An air of enchantment continued to linger over Robin and Marian in their bedroom at Locksley Manor. Pouring through the open window, moonlight flooded the room, bathing it in loveliness, while husband and wife basked in their love.

Sleepy after their passion and perfectly content, Marian rested on her back in bed, weaving her fingers tenderly through Robin's hair. Robin lay over her between her legs, his feet near the very foot of the bed, his head over his wife's torso. Still enraptured after all they had shared, he was enjoying caressing her with trembling fingertips and planting feather light kisses over her, in awe and wonderment.

"I love you, my husband," Marian softly murmured, gazing down at him.

"I love you, my wife."

They held each other's gazes with loving looks and tender smiles. How much sweeter it was to say and hear the words, now that they had all their lives to share together.

Robin scooted even further lower and gently kissed Marian's belly where their unborn baby lay.

"Boy or girl, do you think?" he asked Marian.

Sighing, Marian pondered the question. "Boy," she firmly decided. "We already have two perfect little girls, after all." She giggled softly. "Your beard tickles."

With that, Robin's mood turned playful. His eyes twinkled with mischief. "Maybe you'll give birth to one of each this time, like Djaq." Djaq and Will were parents of twins, a boy Daniel and a girl Saffia.

Pretending to be outraged, Marian playfully slapped his shoulder, causing him to snicker. "One at a time," she said. "I can't imagine how Djaq managed it. But eventually, two of each would be ideal, don't you agree?"

Robin tensed and moved off her, lying beside her on his back, staring up at the ceiling. The air of enchantment had been shattered.

"What?" Marian asked, wondering what she had said to upset her husband.

Robin tried unsuccessfully to shake off a memory. "I had a dream about us," Isabella told him in his mind, and he remembered how cold the water had been, and Isabella clinging to him as it rose higher and higher, threatening to drown them. "I dreamed we were married. We had children."

He hadn't wanted to hear, already realizing he could never love her, even before he knew her evil nature. She was voicing his own dream for his life, but with Marian. "How many?" he had longingly asked, succumbing to trying to hold onto his dream.

"Two boys and two girls. The boys had your strength."

"And the girls your brains."

Robin hadn't thought Isabella particularly intelligent the way he regarded Marian, not yet knowing how deviously intelligent Isabella was. But he'd chosen to say it, thinking of Marian. All day long he'd been thinking of her, wanting to gently end things with Isabella without hurting her.

And now he was with Marian, his love and his wife, living the dream he had longed for, and he was thinking of Isabella!

Robin shook his head, forcing all thoughts of Isabella from his mind. Looking deeply into Marian's questioning eyes, he began to apologize. "Sorry. Something you said reminded me of-"

A child's scream interrupted his confession.

Ever since Gisbourne had abducted her and locked her in a chest, Ellen was plagued by nightmares. Alarmed, Marian sat straight up in bed, but Robin climbed out and wriggled quickly into his trousers.

"I'll go," he told his wife, heading out their room and down the hall to the nursery.

Ellen was awake, sobbing into her pillow. The children's nurse, in nightdress and shawl, stood beside her bed, wringing her hands. Grace slept soundly in her own bed, curled up in a tiny bundle, a puddle of drool on her pillow.

The nurse, despite being well past fifty, flushed when she saw Lord Locksley enter the nursery shirtless. What was that on his arm, she wondered. A tattoo? A crusader's cross, she figured. What a handsome man! But that wound in his side! It looked ghastly, as if the flesh around it had rotted and been cut away.

"Thank you, Nurse," Robin told her politely. "You may go back to bed." The nurse went to her adjoining room.

Turning his attention to his daughter, Robin sat beside her and stroked her hair. "Shh. It's alright. You're safe, Ellie. It was only a dream."

No longer sobbing, Ellen sat up and climbed onto his lap. "It was the Black Man, Daddy. I was scared!"

"There is no more Black Man, El. He's gone. Mama chased him away with her bow and arrow, remember?"

"Mama's brave."

"Yes, she is. And so are you."

"But I'm frightened!"

"Dreams can seem very real, I know. But they're not. Look around you. What is real, Ellie?"

"You're real, Daddy, and Gracie, and my poppet. Where's my poppet?"

Robin pulled her cloth doll from under her pillow and handed it to her. "She was hiding."

"Did she have a bad dream, too? Don't be scared," she told her poppet, cradling her. "The Black Man's all gone. Daddy, will you stay with me, until I fall asleep?"

"I will. Now, let's get you all tucked in again, shall we?"

It wasn't long before Ellen, clutching her doll to her chest, fell back asleep.

Robin sighed, hating Gisbourne all over again for invading his daughter's dreams. But he couldn't dwell on his hatred. It did nothing but poison him. As Tuck had told him again and again, he had to let it go.

Gisbourne was gone, burning in hell where he belonged, in Robin's mind. But his sister had returned, if she had ever left.

Had she really been living in Kirklees Abbey, as she claimed? Robin knew Isabella was adept at changing her behavior, seeming to be someone she wasn't. She had certainly fooled him in the past, and might have gone on doing so if she hadn't fallen for him, wanting him to care for her true self, as if he could!

He didn't want to think of her. He hadn't given her a thought in years. But coming across her today, and in the meadow of all places!

She had claimed she was like a fire in his blood. That was a lie, or a delusion on her part. He did not burn for her. That fire was out. It might have destroyed him, like the fire that burned down his church that very day his own for her ignited. Since then, he'd rebuilt his village church better than before, just as he'd rebuilt his life. Isabella had no part in the life he was trying to live now, neither Isabella, nor her brother, nor any other villain.

Ellen's breathing assured him she was fast asleep. Robin quietly left the nursery and returned to his own room, where Marian lay sleeping.

No, Isabella could not slither her way into their Eden, no matter how hard she tried.