chapter five
SILVER LINING

[Fylkesskog Forest – October 1522]

Anna had always loved riding. It had always been a welcome occasion for her to escape the stuffy castle walls, a chance for her to be rid of all the tight corsets and tighter-lipped guards watching halls and hallways and gardens like hawks. She had always liked trotting gracefully until past Arendelle's city borders only to have her mount spring into a neck-breaking gallop as soon as she was off the main road. She had always been especially fond of the way the cold northern wind slammed into her chest for her sudden leap forward, sometimes ripping tufts of hair free from the constricting up-dos Gerda enjoyed to come up with when it came to style her hair.

Of course, that wasn't the sort of riding she was doing now. She wasn't close to Arendelle's castle, she wasn't riding Philip, and she wasn't playing tag with the castle staff urging their own horses onwards and faster just to keep up with her. There was no rush of wind either, because she had learned – the hard way – that you couldn't charge at full speed on a horse through that kind of forest… and she had the bruises to prove it. Also, her hair wasn't there to be messed up by the wind because it was braided and pinned to her scalp in a bun that felt even tighter than any Gerda had ever come up with, and carefully hidden under her hood. Finally, the horses trotting behind her were riderless, their bridles tied to the saddle of the one Anna rode so that she could easily lead them back towards the fjord, where she knew they would have been able to find their own way back to the stables of Arendelle's castle.

Anna sighed deeply. She missed it. So much. The laughing, the running, the riding, the reading. Hell, she even missed the complaining – about Gerda's hair pulling as she combed, about having to sit so still for so long, about the corsets being too tight. It seemed so petty, to have complained about such small, meaningless, shallow thing, she mused with an odd twitch of her lips. It had been in Frost Wood that she had found out how shimmering the golden bars of her palace cage had been. Before, if she fell in the river she could count on the hearth in her room, to the very least; but there had been no hearth when Raelyn and her friend had fished her out of the river, and she had come way too close to freezing to death for her likings.

Regaining consciousness is painful. She would have never guessed as much.

Awareness comes and goes, in waves, similarly to the waves that she sometimes feels lapping at her skin, cold as ice. Some other times it's the pain to her ankle, her side and her head that brings her back, but it quickly gets so intense it knocks her out again. At some point, it's the noise… not just the murmuring of the river – that's actually like a lullaby. Other noises. A rustle of leaves; the crunching of frosted grass and mud; voices. They seem so distant first, then ebb closer, like the tide. She lazily realizes she can't feel her body anymore – not her ankle, not her side, not her head. But she has a head, that much she's sure of, or she wouldn't be able to hear. And she knows she has a body because she does feel the cold. She strives to focus on the voices, to make out the words that at times grow indistinct again, to distract herself from the icy bite of the river.

«Rae- … -we-ve to do something.»

«Wha- … -o you p-ose we do? Is sh- … -en gonna -ke it …?»

«I don't k- … but—Wait, I th- … -e's awake now.»

«He- … -ere. C- … -ear me? Can you hear me?»

Anna realizes she has eyes – and that she can see – the moment she blinks the light frost away from her lashes; the world is a blur, enshrouded by haze.

«You know the riverbed isn't the best place to take a nap, don't you, sleeping beauty?»

Oh, her ears are definitely working now. She can discern every single drop of sarcasm bleeding from that voice. She stirs.

«Come on, give me your hand.»

It's another voice, she can tell that much now. Slender fingers wrap around her wrist. She squeezes the stranger's back.

It takes her a while to recover from the icy cold that almost claimed her life. When she finally manages to get back on her own two feet, she starts to wonder about her saviors – two young women: one as shiny as midday, the other as deep as night; blonde the first, brunette the second; both dark-eyed, but differently, ebony and steel. They aren't really talking to her, but she often catches them whispering. And staring. At her. That worries her, like, a lot.

The brunette is the more friendly of the two. She checks on her, makes sure she's keeping warm enough, brings her food and water, even attempts some smalltalk. She catches her name in one of the many, eavesdropped conversations: Duana.

The blonde takes much longer to warm up to her. She's alert, wary. She seems to dislike her, even though Anna has no idea why. All she knows is that her stares could burn a hole in her forehead. But she can tell she's doing it out of worry for the safety of her companion and herself, because with Duana she's often affectionate. Her name, which Anna overheard as well, is Raelyn.

It had taken Anna a couple of weeks to recover. Once she had been feeling well enough to stand the cold and to walk around without needing to stop every ten minutes or so to catch her breath, the two had asked her where she lived, to point her in the right direction and maybe even walk her close to home. That had been when Anna had fallen apart, breaking into tears, sobbing as the words came tumbling out of her as if she had no control over them – the Prince, his honeyed lies, his plot, her sister's shock and panic and disbelief and blindness, her flight, the pursuit, the river. I can't go home, she had realized as she hugged herself, shivering, cuddled up against the trunk of the oak she had crawled near to curl up against, I don't have a home anymore. Her two saviors hadn't offered any real comfort, but they had helped her back into the temporary shelter they had found for the three of them and had given her some space.

Anna had spent a handful of days crying her heart out, drifting in and out of sleep, barely eating. The girls had kept their distance, but sometimes, when Anna felt almost lucid, she could hear them arguing in hushed tones, fighting to keep her voices down. Once out of tears and with enough hours of sleep to last her for at least a month, Anna had crawled back out in the open, sitting down in front of the small bonfire and her saviors.

«I want to do something but I don't know where to start.» had been her first words to them in five days.

The two had exchanged a long look and had nodded. They would have helped her, at least for a while. And so her training had begun. They had taught her how to cope with a life in a forest in which almost everything was out to kill: how to lose and outsmart predators, both animal and human; how to find shelter and how to maintain it and when to abandon it; how to win a fight with fists and knife; how to lose herself among the crowd, how to single out the targets, how to coax things out of them, be it money or information.

The turning point had been when Duana had put her bow in Anna's hands. Archery was second nature to Anna, had always been. She had picked it up as a pass time when she was young and restless – yes, even more restless – while Elsa studied piano – because she never had the patience for piano. And she had loved it so much, she never stopped practicing it. It had gotten to the point where her parents had to arrange for proper lessons, even though it wasn't the ladylike activity they would have wanted her to be passionate about, because she wouldn't stop pestering the castle guards enjoying a break to get them to train her further – «Teach me! Teach me! Teach me!»

Anna smiled at the memory of the targets' core stuffed with her arrows and of Raelyn's face, with her mouth all but hanging open, as she stared at them. After that, even the blonde had begun to warm up to her and join her for training, teaching her how to move through the forest with the bow in hand, and she had slowly combined the movements she taught her to her archery techniques, coming up with the lethal acrobatics she was now able to pull off.

After a few months spent training and tracking every lead, Anna had finally found out what Hans had been doing: after taking control of the Duchy, painting Elsa as an emotional weak woman unable to think straight because of her grief in the process – and hearing her sister's carefully crafted and painfully maintained reputation sullied so easily had made her blood boil in a matter of seconds – he had begun raising the taxes, slowly but gradually… only for some reason, she had found out that none of the raises touched the nobles and the aristocrats; actually, they had been paying less and less amounts of gold and, ultimately, stopped paying altogether. Apparently, the Prince himself had been working to obtain that result for them.

«It's a political maneuver.» Duana had said to the embers the night they discussed Anna's discovery. «He wants the nobility and the aristocracy to support him, and this is his way to buy it.»

Why had been the first question that rang in Anna's mind, but the motives of the Prince had quickly fallen to the bottom of the list of more pressing worries: how much did Elsa know about this, was she on board with him? Was that why she had refused to side with her when she had told her of her suspicions? Was she protecting him? But even those questions had been drown out by the most vital concern: how were her people going to survive with all those taxes to pay and no aid from the aristocracy whatsoever?

«People are going to die for this.» Raelyn had hissed, many emotions flashing in her coal black irises.

«No, they won't. I won't allow it.» she had spat.

From that night on, Anna had sunk deeper and deeper in the criminal undergrowth of Frost Wood and of the Duchy. Again, Raelyn and Duana had shown her the ropes – even though the arguments on Elsa's part in Hans' maneuvers had put a dent in their relationships – and kept on looking out for her, whispering her every trick to help her build a reputation for herself, so that the other outlaws would leave her very well alone. Funny enough, Hans himself had been a huge help on that front, with that crazy kidnapper story he had fed the people in order to justify her disappearance.

«He talked so much about this shadowy criminal, it'd be a shame not to give him one, don't you think?» she had suggested with a smile so sly and lovely it had made Raelyn proud.

So Robin Hood, the mysterious and heartless kidnapper of the Duchess' sister, who had managed to break into Arendelle castle and leave with his hostage entirely undetected, had materialized in Frost Wood, with the thieving girls to back him up – because yes, Duana and Raelyn also had quite the reputation among the criminals, thanks to lots of daring robberies in very fancy houses and lots of broken noses and arrows to the knees of nuisances who were cocky enough to pick fights with them. Or so they had said at least.

The Merry Men had almost created themselves on their own accord as the first weeks of 'taking from the rich to give to the poor'. No matter how hard she had tried, Anna had not been able to reach everyone, and with the increase in theft, Prince Hans' guards had been carrying out their duty as thoroughly as ever: those who didn't have the money to pay the taxes had had their homes ravaged to strip them of anything worth selling to 'extinguish their debt towards the Duchy'. This approach had made the people's indignation flare, but when they resisted, the guards only reacted with further violence, and homes had been burnt to the ground with the utmost disregard of what that would mean for the family, or the risk for the towns and villages, should the fire had spread. The resentment had bred among the people, and those who had reacted and had obtained a price on their heads inevitably drifted towards Frost Wood to find the mysterious Robin Hood, who had been so graciously robbing the noblemen blind only to keep the people of Arendelle afloat.

The influx of people willing to support her had caught Anna, Duana and Raelyn off guard and, even though not unwelcome, it had brought up some practical issues they had needed to deal with, and had required to come up with explanations for the many empty blanks regarding Robin Hood's identity. So the camp in the dangerous core of Frost Wood had been set up, and the legends surrounding Robin Hood had been spread.

Anna's thoughts were interrupted by the intensifying light: she was close to the edge of Frost Wood.

"Yes, a truly tragic and fascinating story…" she mused as she took the bridles of the other horses in hand and began leading them through the forest. "The Duchess' sister drowns in a frozen river as she tries to flee the castle after discovering the Prince's wicked plot. Then her spirit saves a young woman on the run from the very same fate in the very same river, allowing her to live and to command Frost Wood's Candlelights, but only if she embarks on an underground crusade to stop and expose the Price's scheme. How touching." she couldn't contain a smirk as she moved some thin, leafy branches out of her face. "Definitely Duana's best ghost story so far."

She could already see the titles: the ghost story of the mysterious Robin Hood, that terrified both nobles and countryfolk, that kept other outlaws from interfering or selling her to the authorities, and that kept her own allies in check, making sure they didn't get too comfortable or too close – or that they wouldn't get ideas about challenging her after finding out she wasn't a man… the only secret she hadn't been able to keep from the Merry Men in the camp. Indeed, that little rumor about her… otherworldliness was vital to her, for the eerie aura it projected had been protecting her and her associates much better than any suit of armor. It had also gotten extremely believable, complete with disturbing phenomena and strange apparitions and disappearances, thanks to Elsa's support – once things between them had been cleared up – and the help of a selected, trusted few among her men who knew almost the whole story, or something very close to the truth at least. In particular, the trick with the mirrors and the light they had employed that very day was particularly effective, and the theatrics with her crystal and all all but helped to strengthen the supernatural effect.

She tugged on the cord that kept the ice blue crystal around her neck, and as she kept pulling, another crystal dangled out of her corset and into the light: it was a warm yellow, and the legends had it that, if charged with the energy from a fireplace or a bonfire, it could be used as a diversion to get away with a beating heart from a Candlelight ambush. It was an old superstition, but to that day the locals who happened to travel through the forest still brought one along, for protection against the vengeful spirits – just in case. All of the Merry Men carried one, which she provided herself specifically to keep the ghost stories alive and make them feel real. Technically, she wasn't supposed to have one herself: she was supposed to command the Candlelights, to be safe from them, which is why the crystal she used was clear, cold and looked like a polished shard of ice. However, she still carried one, hanged on a longer cord and hidden in an inner pocket in her brown leather corset. Just in case.

The amber crystal shone like fire when the light of the dying day touched it, and Anna raised her gaze to meet the sunset head on.

The blazing Sun, a triumph of goldenrod and persimmon, hovered over the fjord, slowly sinking towards the sea. The waters shimmered beneath it and the darkening sky was tinted in soft hues of honeyed gold, soothing indigo and welcoming navy blue. The fjord was reflecting especially the shades of purple: a blend of mauve, thistle, pearly, purpureus, pansy, palatinate and periwinkle that surrounded the bright, rippling reflection of the fading Sun. The last light of the day shone on fair Arendelle, the sunbeams filtering through the rocks of the fjord in dramatic streaks, the slender towers of the snowy castle radiating an ivory halo all of their own.

Anna felt something tug at her heart, the familiar pull of homesickness calling her to the castle, its balconies and windows and pitched rooftops gleaming like spun silver with a platinum shine in that glorious sunset. Almost everything in that sight was calling her home, and she wanted to, she wanted to go home.

But she couldn't, she couldn't, not yet. Too much was at stake.

Tearing her eyes away from the radiant castle was almost physically painful, but necessary. She began leading the horses out of the treeline to set them on the path that left Fylkesskog Forest to head towards a bridge, which in turn led to a path that would have put them on their way to the city, and ultimately to the castle stables. The horses knew the way, of that she was sure. This wasn't the first carriage they ambushed, and none of the mounts had ever lost their way.

After rummaging through the bags attached to their saddles one last time – why leaving a potential useful item behind, after all? – she let them trot away, keeping her eyes on them until they passed the bridge and moved on, and they were no longer visible. She sighed, and lingered a moment to bask in the sunset a little longer: it was rare to get that kind of sunlight in the thicker area of the forest. The murmuring of the rushing river reached her ears.

She knew that river, she mused. It was the one in which she had fallen during her flight from the castle, three years past – oh, had it really been so long? No wonder she felt that homesick. She fought a bittersweet smile: and to think she had fallen into another river just a few weeks back, after robbing an ice harvester on his merry way to the castle to deliver ice for a ball. That stream was one of the tributaries of the river – which also had a number of sluggish, shallow effluents that crept into the forest, like the one in which Duana and Raelyn had found her that fateful night, years ago.

Now that she thought about it, she wasn't that far from the river in which she and Little John had fallen. And she still had a bit of time before the light faded completely – though not too much. Perhaps… perhaps she could take a bit of a detour after all, to go and check the stream out. Who knew, maybe the young man's locket had gotten stuck in a root or had been washed on the bank or… something, and maybe she could find it. She would gladly return it to Little John, if that meant getting him to act like a civilized human being and not like the lumbering narcissistic son of a troll he was being. You know, just for a change. Oh, it would have been so worth it…

She softly bit her lip as she considered her options, then decided that hey, it was worth a shot. Keeping herself close to the river – just in case the locket had made it that far and had gotten stuck between the rocks – she made her way East. She wasn't going to be long. And maybe the low light of the sunset would filter through the undergrowth and help her find it. Who knew. Maybe it was her lucky day.

Okay, so apparently it wasn't her lucky day after all. She had checked the waters and the banks of the main river and affluents alike, but no locket; she had inspected every root and low branch and submerged trunk, but no locket; she had searched every shallow, muddy pond that had formed at the edges of the stream, but no locket; she had observed every underwater rocky cluster, looking for the telltale gleam of silver, but no locket. And she was running out of light.

"Damn, I was really looking forward for him to stop being such a jerk." she grumbled to herself. She sighed, irritated, but something within her refused to accept defeat. There was still one place she had to go to: the spot where they had actually fallen in the river.

Honestly, it was more of a last resort than anything else: it was very unlikely that the locket hadn't been carried by the stream anywhere down its course, that the chain had caught somewhere right there and then. She had likely better chances to find it in the depths of the fjord than at the fallen tree-bridge… but searching the bottom of the fjord was something way out of her possibilities, while checking the dried branches of a mossy trunk wasn't.

So, Anna rolled her shoulders, squared them, and headed upstream. She wasn't far at all, so it took her only a handful of minutes to spot the fallen tree. It hadn't rolled down too far when they had tried to walk on it, she realized: the river grew wider only a dozen of feet down, so the trunk had slipped off the edges and sunk in the mud. Apparently, she and Little John had been lucky: instead of falling in in the shallow, rocky portions of the river, the rolling trunk had dropped them into a pool, with rushing, cold waters, but deep enough so that they hadn't been injured from hitting anything, really.

Yes, it could have been a lot worse, she mused as she crept through the undergrowth to circle the former natural bridge… and then she stopped dead, her breath catching in her throat, when she saw the figure crouched on the muddy bank – near the exact spot where she had dragged that big conceited blond hulk of a man after hauling him out of the water because apparently Mr. Grumpy Pants couldn't even swim. He was dipping a hand in the river and splashing his face, trying to get blood and crumbled leaves and splinters of branches and thorns out of his hair and beard. His black uniform was dusted with dirt and blades of grass, and the way he was turned made it impossible for her to spot the royal insignia sewn on his chest. Not that she needed it to identify him: she would have recognized the Captain's wicked face anywhere.

Morten.

"Okay okay okay, Anna, don't panic" she scolded herself, focusing on taking deep, slow, quiet breaths. "You're okay. You're fine. He hasn't seen you yet. Just get away from here, slow and quiet and nice and easy, and you're good. Right? Right. You'll come back some other day for that stupid lo-OH YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME."

A curious expression had just passed on the Captain's face and he, under Anna's horrified eyes, had motioned towards the river to grab a handful of mud that, as the water trickled on it washing away the dirt, revealed itself it be a worn chain, from which dangled no other than a silver locket.

That had to be Little John's locket – for real, how many other silver lockets could you find buried in the banks of a river that ran deep in a deserted forest because the locals believed it haunted?! – and now it was in the hands of an enemy she really didn't want to tango with.

Oh, this was so not her lucky day.

For a moment she hesitated, seriously considering her option of disappearing into the forest and let him take the damn thing. But… Little John was really attached to it, which meant it was a keepsake of some sort. Which meant that he could have put in the locket something personal… and what if there was a family picture in there? Would if Morten recognized Little John? Oh, he would so head straight for his relatives to torture them in public, using them to lure him out, and her in turn…

No, no no no no no, there was too much at stake. She had to get that locket and be done with it. Better safe than sorry after all. It's not like he had his sword anyway, he had dropped it when he had tried to slash her head off during her ambush of the weasel's carriage. True, he had two knives hidden in his clothing, but at least she knew about them – knew for a fact, unfortunately – and she could avoid them, should he decided to draw them. Right. She got this.

"It'll be fine…" she encouraged herself and, after yet another steadying breath, she began crawling through the undergrowth of the forest.

Rolf Morten, chief and favorite personal guard of Wesley Weselton, and assigned by him to Prince Hans to take care of all the not-so-legal business. Like hunting her down and silencing her before she could be actually captured, trialed, recognized, or whatever Elsa could have come up with to save her skin. He was almost certainly the only one among Hans' men who knew who she actually was, and he hadn't had bothered to hide the fact during their very first… meeting. Her hands still shook at the memory: Morten was a cruel man, a hunter who enjoyed toying with his prey just for the sake of blood – he had seen his share of it during the war, and discovered he couldn't see enough; his volatile behavior had got him kicked out of the army, but he had simply passed under Weselton's banner.

Lucky for her, and her men, Morten was just horrible at avoiding traps. She was fairly sure that depended on his hunter's nature – he was used to hunting prey on the run, not someone who actually sought confrontation, planned ahead and forced him to stalk her deep in her own playground. If only, if only she could get close enough, she had a chance… she just had to hit him real hard on the head, grab the locket and run fo-

The Captain tensed suddenly, as if he had realized that something was off. Anna bit back a curse: she was positive she hadn't made any noise, but that horrible bloodhound hadn't gotten that good at what he did – as disgusting, reproachable and cruel as it was – because he had only been going after clumsy prey.

"Well, I tried."

Morten had merely begun to turn around when he felt the cold prickle of steel against his neck. He slowly raised his hands, keeping that curious locket he had just found between his thumb and index finger, trying to look behind him in a way that wouldn't drive whatever weapon was threatening him dee pinto his throat. When he realized it was an arrow pressing against his skin and his eyes locked on the dark green hood of his assailant, he smiled.

«Anna.»

The way he said her name always made her skin crawl. «There should at least be a 'Lady' in there, you know.»

«Ah, but what's the point of formalities when addressing a walking dead?» he retorted, and Anna knew full well this wasn't about her little cover ghost story: this was about him being sure he was going to kill her at some point.

She decided not to waste any time bantering – every second she spent indulging him was a second she risked getting distracted, and getting distracted meant she would have never walked away from him, ever. «The locket.»

He cocked an eyebrow at her, relaxed, as if they were bickering over a cup of tea and he hadn't her eyes and a nocked arrow trained on him. «And what, I wonder, is this small trinket to you?»

Instead of humoring him with an answer, she pulled her arrow back an inch. «Now.»

«How strange.» he commented, his eyes staring, studying, judging. «Isn't Robin Hood supposed to laugh in the face of danger?» his gaze sharpened all of a sudden. «You never act serious when you're in character. So this means…»

He was so fast, she managed to react only because she was expecting him to do something. He threw the locket in the air, thinking she would go after it, while a glinting dagger materialized almost out of nothing in his hand. He slashed at her, and he would have carved a nasty cut into her arm and shoulder, had she been just a second slower to step away from him. She retaliated by slamming her bow against him with enough force to make him stumble back and fall in the river.

Not wanting to miss that window of opportunity, she used the momentum of her own attack to fall back, grabbing a handful of pebbles along with the fallen locket as she rolled, her back against the ground, her body coiled so that when her feet hit the ground again, she bolted, darting for the trees, leaving the bloodhound to haul himself out of the ditch.

She hissed when she felt a slash of pain searing her calf – son of a troll, he had thrown one of his knives at her! – but refused to stop to inspect the damage: halting would have meant certain death. So she bit on her lip, teeth bared against the pain, and she jumped on a tree, leaping from fork to branch, from branch to branch, from tree to tree, nimble as a squirrel. Her outraged leg sent angry jolts of pain up her body, but she steeled herself and swallowed: she had no way to outrun him on the ground.

Feeling relatively safe for the moment, between the low chance of being spotted, her being out of his immediate reach – he couldn't climb and she knew it – and her being able to watch him from above, Anna decided to see what kind of damage his knife had done. She released her grip on the branch in front of her and leaned against the trunk of the tree she was on and glanced down: her pants had been ripped by the blade at the knee, but luckily his aim had been thrown off by his haste and her running, so the wound was only a superficial cut on her calf. It hurt but it wasn't serious, and it wasn't even bleeding too much, so as long as she cleaned it and bandaged it up she was going to be alr-

The soft thump of a dagger burying itself in the trunk of the tree in front of her broke through her thoughts, and the wicked glint of the blade held her horrified gaze for a handful of terrifying seconds.

"Oh, lord," she thought, fear rippling through her body as she forced herself to keep her breath slow and as quiet as possible. "He's watching the trees to figure out where I am."

Probably, the rustle caused by the branch when she had let go of it to lean back had given her away. She had been so damn lucky that he thought she had gone forward instead of leaning back, or that knife would have totally found its mark, in her thigh.

How long, she wondered, until he figured out he had missed and decided to try the other tree, just to be sure? Did he even have another knife to throw? Probably, she knew of two of those hidden blades he kept on himself; assuming he had picked up the one that had scratched her leg, he had at least another one. Was it his last one, or wasn't it? If it wasn't, he was definitely going to take the risk and throw it. Would he take it even if it was? After all, it wouldn't have been so hard for him to dispose of her even with his bare hands.

Her mind raced as her thoughts swam, images of her falling on the soft moss of the forest floor, a dagger buried deep in her body, helpless as he crept near, smiling, his hands stretched into claws reaching for her, her neck…

Her heartbeat picked up as her breath turned shallow, precious seconds ticking by.

"Snap out of it, Anna!" she shook herself, fighting back the dread, the fear. She brought a hand to cover her mouth, both to make sure to keep her own breathing quiet and to make sure she still had control over her body. Her other hand flew to the pocket where she had stuffed the silver pendant, her fingers grasping one of the pebbles she had picked up by pure chance. She rolled it in her palm, aimed, and threw it.

Morten saw and heard a branch rustle a bit further away from the spot where he had thrown his knife. He didn't know if he had hit her, scratched her, or missed her entirely, but when another branch rustled further still, he knew he had at least got her moving.

Anna caught sight of him when he glided through the undergrowth, throwing her third pebble and sending it to hit a cluster of leaves past the second tree she had targeted.

"It worked!" she gloated, but triumph was short-lived: that trick wasn't going to fool him for much longer, not with her having to throw even further and with her stock of pebbles quickly depleting – she didn't have that many to begin with.

She carefully climbed down to keep on the thicker, less-likely-to-rustle branches, and slowly began to steer in the opposite direction from where she had thrown her last stones – her accidental saving grace. Of course, she didn't head straight for the core of Frost Wood: she took a detour – and a detour of the detour, and a detour of the detour of the detour – to make sure she wasn't followed. She'd rather take her chances with the cold and the dark and the pain – though thankfully that rush of fear had turned the cut on her calf into a negligible discomfort – than risking another round with Morten. Honestly, she would have sooner chosen an encounter with a Candlelight over one with him any time. It scared her less.

When she felt safe enough to return to the tree-house camp, darkness had fallen already. As she drew near, striving not to limp – once the excitement had worked its way out of her body, the pain from her cut had returned with a vengeance – she realized that her Merry Men were still around the bonfire, telling stories to one another. Actually, telling ghost stories to Little John… and not just any ghost story, she smirked when she heard Marten's words – «Because the impossible happened: a Candlelight saved her life.»

She stifled a chuckle: well, she had had a long, hard and stressful day so far. She was due a bit of fun.

She crept closer to the bonfire, her whole body hidden by the deep shadows of the forest, her face and hair well concealed by her hood, then she brought her foot down on the undergrowth, hard… and sure enough, a twig snapped loudly under her boot. She watched in amusement as Little John jumped a good foot in the air.

«Jittery, aren't we? What's the matter, Little John?» she purred, her voice darker, as she always made it when addressing… well, basically anyone but Raelyn, Duana and Elsa.

The blond man spun around, though the disquiet in his eyes didn't leave even after he realized it was her. She couldn't help but be pleased at that: it meant that story still worked its charm. She smiled a smile that was more baring teeth than smiling. Everybody was quiet as a grave.

«You guys weren't doing anything you shouldn't be doing, were you?» she teased them, and some coughed to dissimulate the bit of a scare she had managed to give to them as well.

«Of course not, Robin.» grinned Strider, welcoming and sheepish as he had been since that arrow. «And look! He cooked!»

Now that caused Anna's eyebrow to disappear under her bangs – not that they could notice anyway. «Did he now.» she let her gaze glide over each and every one of her men, and the outlaws closer to her could see the hint of a smile forming under her hood. «Well, Little John, I think we'll assign you to kitchen duties from now on. Your cooking seems to have drawn even our elusive Nightingale out of his nest.»

A few of the Merry Men whirled their heads around in disbelief, but it didn't surprise her: Nightingale knew how to literally make himself invisible; he liked to stay out of sight, barely within reach, keeping watch hidden among the branches of the big oak trees that surrounded their camp. It was pretty much the only one of her crew whose real identity was a mystery for her as well; normally she wouldn't have allowed him to join her on those terms, but he had seem so young and small and desperate when he had begged her to take him in… and after he confessed his story out of him, she hadn't had the heart to shoo him away.

Nightingale seemed to shrink when his name – or cover name, at least – was called out.

«We've saved you dinner, Robin.» Marten told her, gesturing to the covered pans – well, handles of the pans, since those were buried under the coals to keep the meat warm.

Anna's mouth watered under the darkness of her hood – it smelled so good – but she shook her head. «Thank you, but there was no need. Let Nightingale have my share.» then she waved towards Raelyn. «Scarlet, I'll have a word with you.»

The blonde outlaw nodded instantly; she bid everyone a quick goodnight with a wink and hurried to follow her up the steps of their treehouse – while Anna tried her best not to limp, counting on the lack of light to hide her injury.

Kristoff watched them as they disappeared through the branches, and finally let that grimace he had been hiding in Robin's presence show on his face.

Boy, had she given him a scare. And she had done it on purpose, he was positive.

He carefully removed the pan with the rest of their dinner from under the coals, carful not to burn himself, to hand its contents to the thin, hooded man that had stepped up to him. He nodded his thanks and then retreated to lean against one of the trees that supported the huts.

«So what's up with him?» he asked the outlaws he was slowly warming up to. «Why the hood? Is he some kind of undead too?»

Lionheart laughed, but it sounded hollow and bitter. «No, Nightingale isn't some sort of undead. But he is a survivor.»

«He's our newest recruit, excluding you. He's been with us for a few months already.» Marten hissed. There was some kind of anger in his voice, Kristoff noticed, the same outrage that had resonated in Lionheart's hollow laughter; the man's hands were clenched, his knuckles quickly turning white. «He joined after an attack on his village. He had tried to step between the guards and his mother. Our friend Captain Morten was there, and he didn't exactly appreciated it, as you can imagine.»

Kristoff wasn't sure he wanted to hear the rest, but Marten went on.

«He killed his mother in front of him, locked him in his house and set it on fire.»

«He never told us how he made it out of it alive.» Strider said, since Marten seemed too furious to continue. «We had heard of the fire, but when we went to check it out he wasn't there. All we know is that he showed up in the forest, calling out for Robin at the top of his lungs. She talked with him alone and decided to take him in.» He sighed. «He keeps his hood on all the time because, well, he didn't exactly made it out… unscathed.»

Kristoff immediately regretted his question and began to stare at the coals glowing in the stone circle they had set up.

Lionheart sighed too. «He doesn't really hang out with us. I guess that we're a little overbearing and… loud for him. He hasn't really gotten used to it yet. He generally comes down for the meals, grabs his share of food and runs back up on his trees.» He scratched the light stubble lining his chin. «This is the first time I've seen him staying down here. I guess your cooking is so good, he was hoping for left overs, or even a second helping.»

«It can't have been that good.» Kristoff downplayed, blushing. «Robin didn't even want a bite.»

«Eh, don't take it personally. Robin never eats.» Marten explained, his face still dark. Clearly, something about Nightingale's story really made him mad. «We always set something aside for her, but she always refuses it. I've never seen her eat.»

"Well of course she doesn't eat, she's, you know, dead!" Sven's voice snickered among his thoughts, but Kristoff snorted inwardly at that. «But… that's really not possible, is it? She probably just eats somewhere else, maybe she's picky. Like, really picky. Come on, you guys can't really believe that… I mean… can you?»

The Merry Men assembled in front of the fire smirked when he stuttered.

«It's not something we've looked into.» Strider said simply with a shrug. «It's not that we're not curious, mind you. But… after what happened to Cat, we decided it was better to mind our own business.»

Sven sighed in his mind. "I'm starting to think we'd better mind our own business too, brother…"

«Cat?» he asked instead.

«Scarlet's former companion, and one of the best pickpockets of Frost Wood.» Lionheart supplied. «Not exactly the fun and friendly type, but she was quite the dish. I don't know how many times Don Juan tried to work his charm on her. Didn't work, and he got his ass handed to him when she finally snapped. It was hilarious!»

«Don Juan's our philanderer.» Strider interjected before he could even ask. «The man never stole anything, but he slept with so many married women, he ended up with a price on his head. Robin doesn't really trust him around us so he doesn't know where our camp is, but he's a great source of information and he always has a jiucy bit of gossip to tell Robin when she seeks him out. But don't ask me how he gets it because I really don't wanna think about it.»

Kristoff could agree with that. «So what happened to Cat?»

«Well, she was never really on board with what we did. She never really liked us and never bothered to pretend she did. I don't know how many times we overheard her fighting with Scarlet about them joining Robin in the first place.» Oaken told him. «One night she began ranting about how creepy Robin was and that she thought it was all an act, and that she was going to find out how she did it.»

«Too bad Robin wasn't far away and heard everything.» Lionheart continued. «It wasn't the first time something like that happened, but I think Robin was sick of it. She asked Cat to follow her to have a word with her.»

When nobody spoke for several minutes, Kristoff prompted: «And?»

«And that's it. We never saw her again.» Marten informed him nonchalantly, as if it was the most normal thing in the word; but his eyes were fixed on the darkening coals. «Robin came back with her fire crystal and never spoke of her again.»

Fire crystal? Kristoff ran a hand over his face: there really were too many missing pieces to that story. «What's a fire crystal?»

All the Merry Men around him pulled a string of lace out of their shirts: from each of these simple necklaces dangled a pointy crystal which glowed a warm orange in what little light the dying fire still gave off.

«They're supposed to be used as a diversion in case a Candlelight attacks.» Marten explained. «You charge it by letting it sit in front of a fire, and should you find yourself in danger of having your heart frozen solid in your chest, you take it out and throw it away from you. The Candlelights apparently go after it and you have the time to run. We all have one.» he seemed to think it over, and finally added: «Except for Robin. She has a blue one.»

«You know…» Strider's words were soft into his ear, when the outlaw leaned closer to him to whisper: «The cord of Cat's fire crystal was severed when Robin came back. And from that day, something began to join us for some of our ambushes here in Frost Wood.»

Kristoff swallowed loudly, a shiver running down his spine. «S-something?»

«Well, do you have a name for that thing that was there today when we attacked the Weasel's carriage?» the outlaw retorted, cocking an eyebrow at him.

"Candlelight." Sven answered in his mind. "Oh God oh God oh God brother she did it she killed this Cat and turned her into a Candlelight! And you decided to go and threaten her, oh God we're so dead!"

Kristoff's mind swam. What they were saying to him didn't make any, any sense at all! Drowned fugitives brought back to life by a the vengeful spirit of a frozen-to-death Lady who had the power to command ghosts and even to create them out of those who crossed them? That… that wasn't possible, that just wasn't possible!

…was it?

He suddenly realized he didn't have a fire crystal. Robin hadn't given him one. He could feel the goosebumps crawl all over his arms.

But wait, he thought. Thinking back to his encounter with Robin had made him realized he knew something the rest of the outlaws probably didn't: he knew what Robin looked like.

And she definitely didn't look like an undead.

"Not that you've ever seen an undead…" Sven interjected. "…but yeah, they're probably not that pretty."

"Probably n- wait, what's that supposed to mean?" he asked, taken aback, but the voice in his head didn't answer him.

So… had Cat been right? Was Robin Hood just an elaborate ruse? But… why? And what had happened to Cat then?

He shook his head and looked at the outlaws. With the fire almost out, it looked pretty dark, and he could barely make out their faces: they were all masked by shadows. «I don't understand. What does this mean?»

«It means…» said a deep, raspy voice right behind him. «That you can't just walk away from Robin Hood.»

Kristoff whirled around, a hand over his poor, hammering heart, and his eyes found the darker shadow that lined the old cross-shaped cut on Scarface's right temple.

Why was everyone trying to scare him to death that night?!

«Shouldn't you all be in bed already? Or at least keeping watch, Strider?» he scolded the group, without bothering to wait for them to say anything. «I want you all up at dawn tomorrow! Except…» his hand hovered in their direction, then pointed right at Kristoff. «except you. You take the breakfast shift, so I want you up an hour before dawn. Scarlet will wake you up when her shift's over. And I'll be guarding the camp at that time, so you'd better not be late.»

«Y-yes, sir.» Kristoff chocked out: Scarface scared him to death alright.

He nodded, then walked back towards the stairs to the tree houses, hidden between the foliage and the darkness. «Good. Now off to your sleeping bags, everyone!»

The outlaws scrambled at his words, heading in the same direction – all but Strider, who stayed to take care of the bonfire and begin his watch. Kristoff followed them as they climbed to the huts, one by one. He hesitated in front of his own: would Robin be still awake? Would she be still mad for the escape attempt he had pulled that afternoon?

Well, he had no way to know. So he steeled himself and crawled in, only to find he didn't have anything to worry about: Robin and Scarlet were both asleep already.

He tried to get in his sleeping bag to follow their example, but he fought back a yelp when the palm of his hand was pricked by something cold and sharp. Squinting in the dark as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he made out the shapes of a pointy charm – so she had gotten him a fire crystal after all – and a round-

"It can't be…" he thought as his fingers traced the fine lines carved on the cold metal of the pendant.

It was.

He would have recognized those lines anywhere.

"My locket."

Author's Note:

So, um... hi?
It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for leaving you hanging! Here's the new chapter, which is a continuation of the previous one. For next chapter, we'll move away from the forest and back to the castle, so stay tuned and enjoy this chapter in the meanwhile!
And do let me know your thoughts ^.^