Maybe Tuck did realize it. Maybe she just clung to her leadership so tightly that she couldn’t yield to anything, even instinct. Didn’t matter, really. I didn’t want her job. I wanted the answers she didn’t know she had.
“Good,” I said once they’d finished. “The rest of you, go up the trail. Once you’re gone, I’ll let your leader go.”
The guards did as I said, disappearing as fast as they could spur their skittish horses into submission. I held on to the earl until they were out of sight, and after I waited half a minute, I loosened my grip on him. “Leave. And if I receive any word of retaliation, your neck will be the least of your worries.”
The moment I jumped off his horse, they took off, the old man clinging to the beast for dear life. I should’ve felt sorry for him, and part of me did, I suppose—it’d hardly been a fair fight. But whoever he was, he was clearly much better off than Tuck and her gang. And I couldn’t muster up an apology for helping them.
“That was brilliant!” cried Perry from far above me, and he slid down the trunk of the tree and scampered toward me. “How did you do that?”
“I think we’d all like to know,” said Tuck, and she swung down from the lowest branch, landing on her feet. “How did you manage to convince the most fearsome earl in the land to give up his most prized possession?”
“What, this?” I said, holding up the pendant. She made a grab for it, but I pulled it back, far out of her reach.
“Give it,” she growled, and I grinned.
“You said I had to steal it. You never said I had to give it to you.”
“Mac!” she said. “A little help?”
Mac, who was busy rummaging through the pile the guards had left behind, raised his head and blinked. And without saying a word, he ducked back down to examine a bag of beans. My grin grew wider.
“Tell me why you want it, and I’ll give it to you,” I said.
“It’s worth your weight in gold, that’s why.”
But the cautious way she watched the pendant didn’t make sense. She didn’t act greedy about it—instead she reeked of desperation. Like this meant more to her than air. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care,” she snapped. “Hand it over, or I’ll change my mind about you joining us.”
She wasn’t getting rid of me no matter what she wanted to think, but I needed her cooperation. And she didn’t handle teasing very well. Dangerous combination.
“All right, you win,” I said, and I offered her the pendant. She snatched it from me, cradling it as if she was holding her heart in her hand. What could possibly be so important about a necklace? “Just do me a favor from here on out.”
“What?” she mumbled, turning the pendant over in her hands. She wasn’t admiring it or appraising its worth—she was inspecting it for damage.
“Trust me. Or at least try. I’m on your side.”
“No one’s on our side but us,” she said, and she finally looked up, her fingers clutching the pendant. “No one.”
“Then let me be one of you. I can help hunt, I can gather, I can do whatever you need me to do, and I will be your subject, not the other way around. I promise.”
“Yeah? What’s in it for you?” said Tuck. By now the boys had finished packing up the loot, and Mac lumbered toward us, carrying a good two-thirds of our take. “You could survive in these woods for the rest of your life without any help from us. So why bother sharing?”
I hesitated. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because my answer was too close to the truth for me to swallow. But it was either that or lose everything. “I’ve been alone for a long time, and I’m sick of it. I won’t take advantage of you or rob you blind or ditch you, I promise. I help you, and in return, the lot of you won’t give me the cold shoulder whenever I do something wrong. Which will be as infrequent as I can manage,” I added. “That’s all I want. Friends. A family. Somewhere to belong.”
Tuck’s expression softened, and her grip on the necklace loosened a bit. Silence hung between us, but before things got too awkward, Perry moved beside me and slipped his hand into mine. “We’re all family,” he said in a shy voice. “You can be part of it, too, as long as you don’t eat too much.”
I managed a chuckle. “I’ll do my best to gather enough game so none of you will ever have to worry about portions again.”
He beamed, and all four of us looked at Tuck. For a long moment, no one said a word, and at last she sighed. “Oh, fine. As long as you hold up your end of the deal, you can stay.”
The boys burst into cheers, and I gave her a pat on the shoulder. “You won’t regret it.”
“I better not.” She slipped into the woods, leaving the four of us to trail after her. I grinned. No matter what she wanted me to think of her, I knew the truth: she wasn’t nearly as bad as she pretended to be.
* * *
We spent the rest of the day in camp. I showed Mac how to make sure a cooked rabbit stayed juicy; Perry and Sprout tidied up in between wrestling matches; and Tuck examined our bounty, though her hand was never far from that pendant.
It was nice—almost domestic, something I’d never had before. The council rarely spent time together in groups of more than two or three, and the way the boys laughed and played—it really was a family. Tuck was more an older sister than a mother, but they all deferred to her regardless, and while Perry occasionally called for her to join them, she stubbornly remained sitting.
There was something different about the way she held herself, too. A secretive smile danced across her lips, and she was more relaxed, more confident, not as nervous as she’d been before. Almost as if she’d conquered the unconquerable. I slid closer to her.
“You look happy,” I said, and her smile vanished. “So how do you know that earl?”
“What’s it to you?” she said.
I shrugged. “Just curious. You don’t seem to like him much.”
“Not many people do.”
“So what’s your reason?”
She sighed. “You’re obnoxious, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told. You still haven’t answered my question.”
She tugged on her braid, staring into the fire. It was twilight now, and if I’d wanted to, I could’ve gone back to Olympus. But as far as I was concerned, I was staying right here for the foreseeable future.