as she raced after the giant and back to where Alan and Will were cooking their rabbit. Alone, he’d said.

To be fair, she’d never gone back to that forest alone. Or stolen from a tax wagon alone. Or done anything without her men.

Now it was her family going back to the forest without her.

When they reached the edge of the forest, Prince John finally signaled for his men to unchain hers. Robin held her breath as she sat atop her horse, sidesaddle since she hadn’t been able to find a pair of breeches in Lathe that fit her before they’d left. It had to be Prince John’s doing, just like the wedding dress.

He saw every opportunity to escape and closed it off miles before Robin could get there.

Fortunately, Prince John’s men didn’t stop her from dismounting and rushing over to her men one last time. Prince John called out after her with a bored tone, “Make it quick.”

Robin ignored him. Now that her men’s hands were free, they were able to fully return her embrace, Will squeezing her tightly and whispering, “We’re not going to stop. No matter what that snake threatens.”

Part of Prince John’s pardon had included the warning that if they committed any crimes, no matter how minor, their pardon would be waived and they would be executed.

She couldn’t ask them not to, but she did whisper, “Be careful.”

---