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"And I know who your father was."

That hit her hard and I watched her nearly buckle under the weight of it. I regretted it but didn’t dare take it back, because a man who was being read wished to be read accurately.

Every trace of play went out of her face. She came off the desk to her feet in one motion, and the woman standing in front of me was no longer a thief teasing a sheriff. She was the last of a house, and she was terrifying.

"Careful, Sheriff."

"I'm not the one who condemned him."

"You wear the badge of the people who did." Her chin lifted, and her voice dropped, and it was worse for being quiet. "You sit in this castle and read your laws and tell yourself the two of us are different animals. Your King executed an innocent man on a Tuesday and sold his land on a Thursday, and you serve him. That is the difference between us."

I had the answer in my mouth. It was sitting right there, the warrant and the statement and the dates that proved she was righter than she knew, that I had spent a fortnight assembling the evidence of her father's murder and had it lying under her boot heel at that exact moment.

I didn’t say it. She was an outlaw with no reason on earth to trust me, and Fitzwalter had eyes on this castle. A secret shared in that room could get both of us killed before I had proof enough to hang anyone.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor, brisk and coming closer.

Neither of us moved at first.

That was the absurd part.

Someone was coming. She was standing in the Sheriff's private office with enough crimes attached to her name to fill the rest of my desk, and still, for one suspended heartbeat, she remained there.

Close.

Warm.

Looking at me.

Her scent still wrapped around us. My gaze dropped once more to her mouth.

Robin noticed.

"If you're thinking about it," she whispered, "you're running out of time."

Jesus Christ.

My hand flexed against the desk. "Are you offering?"

Her smile came slowly. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

The footsteps drew nearer and I looked toward the door.

When I looked back, my office was empty, the window stood open, and the candle flames were leaning toward it in the draft.

My first thought was that she had come to prove she could, that the whole visit had been a message written in her own body, an answer to my note that said you are not the only one who can walk into another's forest.

My second thought, arriving a half breath later, was about the ring.

She had come all this way to give it back. Robin of Locksley did not return things.

Apparently, however, she was perfectly willing to return one thing while stealing another.

I looked at the empty space where she'd been sitting.

Then at my desk.

Then back at the window.