Blackthorn Briar, Court of Oak and Holly
The Fae Realms
September, 1845
At first, nothing seemed amiss about the flocks of Blackthorn.
The goats and the hens alike had wandered out of their shared coop that morning to feast on the grain Wren scattered before them. They continued to mingle as the hens moved on to gobbling up every manner of beetle and worm they could find, and the goats set about their acrobatics and attempts to eat their way through the thorn-vined fence surrounding the garden.
Wren turned to rejoin Shrike to break his fast within the cottage. Then staggered and spun on his heel to confirm what he’d glimpsed out of the corner of his eye.
There, amongst those who bore feathers and those who bore horns, hopped a creature who bore both.
“Butcher,” Wren called out.
Shrike quickly appeared from around the corner of the cottage. “What’s amiss?”
Wren pointed at the feathered and horned creature. “Wulpertinger.”
For, while it did not wear the same snow-white coat as it had when last Wren saw it, it still held the shape of a rabbit with a quail’s wings and a stag’s antlers—now in mottled brown and grey.
“Hail, friend,” Shrike said to the wulpertinger. “We almost didn’t recognize you in your summer coat.”
The wulpertinger sat up on its hind legs to regard Shrike as he spoke. When he’d finished, it hopped forward to meet him. Wren noticed a leather cord crossed over its back between its wings and knotted ‘round a rolled scrap of birch bark.
The wulpertinger halted in front of Shrike and waited patiently while he bent to slip the bark out of the leather cord. Shrike unrolled the bark. Wren had a glimpse of the letters scrawled across it like scattered twigs before Shrike, in a voice which began slow and hesitant and finished stronger, read aloud.
An auspicious night approaches.
We invite you to remember your promise.
The reference to a promise did not confuse Wren. The form of the messenger explained the message; the wulpertinger hailed from the Court of Hidden Folk, where Wren and Shrike had vowed to return and enjoy the company of huldrekall to ransom back Felix Knoll. Wren didn’t suppose the death of Felix in the months since then had absolved them of this debt.
The reference to an auspicious night, however, Wren couldn’t puzzle out. And so he turned to Shrike.
“Mabon,” said Shrike.
Wren raised his brows in expectation.
“Autumnal Equinox,” Shrike added. “A harvest festival.”
The wulpertinger combed one of its long ears with its fore-paw.
“We did vow to return,” Wren admitted. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“I think,” Shrike replied, “I prefer it to the harvest festival in the Court of the Silver Wheel.”
Wren gave a snort of laughter.
The wulpertinger twitched its little black nose.
Wren wrote out their affirmative reply on paper—or wasp-work, as Shrike called it. He added a few illustrative flourishes as he felt might appear appropriate on a missive from two kings. Shrike rolled it up in the leather cord and tucked it into the wulpertinger’s harness. The wulpertinger accepted the further gift of a sloe berry plucked fresh from the thorned vines.
With the fur around its mouth now stained purple, it hopped away down the path from Blackthorn. Then, to Wren’s astonishment, it leapt up and unfurled its pheasant wings to veer off into the sky.
“I suppose I ought to have expected that,” Wren said.
Shrike chuckled and slung an arm around Wren’s waist. There it rested as if it’d always belonged, its warmth suffusing Wren’s heart.
~
The twenty-first of September—or rather, Mabon, Wren reminded himself—dawned with ethereal mist. He and Shrike began their journey to the Grove of Gates before the fog dissipated. Shrike carried a basket of fresh-picked sloe berries from the blackthorn vines, which made Wren feel rather empty-handed, though Shrike assured him he needn’t worry on that head. Concern of any kind only seemed to strike Shrike when they reached the Grove of Gates and halted before a particular crumbling stone arch.
“Give me any sign that you cannot continue, and I shall bring us home again,” he said.
It took Wren a moment to catch what he meant. He’d seen how the Hidden Folk drew their strength from draining others in revels. However, “Surely it would break the bounds of hospitality for them to harm us?”
“I doubt they would intend to harm us,” Shrike reassured him. “But if they should harm you by mistake…”
Wren had no intention of falling to Felix Knoll’s fate. Still, he had to admit Shrike’s protective nature warmed his heart. “You shall be first to hear of it.”
Shrike appeared much relieved. He offered Wren his free arm. Wren entwined it with his own. Together, they strode through the gate.
Wren braced himself for waist-high snow drifts and biting wind.
He stepped into something else altogether.
Greenery erupted all around him. Belatedly he recognized the valley limned with pine forests from his prior visit. He’d never realised it could appear so verdant.
All the fae who’d crowded into the feast-hall in winter now wandered through the lush valley amidst profusions of purple wildflowers and bowers of bent branches overlaid with just enough deer-skin to shade those who dallied within from the brilliant sunshine. Fiddlers, drummers, and pipers dotted the landscape to send sweet music through the breeze, each with a ring of dancers around them.
One such ring stood rather near to where Shrike and Wren had appeared. The fiddler—or so Wren called them, for their instrument bore strings played on by a bow despite being a box clasped between the seated musician’s knees—cut off their song with a confused, discordant half-note. The dancers all spun to see what had halted the music. Their mixed expressions of bewilderment, disappointment, and irritation turned to wondrous delight as they clapped eyes on the Kings of Oak and Holly. Scattered applause, cheers, and whoops resounded. A few enterprising fae took off through the revel to bring word of the kings’ arrival to their fellows.
Shrike, looking no more comfortable with this attention than Wren felt, bowed, and Wren followed suit. Looking back from whence they’d come, Wren saw they’d just stepped through an arch of purple-flowering vine. He hadn’t seen anything of the kind when last he’d visited. Belatedly he realised it likely withered to nothing in the winter months. He gave silent thanks that his Shrike proved cleverer than him by half and had known how to find it under the snow.
The fae who’d gone to play the role of town crier left a trail of jubilation behind them as they went. Shrike led on in their wake, and Wren followed him up the winding thread of commotion to the centre of the throng.
Here a raised wooden dais stood with a familiar black walnut throne upon it. The Mistress of Revels appeared much the same as when last Wren saw her. Her strong chin held high, her broad shoulders thrown back, a crown of thistle and harebells nestled amidst her mighty antlers. The only difference Wren could see was that her gown of patchwork leathers had let down to become a mere skirt, leaving her bronzed chest bare. Wren glimpsed her breasts for but an instant before he forced his gaze literally anywhere else.
Dozens of beautiful fae flocked around the dais. Some to promenade before their mistress. Others to pick from the horseshoe-shaped banquet table laid out in front of it. Wood-carved like the throne, with its curving crossed legs carved into serpents and wolves, it held a feast fit for two kings. A flock of pheasants laid out on a wreath of their own iridescent wing-feathers surrounded the centrepiece of a roast stag decorated with its own antlered skull bleached white by the sun. Horns-of-plenty disgorged apples, pears, elderberries and lingonberries—the latter alongside pots of honey and their own jam interspersed with cheese both in wheels and crumbling piles. Links of black pudding (of all things, Wren marvelled to himself) surrounded the bright scarlet pots of lingonberry jam. Those who chose apples, Wren noted, cut them width-wise rather than length-wise to reveal pips in the pattern of a five-pointed star. And those who didn’t prefer fresh pears might partake of some preserved in lingonberry juice. For drink, he beheld fae pouring the same mead he’d seen them drink in the feast-hall in winter but also elderberry wine and lingonberry water.
Against all this, Wren began to fear the offerings of Blackthorn Briar would prove paltry—perhaps offensively so.
Yet as Shrike presented their basket of sloe berries to the Mistress of Revels, a gleam lit her eyes, and her smile grew into a grin.
Perhaps, Wren supposed, it was enough to know the meagre gift came from the mysterious court which held no subjects save its two kings.
“Kings of Oak and Holly,” the Mistress of Revels declared when they’d finished bowing. “We bid you welcome to our realm. Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Shrike thanked her for the privilege.
“Will you participate in our rite?” the Mistress of Revels enquired.
Shrike turned to Wren.
Wren cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Mistress. I know not what the rite entails.”
“We feast upon each other,” she explained.
Wren’s eyes flew wide despite himself.
“Symbolically,” she added almost as an afterthought. “We rejoice in the strength the summer has brought to our bodies and share them with one another. It honours the harvest to devour each other thus. It would prove a still greater honour if we might devour kings.”
Wren, who’d symbolically devoured Shrike more oft than not in the months since Midsummer, had to admit the idea held a certain thrill for him. He glanced to Shrike again.
Shrike inclined his head.
Wren swallowed hard and turned back to the Mistress of Revels. “We would be honoured to participate.”
“Then these,” the Mistress of Revels continued, gesturing to the loose row of fae at her left with a broad sweep of her arm, “are those who have volunteered to show you our hospitality first-hand. Pick those as would suit your tastes,” she added. “None will take offence.”
Wren, somewhat overwhelmed at the sheer number of beautiful fae looking over both him and Shrike with hungry eyes, felt more relieved than otherwise at this addition. He glanced to Shrike to see what he thought of it.
Shrike gazed down at him with a smile that said as well as words that the choice was rather up to Wren.
Wren would make a liar of himself if he claimed no particular fae had caught his eye. Pointing felt rather rude, so instead he screwed his courage to the sticking-place and strode up to one in particular.
“Your pardon,” Wren said to a fellow who looked as if someone had given him a Payne’s grey watercolour wash; a pale slate blue all over mottled with dappled silver, with blue-black close-cropped curls and beard and tufted tail, and ridged corkscrew horns spiralling up from the sides of his head. “Would you care to join us?”
The Payne’s grey fae, who stood as tall as Shrike if one ignored the horns, split his beard in a smile. “Aye, m’lord.”
Wren bid him go with Shrike and went on to make the same enquiry of two other fae; an antlered and fox-tailed ginger as short as Wren himself, though more slender, and an enormous burly brute who stood a full head taller than Shrike before one accounted for his horns and whose deep russet coat darkened to black over his hands and hooves.
Three seemed like a nice round number. Not so few as to give offence to those not chosen and not so many as to appear greedy.
The Mistress of Revels clapped her hands to dismiss her gathered subjects. To Wren’s relief, few appeared disappointed for more than a moment before all formed into clusters of two or three or more and wandered off to enjoy their own feasts.
Wren cleared his throat as he turned to Shrike and their three companions. “Is there somewhere a little out of the way where we might…?”
The Payne’s grey fae smiled and bid them all follow him. A short way off, just past the banquet table and down the hill, there lay an unclaimed pile of furs, with branches bent over them to form a domed roof laid with deerskin.
“Perfect,” said Wren, which seemed to please the three fae greatly.
It occurred to Wren, as he regarded the fae he’d chosen for their companions, that he hadn’t the first idea what they were, exactly. The one with the Payne’s grey coat he thought was probably huldrekall, but as for the fox-tailed fae and the hulking blood-bay brute, he couldn’t say. He cleared his throat. “Forgive me—I’m a stranger to your realm and unfamiliar with your custom. Are you all… huldrekall?”
After all, the last time he and Shrike had ventured into the Realm of the Hidden Folk, Shrike had told him the most polite thing to do was to ask.
The Payne’s grey and the fox-tailed fae exchanged a smiling glance before telling Wren they were both huldrekall, to Wren’s surprise. The blood-bay brute, in a deep and rumbling voice, identified himself as an incubus.
“And what may we call you?” Wren asked, glancing between the three fellows.
“Hull,” said the Payne’s grey huldrekall.
“Rikke,” chirped the fox-tailed ginger.
“Drude,” rumbled the blood-bay brute.
“Butcher,” said Shrike, to Wren’s surprise.
“And Lofthouse for myself, I suppose,” Wren added.
“Before we begin,” said Hull. “Is there anything you would prefer we not do?”
Wren hesitated, uncertain how best to delicately phrase his desires. “I would prefer if no one ventured into my fundament.”
It wasn’t that he objected to the practise altogether. Indeed, the notion more excited him than otherwise. But as he’d never done it before—or rather, had it done to him—he would prefer to have it done first with his Shrike alone, instead of amongst strangers.
Against all odds, the fae seemed to understand him, exchanging sage nods.
“And you, m’lord?” Hull asked Shrike.
Shrike shrugged his left shoulder. “I’m game for anything, so long as we may return to our own realm under our own power afterward.”
Wren, who hadn’t thought to specify, gave thanks his beloved proved far more clever than himself.
“We’ve no intention of bringing any harm to the Kings of Oak and Holly,” Hull reassured them with a slight bow.
The handsome half-smile Wren loved so well curled up one side of Shrike’s perfect mouth. “Then shall we begin?”
And, under the hungry gaze of the Hidden Folk, he turned to Wren, cupped his cheek in his palm, and drew him in for a kiss. Deep and languid, just as Wren liked best. A claiming kiss, he realised. One which marked him out as Shrike’s forevermore—and marked Shrike as his—no matter what occurred on this eve. The thought of it thrilled him to his core.
As they broke apart, Hull stepped forward.
“May I?” he asked Wren.
Wren, his pulse unaccountably fluttering, nodded.
Hull cradled Wren’s jaw in his fingertips and bent to kiss him. Wren, who’d kissed no one but Shrike since they’d met, and had kissed precious few gentlemen before him, hadn’t the first idea what to expect. Hull proved gentler than one might suppose, his touch carrying a tentative curiosity. He waited to open his mouth until Wren opened his, and only then did their tongues meet, still with that same tender exploration, as if the experience were as novel for him as it was for Wren.
Then they parted, and Wren opened his eyes to find Hull halfway into pulling his shirt over his head. It was a shirt in the style which had been fashionable in the age of Wren’s father or grandfather, with flowing sleeves and a loose open collar. Wren supposed Hull favoured it because it went easily over his horns.
A quick glance around showed all the other fae doing likewise. Rikke had the least to do in throwing off his tattered shawl. Drude had worn the same flowing shirt and knee-breeches as Hull; the thin white of the shirt had done little to disguise his broad crimson chest and stout middle, and the removal of his black woollen breeches revealed a prick in proportion to the rest of his enormous body.
Shrike likewise disrobed. The speed and ease with which he did so—out in the open, under the sun, in front of a horde of fae—astonished Wren at first, until he stifled his shock by reminding himself that Shrike was fae, after all, and the fae had no mortal moral qualms against the nude form. They’d done the very same at Midsummer. And after all, Wren enjoyed the sight of him. His sun-kissed skin, his well-earned muscles, his scars like a weathered map of forgotten lands which Wren delighted in navigating.
Wren felt less delighted at the prospect of baring his own body. He knew his reluctance was ridiculous. He had, after all, shown everything in the Midsummer duel—though he still blushed to recall it, much to Shrike’s amusement.
Even then, however, his body had merely been observed from afar. Whereas the three strange fae gathered before him now would experience it first-hand. He knew himself not half so beautiful as any huldrekall or incubus. No matter what Shrike might say to the contrary.
Shrike watched him now. The gleam of eager anticipation in his dark eyes turned to concern which knit his brow. A single stride closed what distance remained between them. He bent his head, and Wren upraised his face to meet his kiss. A brief one, nonetheless sweet, and one which Shrike followed by turning his lips to Wren’s ear as he enfolded Wren in his arms.
“We don’t have to do this, if you don’t wish it,” he murmured. “We may merely dance or feast. Or go at once. You need but give me a sign.”
“I want to,” Wren insisted low into his collar, knowing those keenly pointed ears would still hear him. “I just…” He trailed off, uncertain what he needed, until inspiration struck. “Will you help me?”
Shrike gave him a curious look but questioned him no farther. He kissed him again, this time slipping his hands beneath the lapels of his frock coat and sliding them up the sleeves until the whole thing shrugged off Wren’s shoulders and fell to the ground. Cravat, waistcoat, boots, trousers, shirt, and smalls followed suit. Under the watchful gaze of the three strangers, Wren realised more keenly than ever before what a ridiculous amount of clothes he wore by fae standards.
Then Shrike’s palms, deliciously warm against Wren’s bare skin, slid beneath his under-shirt and drew it up over his head. When his vision cleared of white cotton, he beheld all of the fae—Shrike included—staring at his body. Not with derision, as he’d feared, but with appreciation. Despite the countless freckles spattered across his skin, and despite the soft swell of his stomach, all three strange fae looked on him with no less interest than before.
As Shrike withdrew, Hull stepped forward.
“I’d be honoured to devour a king,” he said to Wren, his voice husky and low.
Wren glanced to Shrike again, saw his sly half-smile, and returned to Hull. He nodded.
Hull dropt to his knees. Wren beheld his corkscrew horns, the blue-black close-cropped curls tousled over his head, and his Payne’s grey shoulders dappled in silver. Likewise, he beheld a hollow in his back, from where his shoulder-blades ought to have begun, tapering down to just above the root of his tufted tail. The Payne’s grey deepened into darkness within the hollow. Dappled skin smoothed over the ragged edge, with occasional tufts of fur giving the illusion of a mossy crevice within a fallen tree.
Then Hull raised his arm to take Wren in hand, paused, and lifted his face to meet Wren’s gaze.
“May I?” he murmured.
Wren, his prick twitching at the barest brush of his fingertips, nodded again.
Hull wrapped it in his hand. It pulsed in his palm, stiffening even before he began to stroke it. He leant forward and kissed its tip. His lips opened. The head slipped inside.
Wren came undone.
Hull’s tongue, velvety-soft beneath the head of his prick, drew teasing, coaxing knots around him, slipping beneath the fore-skin to encircle the ridge, tracing the vein underneath from its root all the way up to the slit at its tip. His cheeks hollowed as he swallowed Wren down in earnest.
A familiar weight settled against his shoulder-blades. Wren glanced over his shoulder to find Shrike braced against him, back-to-back, whilst Drude and Rikke both knelt before him. Shrike turned his head likewise, smiled to see Wren, and shifted his position enough for their mouths to meet in a kiss. All the while Hull plied his mouth to Wren below, drawing unseemly sounds from his throat to echo within Shrike’s mouth.
An enthusiastic moan from Hull resonated through Wren’s prick, just as Wren broke off his kiss for breath. He turned to regard the huldrekall, who had dropt a hand to his own cock and abused it furiously. As delightful as Wren found the sight of Hull kneeling before him, he regretted that his posture blocked his beautiful dappled-grey prick from view. His fingertips traced the ridges of Hull’s horn before he thought better of it.
“May I…?” he asked, his voice coming ragged.
Hull raised his gaze to meet Wren’s with a mischievous gleam and withdrew his mouth from his prick just long enough to reply, “Please do.”
The words alone almost sent Wren over the edge. Then Hull bent forward and took him between his lips again.
Wren wrapped his hands around his horns and held tight just to keep himself together. The relentless ministrations of Hull’s tongue and hollow cheeks, matched by the low moans of pleasure from Hull at both his own self-abuse and Wren’s grip on his horns vibrating up through Wren’s prick, sufficed to send him to the brink again.
Then Shrike turned his head and caught Wren in a kiss again and flung him over the precipice. With an obscene groan into Shrike’s mouth, Wren poured torrents down Hull’s throat. Hull followed him but a moment after, his hips and arm stuttering with a final moan to wring the last of Wren’s seed from him.
Wren’s knees buckled. Shrike held him upright but barely. Then a rough groan announced Shrike’s own spend—the familiar sound sending a thrill through Wren’s heart and his prick twitching to life again—and together they descended to the pile of furs beneath.
No sooner had they settled than Shrike seized him in his embrace for another all-devouring kiss. Wren felt more than content to sit back and become a feast for him. Yet he didn’t want to leave the other fae out. Hull certainly deserved more for his service. As the kiss ceased, Wren looked ‘round, expecting to see him still kneeling before him. But Hull had vanished, and after another bewildered whirl, Wren found him standing before Shrike and holding out his hands to him to draw him up and lead him elsewhere.
Shrike shot Wren an enquiring glance.
Wren granted him an encouraging nod.
Shrike returned to Hull with a grin and clasped his forearms to haul himself upright. They didn’t go a great distance away; just far enough for Shrike to have room to lie back against the furs whilst Hull slipped his arms beneath his knees in preparation for something which Shrike seemed to find a very exciting prospect. Rikke soon joined them.
In their absence, Drude approached Wren.
“Shall we?” he enquired, his deep rumbling voice nonetheless gentle.
The voice alone would’ve sufficed to send Wren spilling into his hand. He nodded.
The soft furs beneath them both provided welcome relief as Drude’s not-inconsiderable weight settled astride him. Thighs thick as another man’s waist slid over Wren’s own and pinned his hips between them. The embrace of Drude’s enormous arms kept him upright, the corded muscles like tree-branches coaxed into the shape of a king’s throne, as Drude bent his head to meet Wren’s lips in a kiss. Hair like curtains of black rain tinged red with blood fell on either side of Wren’s face. The very hair which had drawn Wren’s notice in the first place, as long and dark as Shrike’s, though lacking his bolts of quicksilver. The kiss itself, from lips unexpectedly soft and with a tenderness that belied the fanged mouth, deepening into a slow hunger as his tongue drew out Wren’s own, sufficed to stiffen Wren’s prick again, much to his own astonishment.
It was Drude who broke away to breathe; Wren felt as if he’d forgotten how. He glimpsed Drude’s face, his strong jaw off-set by his soft smile, and dropped his gaze between them both to see Drude’s interest had grown as much or more than his own.
All other gentlemen of Wren’s intimate acquaintance fell into one of two categories; those who showed their true length whilst flaccid and those who grew into their full length when aroused. He had assumed Drude, already enormous at rest, fell into the former category. To his astonishment, however, he now beheld a rod which had grown full inches as it drew itself upright.
Something no less astonishing lay beneath the proud pole. Where most other gentlemen—Wren himself included—had a sack, Drude instead had nestling petals, two within two, like a delicate scarlet rose.
Whilst Wren stared, Drude’s hand slipped down beneath the pole to the petals. His fingers gently parted them to reveal a hollow, as crimson as the rest of him, and gleaming wet. Something which Wren had oft heard his fellow university students declaim the virtues of, but which he’d never encountered first-hand.
“Is this all right?” Drude asked, his voice a low rumbling murmur.
Wren, bewildered but no less intrigued, nodded.
Drude kissed him again. A roll of his hips crossed his blade against Wren’s. The petals followed in its wake, gliding up the length from hilt to point. With a final forward shift, Wren’s cock slipped inside the—well, the cunt, Wren supposed, for he didn’t know a better word for it. It felt both like and unlike what he’d experienced before. Not so unyielding an entrance, perhaps, but just as blazing hot and slick and tight. Drude sat back with a groan, sheathing Wren within him to the hilt in a single smooth thrust.
A gasp escaped Wren. His hands clenched against Drude’s broad back, his nails digging furrows into the skin. As before, he felt the core of his very being consumed by the narrow strait, and while Drude moved, rolling his hips in wave after ceaseless wave, Wren sliding in and out of him again and again, ever-returning to that steadfast hold, it was all Wren could do to hold back his spend before Drude could satisfy himself. His hips moved of their own accord, thrusting up into him, delving deeper and deeper.
Drude’s own cock slid between their bellies. Its tip stood well past Wren’s navel and left a trail of seed in its wake. Wren dropped a hand to it, his curiosity still insatiable. He wrapped his palm around it; his fingertips met around its girth, but barely. He gave it an upward stroke, exploring its considerable length—the velvet-soft skin, the vein pulsing beneath, the flesh rigid as iron. A low groan rolled up from deep within Drude’s chest and resounded through Wren’s own ribs. Wren clenched his fist around the blade and was rewarded with the sight of doubled fangs biting Drude’s lower lip. Then Drude darted forward—far faster than Wren would’ve expected a man of his size to move—and seized Wren’s mouth in a kiss.
Long dark hair, like and unlike Shrike’s, enfolded, hid, and shielded him as Drude’s cunt consumed him and the enormous brawn of the incubus’s massive frame encircled him in the iron hold of mighty arms as they embraced and Drude’s ravenous mouth devoured him. Drude’s hips ground down, his thighs clenching around Wren’s waist. The monster prick trapped between them throbbed. A hollow groan resounded through Wren’s throat from Drude’s lips, and with a few quick thrusts, the crimson cock erupted in a geyser of hot seed, splashing against Wren’s chest like molten silver. In the same instant muscles deep within Drude clamped down on Wren’s cock as if to wring his spend from him. So utterly consumed within and claimed without, Wren could do no more than succumb to ecstasy. He collapsed in Drude’s embrace.
The sheer brawn of Drude’s frame supported him with ease, even as the incubus shifted his weight and Wren’s soft prick slipped out of him as he settled down beside rather than atop him. Wren, whose vision had spun away to darkness in a sea of stars, knew only the soft touch of lips against his own; then they trailed down, gently marking his throat and collar until he felt the hot wet tongue licking Drude’s seed from his chest. The mouth returned to meet his afterword in a kiss of salt and something more.
Wren had felt so wrecked from his own spend he could hardly move. To taste the seed on Drude’s tongue, however, revived him. And as Drude continued kissing him—long, slow, languorous kisses, almost heartbreaking in their tenderness, each one breathing renewed life into Wren—something else revived as well, much to Wren’s continued astonishment. He’d thought himself done for in that last spend, and yet, under Drude’s influence, his cock stirred again.
A familiar hand caressed his cheek. Wren lolled his head towards it and forced his eyes to open.
Shrike sat beside him; his silver-shot raven locks tumbling over his shoulders and across his brow in dozens of fairy-knots, beads of sweat sparkling against his dashing scars, bruises borne of kisses beginning to bloom along his collar, gloriously naked and softly smiling. He ran his hand through Wren’s hair and trailed his fingertips along the curve of his ear.
“Enjoying yourself?” Shrike murmured.
Words could hardly suffice. Wren nodded.
Shrike chuckled. “One more, d’you think?”
“Yes.” The sound burst from Wren with all his remaining strength. “Please.”
Hull returned—Wren hadn’t even realized he’d gone—bearing a wicker tray laden with apples, honey, and berries. Shrike retrieved his dagger to slice a sliver of apple and dipped it in honey before bringing it to Wren’s lips. The taste of it, cool and crisp and sweet, proved sweeter still once he’d swallowed and Shrike followed it up with a kiss. The whole of his world seemed to centre upon it, and only when Shrike withdrew did he recall they weren’t alone.
In the interim, Rikke had approached and now stood before them with his fox-tail feverishly lashing.
“My turn,” he said with a flash of a feral grin.
Wren had chosen Rikke mostly for his resemblance to himself; the small frame and freckles he thought might appeal to Shrike. He looked the most like a mortal, to Wren’s eyes at least, if one ignored the antlers and tail. Yet rather than fixate on Shrike, Rikke’s golden gaze flitted between them both.
“How would you have me, my lords?” he asked.
Wren couldn’t even begin to imagine. “How would you like us?”
A gleam flashed through Rikke’s eyes. “Both at once?”
Wren blinked. Him in one end and Shrike in the other, he supposed, and he had to admit the notion appealed to him. “Certainly.”
All the fae—Shrike included—began to rearrange themselves. If Wren didn’t know better, he would’ve assumed they’d rehearsed it. As matters stood, he sat in place, bewildered, until they settled into their final configuration; Shrike facing Wren, with their thighs entangled; Hull behind Shrike; and Drude behind Wren, with the root of his enormous rod nestled between the globes of Wren’s arse and its tip rubbing against the small of his back.
Rikke stood where he had before, still glancing hungrily between Shrike and Wren. There didn’t seem to be enough room for him to fit between them on his hands and knees as Wren had supposed.
Just as Wren wondered if he ought to raise his voice and point this out, Rikke leapt between them and sat down astride Wren’s lap, facing him. Wren, stunned, could but blink as Rikke twined his slender arms around his shoulders.
“Will you fuck me, my lord?” Rikke purred.
Wren, still bewildered, nodded nonetheless. If he were to fill Rikke from the bottom, positioned as they were, he knew not how Shrike would find his way into Rikke’s mouth.
Rikke seemed in no way confused by their configuration. With a slight shift of his hips, he aligned Wren’s prick with his hole. Wren, still slick from his previous encounters, slowly sank inside the tight heat, a broken moan escaping his throat as he did so.
Rikke appeared still more satisfied than Wren felt, catching his lower lip between fierce fangs and making a sound almost like a purr of pleasure. Then he turned over his shoulder to address Shrike. “And you, my lord?”
Shrike’s hands descended to Rikke’s waist. He lifted him just halfway off of Wren’s length.
And set his own prick against the same hole.
If Wren had seen it, he would’ve doubted his eyes. As matters stood, he almost doubted his body, though his shaft knew well the sensation of Shrike’s own and recognized it as it slowly forced its way past him to enter Rikke.
Rikke’s eyes fluttered shut and his head fell back with a long, low sigh.
Wren had oft delighted in taking himself and Shrike in the same hand, sliding them together in his fist to bring them both to the brink.
And now he found the sensation both familiar and strange, as inch by inch Shrike slipped in beside him, a fit so tight it hardly seemed as if it were possible, Wren cleaved so close to him it seemed they would become one flesh within Rikke, until Shrike had sheathed himself to the hilt.
Wren thought he might die.
He hardly had a moment to grow accustomed to the unfathomable sensation before Rikke arose on his knees. Shrike and Wren slid halfway out of him before he slammed down again. Wren seized Shrike’s shoulders to keep steady. He clung on through plunge after plunge, until he found himself thrusting up to meet Rikke, and then his clenched grip became one of convulsive pleasure.
Shrike shuddered in his embrace as Hull entered him—and how incredible to see it, the sensation playing out across Shrike’s handsome features, how his perfect mouth fell open in a silent gasp, how those long lashes descended over dark eyes, the heavy brows knitting and coming undone over and over as Hull thrust into him, sending Shrike thrusting into Rikke against Wren in turn. Shrike slipped a hand down between Rikke and Wren—no small feat, given how their chests lay flush against each other—to take hold of Rikke’s cock; the resulting strokes drawing yips of ecstasy from Rikke’s lips. And all the while Drude clutched Wren tight and frotted against his backside. Wren knew not how long he might hold out against the overwhelming sensations.
On impulse, Wren reached out and seized Shrike’s jaw in his hands to pull him in for a kiss over Rikke’s shoulder. Shrike gasped into his mouth, then slipped his own free hand behind Wren’s head to draw him in deeper. The familiar taste of vanilla and woodsmoke from those beloved lips sufficed to send Wren tumbling over the precipice of his own spend. His seed spilled deep within Rikke and over Shrike still thrusting alongside him. Shrike likewise shuddered, his groan resonating through Wren’s own throat as his seed joined Wren’s, mingling with their crossed swords.
In that same instant, Rikke cried out, and further drops of mistletoe spattered against Wren’s chest. Hull stuttered to a halt within Shrike with a satisfied sigh. Seed splashed against Wren’s back as Drude shuddered beneath him.
And still Wren kissed Shrike, until he could support himself no longer.
He fell back limp against Drude’s brawny chest. It rose and descended underneath him in rhythm with his own shuddering gasps. He remained dimly aware of Rikke’s slender weight across his hips and an unfamiliar tongue eagerly licking Rikke’s spend from his chest. Drude’s tongue he recognized on his back; moreso for the tender kiss Drude left on the nape of his neck when he’d finished. Then Drude slipped away, as gently as he’d come, leaving Wren sprawled on the furs. Rikke’s weight lifted, and Wren slid out of him, almost painful for his over-sensitive prick to endure. He bit his lip against a discomfited moan.
“Steady.”
The sound of Shrike’s low burr above him proved ample balm to any exhaustion or pain Wren might feel. He forced his eyes open and beheld Shrike kneeling over him, taking a damp clout from Hull and using it to wipe his prick clean. Then another clout, and he began to do the same service for Wren. The sensation of pain gave way to pleasure soon enough. He’d grown again to half-mast by the time Shrike finished cleaning him off, and groaned in disappointment when he withdrew his hand.
“More,” Wren moaned.
Shrike pressed a finger to his lips to quiet him. Wren licked it. But as he opened his mouth to try and suck it—to draw Shrike in, to show him what he intended for the rest of him, what he hungered for more than anything—Shrike withdrew his hand altogether.
An unseemly sound of protest escaped Wren’s throat at this unjust deprivation. Any further argument halted as Shrike brought the rim of a drinking horn to Wren’s mouth. The taste of lingonberry water wasn’t quite what Wren had wanted, but a thirst he hadn’t realised he’d possessed struck him as it touched his tongue, and he drank down the horn in earnest.
No sooner had Shrike set the empty horn aside than Wren pounced on him.
“Please,” he gasped against Shrike’s lips when need for breath forced him to break off the kiss. “Please, please, please…”
Shrike kissed him again. A delight, as ever, yet Wren feared he meant to shut him up with it and would still leave him wanting.
But even as the fear crossed Wren’s mind, he felt a well-accustomed weight settle across his thighs. Beloved hands cradled his jaw as Shrike straddled him. A slight cant of his hips sufficed for Wren to slip inside the familiar and perfect sheath.
Already slick with what the others had given him, yet still he felt tight as a vise around Wren’s prick. He rolled his hips, and Wren moaned into his mouth, overcome. To have Shrike’s strong arms around him; to fill his every breath with his vanilla-woodsmoke musk; to plunge again and again into that tight wet heat; to take his sword in hand in turn and stroke its satisfying heft in his fist; to have his Shrike again, even after all this—it took all Wren had left in him to hold off until he wrung sweet bursts of mistletoe from Shrike’s cock before he, too, spent, deep within his Shrike. He collapsed in his embrace, satisfied at last.
Wren awoke, he knew not how long after, still gently yet firmly held in Shrike’s arms. Someone had thrown the rabbit-fur cloak over their bare legs. He heard Shrike’s low burr overhead, conversing with someone he couldn’t quite perceive with his cheek laid against Shrike’s chest. With an effort, he raised his head and craned his neck to see to whom Shrike spoke.
Hull sat beside him in all his Payne’s grey glory. Neither he nor Shrike seemed to have noticed Wren’s stirring. They remained in earnest discussion. Wren caught snatches of it here and there, his mind still muddled by the afterglow.
“…skeps,” he heard Shrike say, amongst other things, and Hull echoed it in his response.
Wren licked his lips. Both they and his tongue felt rather dry. He thought he might listen better if he had something to whet his whistle. He attempted to slide upright.
The moment he moved, the conversation ceased as both Shrike and Hull snapped their attention to him.
“Good morrow, our Holly King,” said Hull.
Shrike, meanwhile, slipped his hand through Wren’s hair and murmured into it. “How d’you feel?”
“Good,” Wren said with more honesty than he might have done otherwise, adding, “Thirsty.”
Hull reached out of Wren’s sight and returned with a drinking horn of lingonberry water. He handed it to Shrike, who held it to Wren’s lips as before. Wren drank deeply.
An ecstatic yelp came from behind him. Wren turned to find Rikke some ways off, his arse propped up on his knees and his head buried in his folded arms to muffle the unseemly sounds that burst from his throat as Drude claimed him from behind.
“Rikke is insatiable,” Hull confided in an apologetic tone.
Wren could hardly blame him.
“If I may be so bold as to ask, m’lord,” Hull continued. “Would you consider granting me the gift of letters? I know our runes already,” he added as Wren blinked in bewilderment, “but I should like to learn yours. I can repay you with honey. Or mead. Or assistance in beekeeping. Or something else, if you prefer. You need but name it.”
“Certainly,” Wren replied. Then, “Why?”
Hull gave him a wry and wistful smile. “Acquiring skill keeps boredom at bay. I’ve spent the last century beekeeping, and whilst I enjoy it, I require something more.”
Wren still didn’t quite understand. Yet further enquiry felt rude. He turned to Shrike.
“Fae perish when they lose the will to live,” Shrike murmured.
Something Wren had heard already. How it applied here, however, baffled him. Still, he worked at it, until at last he realised, “D’you mean fae can literally die of ennui?”
Shrike and Hull gave him identical confused looks.
“Of boredom,” Wren elaborated.
“Oh, yes,” Hull said as Shrike nodded solemnly.
“Well,” said Wren, still digesting this discovery. “I certainly wouldn’t want you to die for want of literacy.”
Hull grinned. “Many thanks, my lord.”
Shrike, meanwhile, raised a hand to trace Wren’s jaw with his fingertips and draw him in for another kiss.
“Are you satisfied?” he murmured against his lips as they parted.
Wren twined his arms around his shoulders and replied, “Kiss me once more; then I’ll be content.”
And to his delight, Shrike indulged him.
~