The Holly King’s Peril

 

Blackthorn Briar, Court of Oak and Holly

The Fae Realms

January 1st, 1846

 

Wren still didn’t understand what, exactly, they were hunting.

“It’s an ethereal beast,” Shrike explained—not for the first time—as he strapped on his leathers. “The rite of its capture ensures the strength of the Wild Hunt.”

Wren, who wore just the same woollen suit he’d worn through all his years as a clerk, leaned against the hollow stump in the centre of the cottage as he patiently waited for Shrike to ready himself. All had sprung into motion rather suddenly from his perspective; a starling had arrived shortly after dawn bearing a missive from Nell, who had scrawled the words WHITE HART onto a scrap of birch-bark, and this was enough to send Shrike into a frenzy to join the Wild Hunt. “And it appears but once a year?”

Shrike grunted as he tightened a belt. “Sometimes once a year. Sometimes twice. Sometimes but once in a decade. Three years have passed since last we sighted it. It appears according to its wont.”

Wren stared at him. “It wants to be hunted?”

“Aye.”

“Why?”

Shrike shrugged. “It presents a challenge.”

Wren had some familiarity with the figure of a white hart as the symbol of Richard II—and as the name of at least one public house in every village in England, so it seemed. It’d come up in The Merry Wives of Windsor as well, though Wren had never thought much of the bard’s comedies, much preferring the histories and tragedies in that order. He’d made an exception for The Merry Wives due to its tangential connection to the Henriad.

All this he relayed to Shrike, who listened with more interest than any of the Restive Quills had ever suffered to show Wren. Shrike had heard of Shakespeare before he’d met Wren—A Midsummer Night’s Dream being a vague shadowy reflection of certain historical events of the Fae Realms. He’d even humoured Wren in his reading of favourite passages aloud for amusement as they huddled together in the nest before the fire through the long cold winter nights of Blackthorn.

“But I never thought it real,” Wren concluded. “Beyond the random chance of a fawn being born white and growing up into a hart, I mean. Will you catch it?”

Shrike served him a knowing smile. “I shall certainly try.”

Wren himself had no chance of catching the white hart. Or any prey, for that matter. Still, it sounded like a most singular sight, one which he wished to witness for himself. And he never tired of watching Shrike hunt. The glint in his keen eyes, and how the sheer strength of his lithe form sprang into swift strikes, stirred within Wren a hunger which Shrike felt only too happy to satisfy afterward, with the heady musk of blood and sweat mingling with his familiar vanilla-woodsmoke scent.

All the same, Wren did carry a pen-knife in his waistcoat pocket as he went forth with Shrike into the chill January morning out of Blackthorn Briar and toward the Grove of Gates.

Unlike the fox-hunts of Wren’s youth, the Wild Hunt had no permanent meeting-place. It met wherever its prey would be found. The first time Wren had attended, when Shrike had surprised him with a stag in Hyde Park, they’d arrived late in the midst of the hunt.

This morning, however, stepping through a peculiarly perfectly-round arch of tight-packed slates held in place by their own collective weight—the moon gate, Shrike called it—brought them to the hunting grounds whilst the fae still gathered.

Or so Shrike had claimed it would. When they passed through the moon gate, however, Wren beheld a pale field of snow-drifts scattered across crystal blue ice. Pines limned the shores beside and behind them. To the north, however, the crystal blue seemed to go on forever, forming the whole of the horizon. February wasn’t particularly balmy in Blackthorn Briar, but this was an even deeper cold than he’d awoken to in the cottage garden.

Wren shivered beneath his heavy wool cloak with its rabbit-fur lining. For once, it wasn’t Shrike’s cloak. Rather, it was the one Shrike had created for him in the original’s image. Made from the same black wool and silver rabbit-fur, and running much shorter to match Wren’s smaller frame, it appeared a slightly shrunken version, though no less well-crafted. Wren had watched in fascination as Shrike sewed it in idle hours through the summer and autumn, finishing just as wintry breezes began to blow through Blackthorn Briar. Wren’s own eagerness to join the hunt stemmed at least in part from the opportunity to show off the cloak—to display his beloved’s talents to their deserved audience. Still, he found he missed the familiar vanilla-woodsmoke musk that enveloped him whenever he borrowed Shrike’s cloak.

“Where are we?” Wren asked.

“The Lake of Eternal Ice,” Shrike replied.

Wren stared at their surroundings in disbelief. “This is a lake?”

“Aye,” Shrike answered with more patience than Wren deserved.

“Where’s the opposite shore?”

“Yonder.”

Wren shot him an exasperated look.

Shrike only shrugged. “It’s a broad lake.”

Wren supposed that answer would have to satisfy.

The icy wind that swirled through the air carried with it the distant murmur of merriment from somewhere amidst the pines. Shrike held out his arm for Wren to take and led him towards the sound. The trees provided some shelter from the wind’s bite as they went and soon they came upon a clearing where fae had begun to convene.

Aside from the far greater variety of folk, it reminded Wren very much of the gathering before a mortal fox-hunt. Rather than the distinctive red riding coats, or “hunting pinks,” as society called them, the fae wore costumes in every cut and colour. Wren glanced over the throng in search of familiar faces—Nell, the ambassador, Tatterdemalion, or perhaps even some of the hidden folk he and Shrike had met at Mabon. He did espy Lady Aethelthryth; difficult not to, given her perch atop her steed standing some seventeen hands high. As Wren peered through the crowd, however, he found many in the crowd staring back, some halting in their tracks or silencing their own murmuring conversations to do so. He supposed he ought to expect such a reception. After all, the Oak and Holly Kings hadn’t been seen outside their realm since the Winter Solstice.

A nymph with damselfly wings dared to approach. Wren wondered how she didn’t freeze mid-flight, clad only in a diaphanous chiton which seemed to flow in breezes beyond those felt across the icy lake.

“Good morrow, my lords,” she said, alighting barefoot on the snow before them. “May I offer my congratulations on the success of your Midwinter rite?”

Heat flooded Wren’s face. His tongue, leaden in his mouth, couldn’t have moved for speech even if he’d known how the deuce to reply to her. No mortal maiden had ever spoken to him so brazenly.

Shrike thanked her with a bow. The nymph beamed and continued on her way.

“Well,” Wren mumbled as she went out of earshot. “At least part of me is warm.”

Shrike cast a fond smile down at his burning cheeks. “It becomes you.”

Wren took a little satisfaction in that despite himself. “How did she know…?”

Shrike blinked. “The days grow ever longer.”

“Oh.” Wren supposed that provided proof enough for fae purposes.

The howling of the hunting horn spared Wren any further embarrassment. The broad-chested, moss-bearded, antlered leader of the hunt—whom Wren could not think of by any appellation other than Herne, particularly given their prey on this occasion—sat astride his enormous wolf in the midst of the motley throng, head and shoulders above all. He brought the yard-long curled hunting horn down from his lips just as Wren glanced over to regard him. Herne gestured to those fae who fluttered above the hunt, Tatterdemalion and the damselfly nymph amongst their number, and with a decisive thrust of his arm, sent them scattering in all directions.

Wren looked to Shrike for an explanation.

Shrike bent to murmur into Wren’s ear. “He sends them to sight the white hart.”

“Why not send the wolves and hounds to track it?” Wren asked Shrike in a low tone. “Would they make too much noise?”

Shrike shook his head. “It has no scent.”

“Oh,” said Wren. “Right. Ethereal and all that.”

Shrike smiled and smoothed an errant lock of hair out of Wren’s face. Even in this icy realm, his gentle touch spread warmth.

Not many more moments passed before a particular fluttering fae flitted back to whisper in Herne’s ear. Herne raised his horn to his lips again and blew a rousing note. The body of the hunt, already on pins and needles for the chase to begin, shivered into readiness. Herne’s wolf howled along with the horn. A kick of his heels saw it bounding away over the snow, and the hunt followed with thunderous tread.

Shrike, however, hung back, and therefore so did Wren. Only after the hunt had abandoned the hollow did Shrike go forth, and then in a slightly sideways direction, and on foot besides. He made no move to summon a stag for them to mount, as they’d done in past hunts. Wren supposed it’d seem a touch odd for them to ride a deer and force it to watch them stalk and kill another deer. And Shrike appeared confident in his abilities to catch the white hart up on his own two legs.

Though, as they went along carving their own path through the forest, Wren wondered if Shrike had accounted for his mortal companion.

In the months following the Summer Solstice, Shrike had taught Wren many things—the tending of a garden, the rearing of goats and hens, the keeping of bees, and the butchering of game. Amongst and amidst all this, he had likewise attempted to instil in Wren some knowledge of the hunt. How to track and shoot, yes, but more importantly how to move unperceived through the wilderness. According to Shrike, Wren had made great progress.

However, as they moved through the pines surrounding the Lake of Eternal Ice, even Wren’s mortal ears picked up the echo of his own footsteps as a patch of snow-turned-ice or a dead twig crunched under his heel. Shrike, meanwhile, travelled in total silence. And at a far quicker pace, too, having to halt and turn several times in their journey to wait whilst Wren picked his noisy way through the trees. Though Shrike gave not a word nor a gesture nor even a hint of complaint—indeed, he appeared more pleased than otherwise whenever he turned over his shoulder to espy Wren behind him—Wren couldn’t help but feel his presence held Shrike back. Doubtless Shrike would’ve caught the damned white hart by now if he didn’t have Wren dragging him down.

In the midst of Wren’s bitter self-reproach, Shrike halted again. But rather than turn to Wren, he instead crouched over something in the snow.

Wren caught him up and stood beside him, bending over his shoulder to try and see what he perceived. At first Wren saw nothing and thought perhaps whatever sign the white hart had left could be caught by fae eyes alone. Then, as he tilted his head and squinted, a shaft of sunlight coming through the pine-needles glanced off the snow just so, and he beheld the faint and delicate impression of a cloven hoof-print. The indented snow seemed to shimmer with iridescence. He caught his gasp before it left his throat.

Shrike continued kneeling for some moments longer. Only the infrequent whistling of the wind through the pines broke the silence.

“Would it be cheating to use the acorn spell?” Wren whispered. It sounded as loud as a shout to him in the snow-muffled wood.

Shrike shot him a startled glance which quickly transformed into a bemused smile. He replied in his soft burr, “Not cheating. Merely fruitless.”

Wren supposed he ought to have guessed than an ethereal creature with no scent might have other tricks to prevent its discovery through magical means.

Shrike arose and slung his longbow off his back to string it. Then, turning to Wren, he whispered, “Wait here.”

Wren felt more relieved than otherwise to hear the command. No longer need he worry about dragging Shrike down or holding him back. He nodded.

A slight smile graced Shrike’s lips. He strode off in utter silence. Soon he vanished amongst the trees, leaving Wren quite alone.

Too late, Wren wondered how Shrike intended to find him again. He glanced around. None of the surrounding trees or stones or sticks or snow appeared particularly notable to his mortal eyes. Perhaps Shrike’s keen fae sight found something more remarkable in this quarter of the wood. Or perhaps he would use the acorn trick again, as he’d done when he’d first sought Wren out more than a year ago.

The wind had persisted throughout the course of the hunt. Sometimes it howled across the lake. Other times it whistled through the trees.

Now, however, as Wren crouched alone in an unremarkable spot, the wind whimpered.

Wren cocked his head at the sound. For a moment he thought he’d imagined it. Then it came again; a distinct cry of pain carried along in the biting wind.

Shrike had told him in no uncertain terms to remain where he was. Still, as Wren sat and shivered and listened, the sound of another creature in agony wrenched even his hardened heart. He arose to follow where the cry might lead. Perhaps it was nothing. Or perhaps he might do something useful in the hunt after all.

The whimpering wind wound through the trees on an unfamiliar path. Wren winced at the sound of his own boots crunching through the dead sticks and snow. The pained cries—not true screams, but rather the bitten-off involuntary sounds of one who didn’t wish to reveal their wounds to the world yet felt their agonies all the same—grew louder as he went. Soon enough he stumbled on their source.

In a queer hollow where the snow swept against the enormous roots of ancient pines lay a faun. Sprawled, rather, with one leg caught aloft in a snare tied to a tree-branch. The particularly fine wire had encircled their hoofed foot between hock and pastern, drawing tight and slicing deeper and deeper into the furred flesh as the faun struggled. They had an unstrung bow slung across their back and a quiver belted around their waist. Their arrows had spilled across the snow in their fall. Now they struggled to retrieve them, their whole body stretched taut to bring their fingertips a fraction of an inch away from the arrowheads which might serve to cut them free from the snare which, if they continued struggling, looked well on its way to slicing through a tendon and crippling them.

“Are you all right?” Wren called out, more to announce his presence than to receive the obvious answer.

The faun glanced up, startled, and choked off another yelp of pain as even this slight yet sudden movement drew against the ever-tightening snare.

“Let me help,” Wren added in haste.

The faun stared at him.

Wren held out his hands, palms upraised, to show he meant no harm.

Hazel eyes with horizontal pupils flicked up and down Wren’s frame. The bell-shaped ears, which had pinned back against the skull amidst the dark cropped curls, flopped down to their natural restful position, and the rest of the body relaxed soon after, like a longbow unstrung.

Wren forced a polite smile and approached the faun with measured steps. He reached toward the snare, then hesitated, seeking permission with a glance. The faun granted it in a nod.

The slender snare, slick with blood, proved far too tight to untie by hand. However, it was not wire, as Wren had first supposed. Rather it was some sort of vine, dried and prepared in fae fashion to create a springy yet unyielding thread. Wren followed its path back to the tree-branch securing it in place and found the knot there as impossible as the loop around the poor faun’s leg. Unable to find purchase on either knot with his fingernails, Wren dipped his hand into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew his pen-knife.

The faun’s goat-eyes flew wide. In an instant their whole body tensed again, the ears pinned back, and their gaze flicked from the sharp point to Wren’s face and back again.

Wren didn’t see the cause for alarm. The pen-knife’s blade ran hardly as long as his own thumb. Certainly not a weapon capable of any real violence. Then, as he puzzled over it, he recalled that, unlike most blades in the fae realms, his pen-knife had a cutting edge of steel—otherwise known as an alloy of iron. No wonder the faun looked nervous.

“I’ll be careful,” Wren promised.

The faun didn’t look as though they entirely believed him, but with a hard swallow, they nodded nonetheless.

Wren slipped two fingers beneath the snare and slid the pen-knife between them, careful to keep its cutting edge pointed in the opposite direction from the faun’s flesh. He gave a swift tug toward himself and away from the faun. The snare snapped in twain.

“There you go,” Wren said, quickly shutting the pen-knife and tucking it back into his pocket.

No sooner had the blade vanished than the faun leapt up. Wren scarce had time for a belated flinch. He’d hardly supposed they’d prove so spry considering all they’d endured. Yet there they went, hopping around on one hoof to regather their lost arrows. They’d snatched up most of them before they turned to find Wren still staring. Wren half-expected a reproof for his rude silence. Instead, the faun smiled a most charming smile, one which revealed a very handsome dimple in their left cheek.

“Many thanks, my lord,” said the faun.

Wren didn’t think he would ever get used to hearing that title. Still, he forced a smile as he replied that the faun was most welcome, adding, “Have you anything for your wound?”

The faun blinked at him, looked down at their bleeding leg, then back up with a shrug.

Wren couldn’t take quite so casual a view of the matter. While the snare had not cut anything vital—or so it seemed to Wren’s eye, untrained in medical science—it had almost flayed the flesh, leaving a gory mess in its wake. Fae might not prove so susceptible to infection as mortals, but it couldn’t be good for the faun to run amok through the wild woods with such a wound.

And so Wren dipped his hand into his waistcoat pocket a second time.

The faun took on a wary stance. Wren didn’t blame them. But rather than another iron blade, Wren withdrew his handkerchief.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing to the faun’s grisly leg.

The faun cocked their head to one side in consideration, then hopped nearer and extended their wounded limb.

Wren bandaged it as best he could, tying the corners of his handkerchief into a neat little bow.

The faun smiled their thanks. Yet still they shivered as they glanced around the wood.

Against his better judgment and in defiance of Shrike’s warning echoing even now in his mind, Wren slipped his cloak off his shoulders and held it out to the faun.

The faun’s brow furrowed in confusion. They glanced from the cloak to Wren and back again. Then, at Wren’s nod, they took the cloak with a reverence Wren had thought none but himself felt for Shrike’s handiwork. Their shivering ceased as they drew it over their shoulders.

“Many thanks, m’lord,” they murmured again, running their fingertips through the rabbit-fur as if to marvel at its softness, as Wren himself had oft done.

Likewise again, Wren assured them it was nothing, even as he suppressed a shiver of his own. It seemed the faun’s chill had passed to him in exchange for the cloak.

The faun bowed deeply. Then they bounded off into the wood, swift as a deer, startling Wren once more before they vanished altogether.

Wren wasted some moments blinking in confusion in their wake. Then he turned, intending to go back the way he’d come.

And realised he had no idea which direction he ought to go.

The same howling wind which had carried the faun’s cries to his ears had swirled through the snow and obscured what few tracks he’d left behind like waves washing footprints off the sand. Shrike could have probably followed the trail of broken twigs and crushed pine-needles to trace precisely where Wren had gone. Wren, however, could not. And so he stood in the midst of the forest feeling particularly stupid. The lack of his cloak didn’t improve matters; while his wool coat and scarf had proved sufficient for London winters, they left him shivering in this icy realm.

Though, Wren observed as he spun in an idiotic circle looking for his own tracks, the faun, as fae, likely knew precisely where the hunt had gone. He could do worse than follow them.

And so he stumbled off into the wood.

The faun had vanished from mortal sight. Nor could Wren’s dull ears hear their hoof-beats. Yet he recalled—vaguely—what direction they had bounded off in. He went on in that way for some time, making the straightest line the winding wood would allow. A muffled silence hung over him, broken only by the occasional rustling of the wind through the branches and the crunch of his own footsteps over icy twigs.

Just as his self-doubt overcame his resolve and he cursed himself in earnest for having ever strayed from the point where Shrike bid him stay, he glanced up to find the trees thinning ahead.

A change of scenery, for once, had the very effect most quacks declared it would, in that it instantly upraised Wren’s hopes that he might not be quite so lost after all.

Continuing on through the thinning trees brought Wren to the lake-shore. No sign of the faun or any other of the hunt appeared to his mortal eyes. But if nothing else, on shore he could at least see and be seen. And, being an awkward mortal, he’d left a readily apparent trail behind himself through the woods as he went. And furthermore, unlike the ethereal white hart, he had a scent. If worse came to worst, Shrike could seek the aid of the wolf pack in tracking Wren down.

Still, the wind bit far more fiercely without the cover of the trees and the comfort of his cloak. Wren drew his scarf up over the nape of his neck until it almost touched the back-brim of his hat and tucked his gloved hands into the elbows of his overcoat. Nevertheless, he shivered. Perhaps, he thought, he ought to return to the wood—just a few steps in, mind—to shelter himself whilst keeping an eye on his surroundings.

Then something glimmered in the corner of his eye.

Wren whipped his head toward the spark. Squinting against the wind and the sun glinting off the snow, he beheld a pale form out on the lake. Long slender legs ending in delicate hooves pawed at the snow, and a regal head with its crown of silvery antlers bent to drink from a dark hole in the ice.

Wren had never seen an ethereal creature in all his life. Yet in an instant, he recognized this for what it was.

The white hart.

Wren knew not how he’d stumbled upon such luck. He stood downwind, as Shrike had told him he ought to do if he wished to catch anything. And it seemed as though the trick worked. The hart took no notice of him.

He had an urge—a very mortal urge, he supposed—to approach the wondrous creature. Not to hunt or harm it; he hardly had the skill for that, though upon reflection, he thought his steel pen-knife might more than suffice when hunting a creature of fae origin. But rather in this moment he wished to see it better and fix the image in his mind. Already he cursed himself for leaving his sketch-book at home. A memory would have to suffice if he wanted to immortalise it in his art.

Wren took a cautious step toward the lake-shore.

The hart continued to drink.

A few more sideways skulking steps brought Wren down to the lake’s edge. He dared to slide his boot-heel onto the ice. It held his weight. Indeed, it felt as solid as any dance-floor at a country ball. He slipped another stride out. Then another. And another. The ice withstood his weight.

All the while, the hart ignored him.

Wren held his breath as he drew within a few yards of the beast. Almost without thinking, he raised a trembling hand toward it.

The hart’s head darted up. It moved as fluidly as water tossed on the wind. For an instant, their gazes met, Wren’s dark eyes flown wide in astonishment and the hart’s glowing with an inner liquid light.

Later, when he had a moment to reflect on the incident, Wren would realise his error. He, a mortal man, weighed some ten or eleven stone. The white hart, being ethereal, weighed nothing unless it chose to.

And in that instant, it chose for its hooves to prove as hard as adamant as it struck the ice and bounded away.

A sound like a thunderclap resounded across the lake. The crack shot across the ice from the point the hart had struck, spreading from the drinking hole and shooting between Wren’s boots. He had just time to perceive it before another noise burst the air, this one like lightning cleaving an ancient oak in twain, as the ice shattered beneath him.

Wren plunged into darkness.

Cold like a thousand knives raking his skin. Cold fit to turn his very veins to ice. Cold that burned in his bones in a way he’d never realised cold could do before. He wanted to shut his eyes against it. He couldn’t.

And a very good thing that turned out to be, for he was not alone.

Shafts of sunlight pierced the water from the jagged hole in the ice overhead. By their illumination, Wren glimpsed a shadowy thing. It glided through the water beneath him; he knew not how many fathoms down, but not far enough. Its smooth undulating form, dappled like a leopard in shades of grey, ran some three yards long, if not longer, from head to tail. It had a maw like a hound on a skull the size of a horse’s—as long as Wren’s thigh and as broad as his shoulders. The eyes were pure black, almost human in their shape, but nothing human in the promise of cold death behind them. And as it rolled through the water, it fixed its hungry gaze on Wren.

The sight forced the breath from his lungs in an incoherent yell. He gulped freezing water in its wake. Now he had ice within him as well as without. His heart ceased to beat.

Yet he must escape.

The thought consumed him. He forced his frozen legs, weighed down with wet wool, to kick. His trembling arms clawed through the water as he sought in desperation for the shafts of sunlight still beaming down from the hole he’d fallen through. It felt as though he crawled through molten lead. The cold burned him inside and out with every thrash of his limbs.

But it drew it him nearer to the surface nonetheless.

At last, just when it seemed sheer exhaustion would drag him down to the dark depths forevermore, his flailing fingertips breached the biting wind above. Instinct forced him to recoil from the sensation, dry cold feeding on wet cold to shatter his nails, but survival demanded he try again, and this time, his hand closed on the jagged rim of the hole in the ice.

He ought to have hauled himself up all at once. As matter stood, he could only do so by degrees. His limbs convulsed with the cold, jerking him to and fro, whilst he struggled upward. He got his face above the water, spilling out what had filled his lungs, gulping down freezing air that scraped his throat on the way down and again as he coughed, droplets of ice still stuck inside him. He threw both arms across the ice. The soaked sleeves of his coat stuck fast and held him up even as his strength failed and he could draw himself out no further. He knew he had no hope of saving himself. Yet, with water still sputtering up from his throat and the biting wind burning in its wake, he couldn’t even whisper, much less shout for aid. If he could but catch his breath... if he could regain his strength… if he were to close his eyes, just for a moment, to restore himself…

“No—Butcher, you daft bastard! You’re too heavy, you’ll fall straight through!”

The shout jolted Wren out of his waking dream. A voice he recognised. A woman’s voice. He turned his head despite his stiffened joints and squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the snow to see who had spoken.

Several shadows clustered at the shoreline. One figure in particular strained against others clinging to their arms and legs to hold them back. This, Wren knew, even with the ice-water freezing his lashes together, was Shrike.

Another shadow slithered towards him across the ice. A figure crawling on their belly, smaller and more slender than Shrike, moving far faster than Wren himself could have done. Only when they drew within arm’s reach and thrust out an unstrung longbow towards him did he recognize Nell.

“Oi, Lofthouse—catch hold!”

Wren forced his frozen fingers to unclench and try their grip against the bow. With an effort, he peeled his sodden garments off the ice. They stuck again elsewhere, but by then Nell had begun reeling him in. His shoulders emerged from the waters. The wind nipped the nape of his newly-exposed neck. He kicked his legs to try and propel himself further out.

Then it struck.

Dozens of dagger teeth pierced him through all along his right-hand side. The crushing bite forced a scream from him. He whipped his head ‘round to see what had caught him—as if he didn’t already know.

The cold, dead eyes stared back at him above the wolfish muzzle.

Wren, half-frozen and bleeding out, had no power to save himself.

Then a blade plunged into one of the eyes.

The creature released him with a shriek fit to shatter glass. It veered off, taking the blade with it. Hands seized Wren under his arms.

“Come on, Lofthouse—up, up, up…!”

Wren scrambled to get his legs under him as Nell lifted. The jagged ice scraped against his wound as his waist emerged, then his hips, then his knees. Nell drew him into an embrace, twining her arms through his and linking her hands behind his back. From someone else, in a different sort of moment, it might have felt tender.

“I’ve got him!” Nell barked over her shoulder. “Reel us in, now!”

With a jerk, they began to slide together across the ice. What sort of magic drew them along, he knew not. It worked in pulses; a slide of some few yards, then a rest, then another slide. Wren’s sodden and swiftly-freezing clothes stuck to the ice with every halting, only to be torn free in the successive tug. Every jerk of the line sent fresh stabs of agony down his right-hand side. He took advantage of the pauses to raise his head, despite exhaustion dragging him down, and try to glimpse his Shrike.

A light appeared on the shore. Something flickering bright just where the trees began. A light-house, Wren thought at first, then realised what a stupid thought that was and how far his mind had wandered between cold and pain. It was firelight, though, that much he knew. He could not yet feel its warmth, though he dearly wished to.

He beheld, likewise, a thread linking Nell and himself with the cluster of figures on shore. Nothing of magic, but a common rope, which he now perceived tied around Nell’s waist. Following the line brought his eyes to his beloved. What a dashing figure he cut, Wren thought in his foggy mind—with the firelight behind him, strands of silver-shot ink whipping in the wind, and his strong arms hard at work hauling in the rope. Those who had held Shrike back now bent alongside him to reel Nell and Wren in. Amongst them Wren recognized the ambassador, a rather familiar-looking wolf who dragged the rope with its teeth, and the faun still wearing his cloak. Yet ever and again Wren’s gaze returned to his Shrike, his own northern star guiding him back home.

Then the rhythm of the line changed. No more fits and bursts but a steady and rapid slide. Wren’s final glance showed Shrike hauling hand-over-hand, his breath escaping his clenched teeth in plumes of dragon-smoke. Just a few yards remained between them. Even this felt insurmountable to Wren until the ice turned to rock beneath him and Nell tore her arms free from his frozen garments and, at long last, his Shrike descended like a thunderhead, his cloak billowing around them both as he swept over Wren and drew him up into his embrace.

On all prior occasions, Shrike’s embrace had sparked a kindling warmth spreading from Wren’s heart to the whole of him. But the icy plunge refused to leave Wren’s bones, and all he knew of Shrike’s embrace was his strong grip and his woodsmoke musk.

Shrike carried Wren as if he weighed no more than a leaf. He did not bear him far; a few strides into the wood toward the flickering light, now a crackling fire. There he laid him down with his familiar fur-lined cloak beneath him.

The fire had grown larger and brighter than Wren would’ve thought possible in the time it’d taken Nell to drag him to shore—though, he supposed, he had no real idea how long it’d been. Less smoke, too, than he’d assumed the snowy evergreen branches would’ve produced if cut fresh from the living trees. No sooner had he thought this, however, than a sharp crack caught his ear, and he glanced toward it to find the nymph in her gauzy chiton breaking a dead branch off a nearby pine. As he watched, she reached up again into the green and wrapped her fingers around another living branch. It withered in her grasp, the needles fading from blue-green to green-yellow and finally the burnt orange of desiccation. With another crack, she broke it off, and threw both branches into the hungry flames.

The fire’s warmth seeped through the frozen wool of Wren’s outer garments to barely touch his flesh. Rather than bring comfort, it reawakened his nerves to burn and set him shivering.

Then Shrike’s hands fell to the buttons of Wren’s overcoat.

Wren’s jaw had clenched too tight to allow him to voice any protestations against the loss of his clothes. The cold felt bad enough with them on. Furthermore, in the increasingly wandering pathways of his mind, a sense of shame bubbled up. Nevermind how many fae had already beheld his naked body at Midsummer and Mabon both. All that left his throat, however, was a pitiful whine.

“Steady,” Shrike murmured to him—gentle, sympathetic, and swift. So too were his hands as he stripped off the sodden wool and soaked cotton. In some places they stuck stiff together despite the fire’s warmth; then Shrike took out his hunting knife, slicing through seams and cutting off buttons to cleave the overcoat, jacket, waistcoat and trousers from Wren’s shivering body. The glint of firelight off the knife’s keen edge put Wren in mind of his own pen-knife slicing through the snare entrapping the faun, though he found he had far more trust in Shrike than the faun had felt for him.

When Shrike came down to shirt and small-clothes, however, he halted. His eyes widened as they fell to Wren’s waist. His jaw clenched.

Wren, trembling like a leaf in a storm, couldn’t command his head to tilt down to try and see what Shrike saw. But the more Shrike peeled away his clothes, the stronger grew the burn of his wound. It felt as if the monster’s maw bit him afresh with every breath. Trickling threads of something cold spilled over his side as a half-circle of knives stabbed again and again into his gut, searing as they withdrew. He’d never suffered anything like it in all his days. He hardly knew if he shuddered with pain or cold. Both, probably.

A hard swallow travelled down Shrike’s throat. Then, to Wren’s bewilderment, he set aside his knife and turned his clever hands to his own clothes. He cast aside his tunic and hose. His shirt pulled off over his head to reveal the body Wren loved so well, the myriad scars telling tales of valour. Yet rather than throw it down to join the rest of his wardrobe, Shrike kept his shirt in hand and took up his knife again. Swift strokes slashed the linen into strips.

Then the blade descended to slice the buttons off Wren’s own shirt-front and split open his under-shirt from stem to stern. Wren still couldn’t see what Shrike beheld beneath it all. He could see only Shrike’s own face and the haunted look in his dark eyes as his jaw clenched and unclenched. Yet he worked quick to wrap the strips of his own shirt around Wren’s waist. The cold ought to have numbed the wound, Wren thought. Instead, it burned, throbbing with new agony as Shrike pulled the makeshift bandage tight. A whimper escaped Wren’s throat. Murmured apologies fell from Shrike’s lips in reply.

The wind felt like a cat o’ nine tails scoring Wren’s bare skin. But not for long. No sooner did Wren lie bare than Shrike bundled him in his fur-lined cloak. The familiar sensation of the warm rabbit-fur paired with the scent of vanilla and woodsmoke reminded Wren of what he’d lost. He tried to explain and apologise for his own missing cloak, but his locked jaw would only unclench to chatter, and no words could escape him.

Shrike, in his own nakedness, slipped into the furred folds beside him and wrapped himself around Wren’s smaller frame. His long legs twined through Wren’s. His scarred chest pressed flush against Wren’s shuddering ribcage, careful to avoid the fresh wound. His strong arms encircled Wren’s narrow shoulders and held him fast. The warmth of him burned as bright as the bonfire. It seemed to flow from his heart into Wren’s own veins. Wren wanted to hold him in turn, to wrap his own arms around those broad shoulders, but his joints had gone stiff and would move only in fitful jerks of their own accord. The familiar rise and fall of Shrike’s breath filled his ears, with the fire crackling behind them.

“How did you find me?” Wren asked. He had to wrench his jaw open to do it, and his voice left him in the merest creaking whisper, yet Shrike’s keen ears perceived all.

“You heard it yourself,” Shrike murmured, his warm hand tenderly stroking Wren’s frozen brow. “The cracking ice. It resounded for miles.”

“Herne will be glad of it,” Nell said, tossing another branch onto the fire. “You found the quarry. Another successful hunt, thanks to the Holly King.”

“Nell,” Shrike said in a foreboding tone.

Nell glanced to him, then Wren, then Shrike again, before dropping her gaze to the flames and saying nothing further.

 

~

 

Shrike wanted murder.

Bad enough for his Wren to have fallen beneath the Eternal Ice. But to see him wounded set Shrike’s mind aflame. Wave after wave of fear chased by rage consumed him. He’d not felt its like since he’d beheld Larkin’s corpse crumpled in the midst of their cottage’s burning ruin. Wretched recollections of Rochester—when Tolhurst had dared lay a hand on his beloved—renewed themselves in Shrike’s mind as he gazed on Wren, once again the victim of unjust violence.

Flesh which had been marked only by the gentle dusting of beloved freckles now tore open in the ragged gashes of a monstrous bite. The blood had frozen into crystals like garnets along the edges of the wound. His nail-beds and lips alike had turned blue with cold. The icy pall of his face proved a sharp contrast against the memory of the endearing rosy hue that had bloomed not even an hour ago when the nymph had congratulated them on their successful midwinter rite. The lips disturbed Shrike most, having faded from a speckled peach to corpse-like translucence. He wished he could kiss life back into them. Yet his efforts to breath his own warmth into Wren’s mouth seemed to make no difference.

Whatever fell creature had done this would rue ever drawing breath when Shrike had done with them.

Yet it had slipped away beneath the ice, and even his own towering rage couldn’t force him to abandon his Wren in pursuit of vengeance.

Wren had protested the stripping of his garments, however feebly, which Shrike took as a good sign. It meant the madness had not yet seeped in to replace his lost warmth. As Shrike curled around him in the cocoon of their cloaks, Wren began at last to shiver—another good sign, for it meant his body hadn’t yet given itself up to a grave of ice and would fight back to cling to heat.

They didn’t fight alone. Nell, the ambassador, and the nymph all fed the bonfire’s flames, keeping it fierce and bright. The faun who wore Wren’s cloak—and how the sight of it on a stranger’s shoulders had startled Shrike—had vanished into the wood soon after returning it to Shrike’s care. The wolf, meanwhile, curled up at Shrike and Wren’s feet, and leant its furred warmth to their limbs.

Yet still Wren felt frozen in Shrike’s arms.

“What good is the power of the Holly King if it doesn’t protect him from cold?” Shrike muttered.

“The power of the Holly King is probably the only reason he’s survived this long,” Nell replied. “Any other mortal would have frozen to death before we could fish him out.”

Shrike gave some small thanks for that. Still, something dreadful had occurred before they could rescue Wren from beneath the ice. From the look of the bite—a sight which he knew would haunt him forevermore—he had some idea what had done the foul deed. He looked to Nell again. “Kópr?”

Nell confirmed it with a brisk nod. “Mottled skull-crusher. You’ll know it if you see it again. It took my dagger in its left eye.”

Shrike already owed her more than he could ever repay for dragging Wren back from the depths. His infinite debt increased twice-over for this blow she’d struck his heart’s hunter.

Glass clinked against glass as the ambassador searched within his satchel. A mumbled minced oath came from beneath his mask. Then a victorious gasp escaped him, and he withdrew something particular. He pressed a vial into Shrike’s hand. It held a faintly lavender concoction with a viscosity appearing half-honey and half-vapour.

“A draught of suspended sleep,” the ambassador explained. “It will keep him alive whilst we await assistance.”

“For how long?” Shrike demanded.

“Until the spell is broken.”

Shrike’s patience wore even thinner than before. “And the spell is broken by…?”

“A kiss,” the ambassador replied, nothing daunted. “Traditionally.”

Something Shrike would have gladly bestowed upon Wren under any circumstance. Still, “And it’s safe for mortals? Not just fae?”

“Perfectly safe!” the ambassador assured him.

Shrike wished he could believe him even half as wholeheartedly. The ambassador had never meant them any harm before, though Shrike knew well the harm that could be done with good intent.

But if he did not accept the potion, he likewise knew, though he did not dare to think, that Wren had no chance of surviving on his own. The cold would have slain any mortal. The wound made matters still more dire. He hadn’t the means to halt the flow of blood from the bite, and—

Shrike uncorked the vial. He steeled his nerve and brought the draught to Wren’s bespeckled lips.

“Drink,” he murmured.

Wren opened his mouth without question. Without even opening his eyes. His trust in Shrike proved absolute, beyond anything Shrike could have asked or expected. The knowledge broke Shrike’s heart. As if it weren’t already shattered by Wren’s suffering.

Shrike tilted the vial. Its contents travelled down Wren’s throat in a single swallow. His breath slowed the moment Shrike withdrew the empty vial from his perfect lips. Soon it seemed as though he didn’t breathe at all. Yet Shrike could still feel his heartbeat beneath his palm clasped against his chest, steadier and far slower than before. He’d seen Wren sleeping many a time since they’d met. Yet never had he seemed so still and quiet and peaceful as this. In another moment, Shrike would have kissed him simply to reward his beauty and celebrate their bond. In this moment, however, he resisted the urge he’d so oft indulged afore. He satisfied himself instead by burying his face in Wren’s collar and holding him tight.

The sun had passed it zenith when the faint ringing of sleigh-bells echoed through the trees.

Shrike raised his head—he hadn’t even realised he’d fallen asleep, much less knew how long he’d lain so. Wren remained in his suspended trance, as the ambassador had promised. The wolf lay curled at their feet. The ambassador, the nymph, and Nell still sat by the fire. Judging by the pile of kindling beside it, they’d spent many of the hours withering and hacking more wood to feed the flames. Whatever quiet conversation may have passed between them ended as both looked toward the sound.

No hoof-beats accompanied the bells. Only the curious swishing sound, like low-hanging branches dragging across snow-drifts, grew louder and louder as the sleigh approached. It came into view at last, emerging from the tree-line to curve along the lake-shore, its silver-blue blades gleaming like icicles, pulled by long-furred felines the size of sheep padding across the snow on their nearly-silent paws, driven by a pair of huldra.

Shrike had heard tales of the wildcats who drew the sleigh for the Mistress of Revels but had never glimpsed them before today. He wished Wren were awake to see it. What a marvel it would seem from his mortal perspective.

The sleigh slid to a stop some yards from the bonfire. The blonde huldra remained at the reins. Her companion, who appeared her twin save for the sable hue of her hair, leapt down and approached the motley group huddled ‘round the flames.

“The Mistress of Revels regrets very much the misfortune that has befallen the Holly King,” the sable huldra declared. “She hopes the Oak King will accept our aid in bearing him hence.”

Nell, the nymph, and the ambassador all turned to Shrike.

Shrike assented with a nod. He sat up, taking care none of his movements unbundled Wren from the furred cloaks. His clothes, however, did not lie where he left them. A glance ‘round the bonfire showed them hung up on branches over the flames beside Wren’s own garments, the latter having gone from frozen to soaked and now on their way to dry. Shrike supposed the ambassador had hung them up; Nell wasn’t a laundress, and the nymph didn’t seem the sort, either. Wren had oft told Shrike he smelled of woodsmoke and how he admired that particular aspect of his masculine musk. Now, with their clothes roasted over an open pine flame, they’d both smell very smoky indeed. Wren might find that amusing if he were awake, Shrike thought, and then regretted thinking it for the pang it gave him afterward. He donned his shirt, tunic, and hose with a quickness. The ambassador, meanwhile, plucked Wren’s raiments from the branches and folded them up neat.

Wren remained asleep all the while, bundled in Shrike’s and his own cloak. Shrike would have fain carried him alone. Still, he felt glad for the aid of the ambassador and Nell, who took up their posts on either side of Wren’s legs as Shrike lifted him beneath the shoulders. Together they all conveyed Wren to the sleigh. Shrike sat on the bench with bundled Wren laid out over his lap. The wolf curled up at their feet. The nymph had wandered off into the wood amidst the confusion, but Nell and the ambassador remained, clinging to the back of the sleigh balanced on its runners. Shrike turned to the huldra who had resumed their places at the reins.

“You have our thanks,” said Shrike.

“And you have ours,” the sable huldra replied. At Shrike’s bewildered look, she continued, “Our Court has a vested interest in the continued good health of winter.”

The blonde huldra picked up the reins and shot an enquiring glance at Shrike.

“To Blackthorn Briar,” said Shrike. “An’ it so please you.”

With a sharp nod and a flick of her wrists, she set the sleigh in motion. Silver bells rang out through the wood as they went. Pines flew past in a blur of green.

Shrike hardly noticed them. His gaze dropped to Wren in his arms. Only his face remained visible, asleep and serene yet pale as ice. A spike of desperation pierced Shrike’s heart. His hand delved beneath the furred folds, seeking, until it found Wren’s cold fingertips and clasped them close.

And, though the whipping wind tore the sound from his lips ere he spoke it, he whispered, “Hold on.”

 

~

 

Blackthorn Briar hadn’t seen so many souls all together since the Summer Solstice. This gathering proved far less festive. Nell, the ambassador, the wolf, and the faun had all accompanied Shrike and Wren not just to Blackthorn but into the very cottage. Shrike felt more gratitude than he could express at their willingness to abandon the hunt for the white hart. He wished he could show them better hospitality. Yet he couldn’t tear his gaze from Wren, much less offer food or drink or good company.

Nell, as she so oft did, made herself quite at home—this time much to Shrike’s relief. She took the copper kettle down from where it hung in the rafters amidst dried lavender and other herbs, filled it with water from the hollow stump, and hung it over the fire Shrike had stoked to a blaze in a feeble attempt to bring warmth back to his beloved’s body. Shrike didn’t take much notice of her doings until she pressed a steaming mug of tea into his hand some moments later—he knew not how long, for he’d not taken his eyes off Wren all the while. Now, glancing ‘round, he found her handing off another stoneware mug to the faun and setting the third on the night-stand beside Wren’s sleeping head. Likewise she set out a clay bowl for the wolf. For herself, she had her tin cup from her hunting pack, and the ambassador produced a delicate porcelain cup of his own from his clanking satchel. The matter of tea seemed settled without Shrike’s interference, and so he returned his focus to his Wren.

Shrike felt well-accustomed to performing chirurgy on himself. The myriad scars that bedecked his body attested to that. He’d even done it for Nell now and again in the midst of particularly bloody hunts.

Now, however, as he gazed down on the frail form of his beloved, half-curled in their bed, with shivers still passing over his skin despite the quilt and furs tucked around him and the fire roaring in the hearth of Blackthorn’s cottage, Shrike knew not where to begin.

Mortals were far more delicate than fae. While, unlike fae, their flesh could withstand things their spirit could not, so too could their spirit withstand far more than their flesh might bear, and so they oft slipped away from wounds which fae could endure for years.

And as he gazed on Wren’s sleeping face, his heart stayed his hand.

“Is there anything more the Court of Hidden Folk may do?”

Shrike flinched at the faun’s voice, low and soft though it sounded. He turned to find them looking as startled as himself at his reaction. He supposed, now that he beheld them perching their hip against the rim of the hollow stump, that they couldn’t stay long; the Mistress of Revels needed her sleigh and steeds returned.

Still, before they left, Shrike had one request. “Does any member of your court have the skill in chirurgy to save a mortal life?”

The faun worried their lower lip between their teeth. “I don’t know. But I may enquire. If there is one who can, we shall send them here.”

Shrike nodded. The faun bowed and departed the cottage.

“More tea, my lord?”

Shrike snapped his head ‘round to regard the ambassador. The ambassador, however, was not looking at him but rather delving into his clinking satchel.

“It would do some good, I think,” the ambassador continued. “Particularly if we were to add a dash or so of this.”

From his satchel he produced a round bottle about the size of a crab-apple. The pale pink liquid within swirled with a streak of darker pomegranate shade.

Shrike stared at the ambassador, then the bottle, then the ambassador again.

“A tincture of heart’s-ease,” the ambassador explained. “For—well, the obvious purpose, I suppose. Unless you would prefer something stronger,” he hastily added in response to Shrike’s increasingly incredulous stare. “There’s an elixir of poppy essence and distilled—”

Shrike had no intention of taking anything. He had no need of physick for his own body. Wren needed all. Yet, rather than any of this, what fell out of Shrike’s mouth when he forced it open at last, in words so dull they almost defied enquiry, was, “How is it you are so bedecked with potions?”

The ambassador blinked. “My brother is an apothecary and alchemist of some renown.”

“In the Court of Spindles?” Shrike couldn’t keep from wondering aloud, his astonishment proving too great to restrain. Strange enough that a noble bloodline in that realm would suffer a single son to live, let alone two.

The ambassador’s cat-slit eyes flew wide behind his mask. For the first time in all their brief acquaintance, Shrike heard something approaching fear in his voice as he replied, “No, no—well, he was, yes, but he escaped it some years hence. I followed in his footsteps. He dwells in Fathomseek now.”

From whence the mortal half of Nell’s family hailed. Disparate threads Shrike had observed throughout the years began to weave together before his mind’s eye. “And there he tends mortals as well as fae?”

“Indeed,” the ambassador said, sounding relieved to have moved on from the subject of his own ancestral realm.

“Would he tend…?” Shrike’s voice faded as his eyes fell again to Wren’s pale sleeping face. The bespeckled lips had not yet regained their rosy hue. He cleared his throat and tore his gaze away to see how the ambassador might answer.

The ambassador hesitated, leaving all Shrike’s hopes upon tenter-hooks. Then a resolve came into his masked gaze to match the tightening of his jaw. “He does not oft venture out of Fathomseek—or out of his laboratory, for that matter—but I will endeavour to persuade him to make an exception.”

“Do,” said Shrike.

The ambassador bowed deeply. Not just to Shrike but turning to do the same to Wren’s sleeping form afterward. Then he tipped his tricorn hat to Nell—who gave him a bare nod in reply—and departed the cottage.

In his wake, Nell met Shrike’s gaze.

“I think,” she said, “you need me here.”

Shrike heartily agreed, though even if he were the sort to unburden himself in speech, the pain in his throat would hardly allow him to say so.

Thankfully, Nell didn’t need him to.

Nell didn’t require much from anyone—or so Shrike had observed of her throughout the years. It served him well now, as she made her own supper from his stores and kindly shared it with him and the wolf, and hung her hunting hammock from the rafters of his cottage to sleep in. The wolf, once it had finished eating, curled up before the fire. Shrike himself slipped into the nest beside his Wren, gently enfolding his small frame within his own long one and willing his warmth to seep through their skin into the cold bones of his beloved.

The night stretched dark and cold and long. Shrike didn’t find much sleep in it. He hardly dared to close his eyes, their gaze fixed on the slow and subtle rise and fall of Wren’s chest and the barest parting of bespeckled lips which had not yet regained their rosy hue. Whilst Shrike could not kiss him, lest he break the spell, he could run his fingers through his chestnut locks, stroke his cheeks which had grown pale beneath their freckles, and chafe his hands between his own to try and bring some warmth back to the blue nail-beds. Then he laid his head beside Wren’s on the pillow and murmured low into his ear. He wasn’t one for chattering or long speeches. Yet he couldn’t bear the thought of Wren dreaming himself alone. And so he talked himself hoarse until dawn.

 

~

 

Everyone else in Blackthorn arose with the sun. Nell made herself breakfast and shared it with Shrike and the wolf. Then, with the wolf at her side, she went out to tend the flocks. Shrike remained in the cottage. Nothing, he thought, could persuade him from Wren’s side.

Then a knocking came upon the cottage door.

The noise startled Shrike out of his sombre meditative state. He whipped his head towards the door, then just as quickly back at Wren. Wren had stirred not a whit. No sound, it seemed, could wake him from his induced slumber.

With many a wary glance back at his sleeping beloved, Shrike crept toward the door. He reminded himself, as he hesitated with his hand on the latch, that none could pass through the wall of briars if they meant him or Wren harm. He drew a steadying breath and opened the door.

A page stood before him, clad in the green-gold livery of the Court of Bells and Candles. They bowed. Shrike nodded his head in return.

“Our Lady Aethelthryth slew the white hart,” the page began.

“My heart leaps for her,” Shrike replied dully.

The page either didn’t perceive Shrike’s sarcasm or chose not to acknowledge it. “She recognises the Holly King’s role in her victory and is grieved to hear of his peril. Would the Court of Oak and Holly accept her aid?”

“Has she a chirurgeon experienced in saving mortal lives?” Shrike growled.

“Yes,” replied the page.

Shrike blinked. “Oh.”

“Shall we send them?” asked the page, nothing daunted.

“Aye,” said Shrike. Then, because he knew he should, though he hardly felt it, he added, “Thank you.”

The page bowed and withdrew.

Shrike shut the door. His arm remained braced against the door-frame afterward. He let his brow fall to it with a heavy sigh. How long he stayed there, he knew not. Crackling logs tumbled against each other as they collapsed in the hearth-flames behind him.

“There’s a spot of luck,” said Nell.

Shrike, who’d half-forgotten she was there, whirled at the sound of her voice.

“Her bone-setters break curses,” she continued in response to his bewildered glance. “Surely they can handle a bite.”

While little brightness could penetrate the fog of gloom that hung over Shrike’s mind, he had to admit her words sparked a spot of hope. He knew well the legend of Lady Aethelthryth. How her wicked sister had coveted her throne and conspired to slay her with a curse, and how she had nearly succumbed, save for the fortuitous aid of the summoned chirurgeon, who had dwelled in the Court of Bells and Candles ever since. Lady Aethelthryth would never walk again, true enough, but she yet thrived, which was more than could be said for those who’d cursed her.

Still, Shrike’s sober good sense demanded he reply, “If she will spare us a chirurgeon at all.”

Nell raised an eyebrow. “She’d better. For her sake.”

 

~

 

Shrike didn’t expect to hear back from the Court of Bells and Candles before the se’en-night was out.

Which made the knock at the door the very next morning all the more confounding.

Nell, still in the midst of breaking down her hammock, shot a raised eyebrow at Shrike. The wolf likewise leapt to its feet and looked to him.

Shrike left off stroking Wren’s hair and went to answer the door.

And before him stood a mortal.

She stood shorter than he or Nell, though not so short as Wren. Her hair likewise surpassed his chestnut locks to burst into the true colour of flame, though she cropped it just as close, if not closer. Her clothes appeared plainer; a hooded robe covered all but her head and hands in rough brown wool. One hand rested on the leather satchel she’d slung over her shoulder. The other braced against the thick neck-ruff of the pack-stag who followed a half-step behind her, laden with two leather cases balanced on either side with straps across its back.

“The Oak King, I presume?” she said, after the silence had stretched for a long moment.

“Aye.” Shrike’s voice creaked with disuse.

“My Lady Aethelthryth has sent me to tend the Holly King,” the mortal continued.

Shrike blinked. “You are her chirurgeon?”

“Aye,” she replied with more patience than Shrike thought his due. “And bone-setter besides. You may call me Everilda.”

Shrike bowed and set about unpacking her steed.

Released of its burden, the stag looked to Everilda. At her nod it wandered off towards the back of the cottage where Shrike could just glimpse its joining the goat herd in gnawing at the briars surrounding Blackthorn. The goats didn’t seem to mind their strange companion.

Shrike led the way into the cottage with a leather case under either arm—one considerably heavier than the other. Everilda took in the singular round room in a sweeping glance which came to rest on Wren. Nell, Shrike couldn’t help noticing even in his distracted state, never took her eyes off Everilda. The wolf slipped out the door into the garden.

Everilda approached the nest. Shrike followed and, at her indication, set down her leather cases beside her. From the heavy one she took out a gyrdel-book. From the other she withdrew a gilded heart’s-vine and glass fever-wand—tools Shrike had seen used on other wounded fae after tournaments or hunts, yet never had the privilege of himself. She slipped the fever-wand between Wren’s lips. The brass bell of the heart’s-vine she pressed against Wren’s ribs, then lowered to the rude bandage wrapped ‘round his waist. She listened intently through the prong in her ear all the while. Nothing her instruments told her seemed to surprise her. At length she turned to Shrike.

“What tonic has he taken?” Everilda asked.

“A draught of suspended sleep.” Shrike strode to where his cloak hung on the wall-hook beside Wren’s and dove into its pocket to retrieve the empty vial.

Everilda accepted the vial from him. She uncorked it and sniffed the residue, then nodded, much to his relief.

“It’ll keep him peaceful through the chirurgy,” she assured him. “Where shall we lay him out?”

Shrike glanced between her and Wren already lying peaceful in the nest.

“A hard surface would serve better,” she added in answer to his unspoken question. “Something to brace against while I work. Easier to clean before and after.” Her gaze flitted over the room and landed on Shrike’s work-bench. “Would you object to the use of…?”

Shrike strode to the work-bench and cleared it off in three sweeping armfuls.

Everilda raised her brows. “That’ll do nicely. Have you a cauldron?”

Shrike leapt to fetch it. At her bidding he filled it with scalding water from the hollow stump and hung it over the fire to grow still hotter. When it boiled, he tossed it over the work-bench. Steam hissed up from the cleansed wood.

Everilda glanced at Nell. “Can you carry him between the two of you?”

Shrike felt as if he could carry Wren on a journey through all the realms and fight off any foe who dared to cross their path. He did, however, bear a great appreciation for Nell’s assistance in gently lifting Wren from their nest and conveying him to the work-bench.

As they laid him down, Shrike kept his hand against the back of Wren’s head to shield it from the unyielding boards. Laid out on the bare wood, he appeared still more frail than he had when swathed in quilt and fur. At the chirurgeon’s bidding, they set him on his left side, for the wound ran down his right flank. Shrike withdrew his palm from beneath Wren’s skull, and the sight of him lolling across the oak in the wake, even for but a moment, plunged a knife into Shrike’s ribs and sent him scrambling for something, anything, to support his helpless frame. Wren’s own scarf hung on the wall hook. Shrike snatched it up and rolled it into a pillow to slip beneath Wren’s head. Perhaps he imagined it, but he thought a slight sigh of relief escaped Wren’s barely-moving chest.

Everilda, meanwhile, had set her kit down on the stool and opened it to reveal a set of gleaming silver tools. Then she went to wash her hands and arms up past her elbows in the scalding spray of the hollow stump. At a significant glance from her, Nell did likewise, and shot the same glance back at Shrike. With some reluctance, Shrike followed their lead. It took him but two strides from Wren’s sleeping form. Those two strides felt like a thousand leagues. The warmth of the water he hardly felt at all. He hastened to return to his post by Wren’s head.

With clean hands the chirurgeon took up her silver shears and began to cut through the makeshift bandages. Very little blood had seeped through, leaving the merest pinpricks of scarlet on the outermost layer. To see the wound again—the raw and ragged edge torn by serrated teeth—shot Shrike’s heart into his throat. Yet the frozen garnets of blood remained to seal it shut. Whether an aspect of the Holly King’s power or the remnants of a curse from the Lake of Eternal Ice, Shrike couldn’t say. Still, he gave thanks Wren had not bled out.

“He’s no worse off than William Wyncelowe,” Everilda declared.

Shrike shot her an alarmed glance. But, whilst her words had baffled him, to her they seemed to suggest that Wren stood a far better chance than Shrike had hoped for. Or so he judged by her serene face and the soft surety of her voice.

Her soft and serene surety continued as she murmured a brief spell. Shrike could not perceive its immediate effect, though he trusted it did what she wished it to do.

Then she reached forth and gently touched the frozen garnets. They melted at her fingertips.

Blood began to flow down Wren’s side.

Shrike had beheld bleeding wounds before. He’d caused most of them. Scores upon hundreds upon thousands throughout his centuries.

But to see Wren bleed staggered him.

Shrike swallowed hard and dropped his gaze to Wren’s face. Though his lips retained their bluish tint beneath the freckles Shrike loved so well, and a dark bruise had crept beneath his eyes, his visage still held the same serenity Shrike had seen laid beside him every night since the summer solstice. To this Shrike clung, and upon it he pinned all his hopes, closing his ears against the clink of silver instruments and the shuddering wet sounds of the chirurgeon’s work and turning them instead toward the faint whisper of Wren’s slow and steady sleeping breaths.

“Vinegar,” said Everilda.

Shrike glanced up. Nell handed the vinegar jug to Everilda, who uncorked it and poured it over Wren’s side. Shrike’s eyes followed the movements before his mind could catch them up and force them away. He glimpsed Wren’s wound again—stitched up with silver threads and smeared with gore, the streams of vinegar just barely beginning to wash it away—then forced his eyes away, down to Wren’s face, where Shrike kept his head cradled in his hands as if they could shield him from all this.

“Linen,” said Everilda.

This time Shrike knew better than to look up. In idleness he stroked Wren’s chestnut locks, tying and untying knots in his fingers’ wake. There, at least, the frost had long-since melted, freeing the soft strands from icicles like blades.

Only when Everilda withdrew from the work-bench to wash her hands and instruments in the hollow stump did Shrike dare lift his gaze again.

Vinegar had washed the blood from Wren’s body. Its pungent scent yet hung in the air. Pale linen bandages sewn together tight around him, the edges of their wrapping clean and crisp, hid all his wound from sight. They shifted ever-so-slightly with each of his slow breaths.

“We may put him back to bed now,” Everilda announced, startling Shrike out of his reverie.

Shrike caught him up under his shoulders. Nell took command of his legs. Together they returned him to the nest. His head lolled against the pillow toward Shrike. A slight sigh escaped him, though his eyes remained closed.

“When shall I wake him?” Shrike asked, forcing himself to temper his hopes.

“In an hour or two,” Everilda replied.

Shrike’s heart soared to hear it.

“We’ve work to do in the meantime,” she continued. “The beast’s teeth have punctured his entrails.”

Shrike’s own entrails twisted at her words.

“He’ll need plenty of tea and broth to sustain him,” Everilda went on, heedless of Shrike’s inner turmoil. “Best start brewing now.”

Shrike leapt to do as she bid. Lavender and chamomile pulled down from the bundles hanging in the rafters alongside the copper kettle. The taps in the hollow stump filled kettle and cauldron alike with hot water which grew hotter as Shrike hung both over the hearth and stoked the flames. Nell went out to the garden for eggs and goat’s milk. She returned to crack the eggs into the cauldron and whisk them into gossamer strands amidst the boiling water. The milk joined the pot of honey on the stone slab beside the hearth, awaiting the tea.

“Is the old warren watch-tower in use?” Nell asked.

Shrike blinked at her. “Only to keep sheaves.”

“Even better,” Nell declared. “Might I borrow a few to make it fit to live in for the next fortnight or so?”

The request was not even half so odd as her bothering to ask permission to do as she wished. Shrike, still bewildered, nevertheless assented with a nod.

“You’ve got the ambassador and his brother arriving… well, within a few days, if he can find him and coax him into leaving Fathomseek,” she explained with a shrug. “Cottage is already a touch crowded. Thought it’d be better to set up camp not too far off. And if memory serves, Lofthouse prefers fewer eyes on him when he’s not wearing at least three shirts. Unless he’s making a rite of it.”

A chortle escaped Shrike despite all. “Aye, that’d do. Thank you.”

She waved him off and, with a significant glance at Everilda, gathered up her bundle and left the cottage.

What Everilda made of Nell’s glance, Shrike couldn’t fathom. She merely took up her fever-wand and heart’s-vine again. The fever-wand slipped between Wren’s pale lips. The brass bell of the heart’s-vine pressed against his ribs, then moved to the ivory wrappings ‘round his waist.

Shrike forced himself to cease watching her. Yet he couldn’t keep his gaze from returning over and again to Wren’s sleeping face whilst he sliced and chopped and crushed herbs to add flavour to the stirring stew. Goat’s milk gave it body. He melted cheese into it for good measure. He wished he had marrowbone to toss in.

An hour or so passed. Shrike knew not how long precisely. It felt like an age. The stew simmered. And Everilda, at last, turned to him and said the words he’d awaited ever since Wren had swooned in his arms.

“You may wake him.”

Shrike leapt up from the hearth, his heart in his throat. A single stride brought him to Wren’s bedside. There he knelt and took Wren’s cold hand between his own. He glanced to Everilda to find she’d turned her back and busied herself in her instrument case.

So Shrike held his breath, bent his head, and, as he’d fiercely wished to all these long hours, bestowed a kiss upon his Wren.

 

~

 

The first thing Wren knew was the gentle sensation of familiar lips against his own. Vanilla and woodsmoke filled his lungs, and he smiled even before he opened his eyes to find his Shrike’s handsome face above him.

The second thing he knew was a sharp ache throbbing through his right-hand side. His breath hitched and he bit back a pained groan. A shiver ran through his whole frame and refused to leave him.

Shrike’s soft smile fell into concern. His fingertips alighted on Wren’s brow—his touch warm as sunshine—and trailed down his cheek in a tender caress. His lips parted for speech.

Wren got there first. “Gave my cloak away.”

Shrike blinked in bewilderment.

“To a faun.” Wren’s voice came out in creaks and cracks. He would’ve said more, but his shivers increased and his teeth began to chatter.

Shrike’s mouth set in a grim line. He turned from Wren toward the hearth—for, Wren realised now that Shrike’s beloved form no longer filled his vision, he lay not in the icy forest but in their own bed in Blackthorn cottage.

A scraping sound arose from the crackling fire as Shrike worked the poker. Wren felt he could watch him in contentment forever. But he espied something over Shrike’s shoulder that drew all his attention.

A woman stood in the cottage.

Not Nell, either. An altogether stranger, dressed in the dull brown robes of a monk—or a nun, Wren supposed, for while she wore her auburn hair cropped close, it lacked a tonsure. She busied herself in digging through a leather case and producing a great deal of clinking noise. And as Wren stared, he realised her close-cropped hair revealed ears shaped much like his own.

Wren supposed his icy plunge had strained his nerves to their breaking point. Now he saw shadows as spirits and imagined an entire woman standing in their cottage.

Unless she was real.

Wren forced his gaze away from the conundrum and looked back to the familiar form of his own dear, sweet Shrike. He wanted to call him back to bed, to lie beside him and curl around him and entwine himself with his beloved’s warmth. Only he mustn’t call him Shrike just now, in front of company. Assuming the company was real. But neither could he recall what it was he ought to call him instead. And all the while his wound throbbed.

Shrike turned to the woman. “Ought he to eat or drink?”

“Oh, thank God,” Wren blurted. “You can see her, too.”

Shrike whirled ‘round to blink at him.

The lady laughed. “Aye—and I can see you, as well.”

Shrike stood. The poker in his hand had been replaced by a flannel bundle in his arms. He brought it to the end of the nest and tucked it beneath the furs and quilts by Wren’s bare feet. Only when its warmth seeped into his skin did Wren recognize it as a hot brick—or, given Blackthorn cottage’s construction, a rock.

This done, he returned to kneel at Wren’s side, taking his hand in his own with a soft smile. His warm palms folded their warmth over Wren’s frozen knuckles. Wren wanted nothing more than to take him by the wrist and draw him into bed beside him. But the presence of the woman gave him pause. Worse still, over Shrike’s shoulder, he beheld her approach the nest with her leather case.

“I’m called Everilda,” she said, relieving Wren of having to ask. “You may have some broth in a moment, but first I must ask; how do you feel?”

“Well enough.” The polite reply fell from his lips without thought. With a touch more honesty, he added, “Cold.”

He dared another glance at Shrike, his gaze flicking from one dark eye to the other, searching for answers. He couldn’t speak his myriad questions aloud, for he couldn’t think of a way to phrase his enquiries which wouldn’t give offence.

Shrike seemed to hear him regardless, for he murmured, “She is chirurgeon and bone-setter to Lady Aethelthryth.”

Wren didn’t know much of Lady Aethelthryth beyond that she had numbered amongst their allies in the midsummer duel at the Court of the Silver Wheel. He supposed that would suffice for trust.

“No pain?” Everilda cut in.

Wren caught his tongue before it let slip another polite lie. “Bit of a stitch in my side, but you don’t have to…”

He trailed off as he realised, given how naked his body felt beneath the furs aside from something snug wrapped ‘round his middle, that she likely already had.

Everilda went on, nothing daunted. “Is it a sharp stabbing pain or more of a dull ache?”

“Burning ache,” Wren decided after he’d taken a moment to focus on it—which he’d rather not have done, frankly. He hesitated before adding, “Gets sharp if I breathe in too deep.”

Shrike’s grip on his hand tightened.

Everilda nodded. “All rather to be expected, I’m afraid. But,” she continued, withdrawing a curiously familiar bottle from her leather case, “an elixir of poppies ought to blunt its edge.”

Shrike let go of Wren’s hand for just a moment to turn again to the hearth and pour a cup of tea. The scent of chamomile and lavender wafted up alongside the steam. Everilda passed him the laudanum bottle. Shrike dispensed a few drops into the tea and gave it a dollop of honey for good measure. Then he slipped his strong arm beneath Wren’s shoulders and raised him up to drink.

Wren had to reach for the cup twice before his clumsy fingertips met the handle. He couldn’t support its weight—couldn’t even tip it on his own—but still he could do enough to signal to Shrike his readiness to drink and when to draw it away again. The hot tea slipping down his throat became a warm balm spreading through his chest. For a moment he felt almost himself again. Then the warmth faded and the shivers resumed. Intermittent ones, chasing each other across his skin like summer zephyrs rustling through oak branches, rather than the bone-shattering convulsions he recalled on the lake-shore. But shivers nonetheless.

Shrike set the empty cup aside and laid Wren down as gently as an autumn leaf’s descent. Wren had half a notion to coax Shrike down alongside him into a sweet embrace. Yet the presence of Everilda still unnerved him. He’d already disrobed thrice-over in front of fae ladies. That was more than enough to blush for. The prospect of doing anything of the kind before a mortal woman, however, mortified him.

Everilda didn’t seem in the least bit mortified. She had, at last, got what she wanted out of her kit and now approached the bed. From the leather case she withdrew an instrument which appeared very much like a brass ear-trumpet affixed to a rubber tube, with a brass bodkin at the other end. Brass wires spiralled up the tube-like vines and, indeed, had little brass ivy leaves sprouting from them. Wren watched as Everilda briskly rubbed the mouth of the ear-trumpet—which he now saw wasn’t hollow, but instead solid brass—against her palm. Then, with a glance seeking his permission, she drew back the bed-clothes just far enough to expose his bare chest. She laid the ear-trumpet firm against his ribs over his heart, stuck the brass bodkin in her ear, and turned her gaze towards the rafters whilst she listened.

Wren could only imagine how fast his heart beat with the panic of having a mortal woman see his naked form. He forced his attention away from her face and towards her instrument. As his eyes traced the brass vines, he realised the ivy leaves seemed to furl and unfurl in time with his own pulse. Though he supposed that could just be delirium.

Whatever Everilda gleaned from this experiment seemed to please her. She removed the brass bell from his chest and, with another enquiring glance at him and Shrike both, pulled the bedclothes still further down to expose a wide sash of ivory linen wrapping Wren from ribs to hips.

Wren gave silent thanks she halted there—though he knew she must have already seen what he had below the water-mark of his hip-bones. It was his first time seeing what had become of his wound since he lay on the icy lake-shore. The crisp linen contrasted against his memories of Shrike cutting his own shirt to pieces. He supposed it’d been re-dressed after surgery. The strips of Shrike’s shirt were likely cast away. He felt a guilty pang at that and all the other trouble his foolishness had caused.

Everilda laid the brass bell against the ivory bandage. Its weight gave Wren a twinge but nothing worse. She listened intently, moving it now and again over the breadth of his stomach, though she never ventured near even the perimeter of his wound. As before, whatever she heard she seemed to take as a good sign, and when she withdrew her instrument, she did so with a smile. She tucked it away into her leather case and brought out something else—a glass tube, about as long and slender as a pencil, rounded off on both ends, with a minuscule blue fish embedded in the middle.

“Hold this under your tongue,” she said.

Wren shot an enquiring glance at Shrike. Seeing he seemed to find nothing about this out of the ordinary, Wren supposed this was just routine fae medicine and opened his mouth for the chirurgeon.

She tucked one end of the glass under his tongue and bid him close his mouth to hold it.

To Wren’s astonishment, the fish began to move. It wriggled and swam away from him, up towards the end of the tube, and as it went it changed colour from blue to green to yellow and, finally, an orange like flame. It halted about a half-inch shy of the rounded end and began to swim figure-eights in place.

Everilda plucked the tube from Wren’s mouth and peered at the fish with an approving air.

“Can you stand?” she asked him.

“What?” Wren blurted.

Everilda appeared unperturbed. “Just a quick turn ‘round the cottage. Then straight back to bed.”

Wren stared at her, then turned his confusion on Shrike. He felt he could hardly sit up, much less walk.

Yet the small smile that graced Shrike’s lips looked so gentle, so hopeful, and so encouraging, that Wren couldn’t bring himself to deny him an attempt, at least.

“All right,” Wren said, his voice sounding weak even to his own ears.

Once again, Shrike’s strong arm slipped beneath his shoulders and helped him sit up. His wound twinged, but already the laudanum had begun to do its work, and the pain ebbed.

He had a moment’s hesitation when it came time to withdraw the bedclothes altogether and swing his legs out. But just then, Everilda held out his own night-shirt, and then turned her back to him whilst Shrike drew it over his head. Wren supposed the mortification of having a strange woman touch his intimate garments was the lesser evil compared to her seeing, again, what lay beneath them.

Then, with a great deal more work on Shrike’s part than on his own, he stood.

His legs felt equal parts stiff and insubstantial. Ethereal, his mind supplied, though he moved not even half so graceful as the white hart. He leaned heavily against Shrike and made his way with slow staggering steps out from the bed. When they reached the hollow stump, he laid a hand on its rim and kept it there to guide him as he went. His other arm remained locked in Shrike’s.

By the time they made it back around to the nest, Wren’s legs trembled. Shrike laid him down feather-gentle. Beads of sweat trickled from Wren’s brow. Shrike dipped a clout in a bowl and washed Wren’s face in cool water that smelt of lavender.

Wren had never suffered any real injury in all his life. Not even a broken bone whilst climbing a tree or riding, which might have at least proved himself a man to his father. His experience with illness remained limited to a bout of pox as a child; he remembered little of it beyond his nursemaid keeping him abed when he’d much rather have been up playing with his tin soldiers. Good fortune had seen him escape the cholera outbreak at Oxford unscathed.

All of which meant the plunge beneath the ice and the ferocious bite came as something of a shock.

The alternate numbing and burning of the frigid waters had dulled the pain of the attack when he’d received it. He realised it now that he’d reawakened in the warmth of Blackthorn cottage and found the ripping agony of monstrous teeth throbbing through his side despite the laudanum’s attempts to dull it.

Wren had assumed—as he supposed all gentlemen assumed—that if he ever did get caught up in the throes of dire illness or injury, he would simply buck up and press on and push through it.

Instead, he found himself weak and pathetic and rendered utterly dependent.

What must Shrike think of him? Shrike, who until Wren had come along had stitched up all his own wounds with gritted teeth and nothing more?

Everilda seemed pleased, at least. No sooner had Shrike laid Wren down than she approached the nest with her instruments again. Wren submitted to the tube beneath his tongue and her listening to his gullet. Both produced results she deemed satisfactory, adding, “I’ll return by noon if you don’t need me before.”

She packed up her instruments as she spoke. With a nod to Wren and another to Shrike, she departed the cottage—much to Wren’s relief.

Shrike, meanwhile, descended on him the moment the cottage door shut behind her and laid another kiss on his lips. Neither pain nor exhaustion could keep Wren from kissing him back. He would have kissed him forever, for the sheer joy of it, but Shrike withdrew, and Wren hadn’t the strength to follow him.

“I gave her forewarning,” Shrike said, turning to the fire, “that you might not feel at ease in the company of a strange woman.”

“Oh,” said Wren. He added a belated, “Thank you.”

Shrike smiled as he ladled something fragrant from the cauldron set in the hearth into a clay bowl. The savoury scent wafted up to fill the cottage. Wren hadn’t felt hungry before. Now, as Shrike brought the broth to him, he realised he’d grown ravenous.

With Shrike’s continued assistance, he sat up braced against a pile of pillows. All his strength went toward remaining upright. This left him nothing with which to grasp or raise the spoon from the bowl. So it was left to Shrike to bring both to Wren’s lips and dispense spoonful upon slow spoonful to his withered Wren.

Whenever Shrike happened to glance away—either down to the bowl to procure another spoonful, or, when Wren’s exhaustion overcame his hunger and it became apparent he could consume no more, off to the stone slab beside the hearth to set the half-empty bowl aside—Wren searched his face. A furrow of worry appeared now and again between Shrike’s brows. Nothing more as of yet. Wren dreaded the inevitable arrival of disappointment, disgust, and disdain in Shrike’s eyes.

But as Shrike returned to him, he inevitably did so with the small handsome smile Wren loved so well.

As Shrike raised his hand to brush his knuckles against Wren’s brow, Wren summoned all his strength to catch him by the wrist. He intended to drag him down into an embrace beside him. The most he could manage, however, was a feeble tug.

Shrike took the hint regardless.

He bent to grant Wren a kiss, all the sweeter for its brevity. Then he withdrew and busied himself with his tunic ties. Tunic, shirt, and hose all fell away, leaving his beloved form bare beneath Wren’s gaze. At last, he slipped beneath the quilt and furs beside Wren. Wren had shivered again as the bedclothes shifted. But the shivers left him when Shrike curled around him, careful to avoid his wound, yet nonetheless embracing him with all the warmth Wren craved. It required very little from Wren to coax another kiss out of him.

“I’m sorry,” said Wren as their lips parted.

Shrike furrowed his brow. “What for?”

“It’s my fault you lost your chance at the white hart.”

Shrike continued staring at him for another moment or two. Then his hand came up to brush Wren’s hair off his brow and trail down his cheek in a tender caress.

“I did almost lose my heart,” Shrike murmured. “But he is found again, and reawakened, and now all is well.”

 

~

 

Wren awoke that very evening to find Everilda had returned to haunt the cottage.

At least, he assumed it was the same evening. He at least felt confident it was evening, given the moonlight streaming in through the eastern windows.

She sat on the edge of the hollow stump and made low conversation with Shrike, who no longer lay naked beside Wren in bed but had evidently got up in the intervening hours to don his clothes and now knelt before the hearth stirring the cauldron. Wren wondered how many hours Everilda had spent here whilst he slept. She’d promised to return at noon. The thought of her watching him in near-silence for so long unnerved him. Had she arrived whilst Shrike still lay naked abed beside him? The fae didn’t look askance at such things, Wren knew, but she wasn’t fae.

His own shirt hung on the wall-hook at the opposite end of the nest. He felt rather well-rested and thought he might have enough strength and cunning to retrieve it without her notice. She was mortal like him, after all. Her senses couldn’t be so keen as Shrike’s or other fae. He would feel far more comfortable, he knew, with a shirt between his bare flesh and her gaze.

But the moment he endeavoured to sit up—not even successfully moving his body, just tensing muscles in preparation to move—his wound reminded him of its existence with an agonizing pulse of pain which began as the sudden stabbing of a dozen-odd daggers and bled out into a burning ache that spread through his whole frame.

While he did his best to stifle his unmanful yelp, a strangled sound nevertheless escaped his throat, and both Shrike and Everilda whipped their heads toward him.

Shrike leapt up at once and flew to Wren’s side. There he knelt and seized his hand in his own, whilst the other cupped Wren’s cheek as his deep burr murmured, “Steady—steady.”

Everilda, meanwhile, poured a mug of tea from the kettle and added a few drops of laudanum. This she handed off to Shrike, who brought it to Wren’s lips and cradled the back of his head to bring him up to it.

Wren gladly drank of the potion. He felt less glad when Everilda pulled back the quilt and furs to expose him to his hip-bones.

“A sharp pain?” she asked him, her eyes on his bandage. “Like something ripped or snapped?”

“Just a twinge,” Wren insisted. “Fading already.”

She didn’t look convinced. “The bandage ought to be changed. We’ll see what lies beneath it and judge better then. After the poppies have a chance to do their work,” she added, with a glance at the mug Wren had not yet emptied.

With Shrike’s assistance, Wren dutifully sipped his tea. It took a quarter-hour for him to finish. As he sipped, Everilda busied herself by filling a cauldron from the hot tap in the hollow stump and setting it over the fire to boil. After another quarter-hour had passed, Everilda asked him if his pain had diminished enough to allow him to stand.

“You need only walk to the work-bench,” she explained in response to his wary expression.

His wariness did not, however, arise from his feeling daunted at the prospect of further pain. He glanced to Shrike, to his shirt still hanging on the hook, and back again.

Shrike understood him in an instant and arose to retrieve the shirt.

By the time he’d returned to Wren, Everilda had turned away to tend to her boiling water—which Wren still didn’t understand the purpose of, but if it kept her back to him whilst he dressed, he thought it all the better. Shrike helped him throw his shirt on over his head and tug its hem down past all he wished to disguise.

Everilda hauled her cauldron off the fire and across the cottage to Shrike’s work-bench. Wren had just time enough to note how curiously barren it’d become whilst he slept before she heaved the cauldron and sluiced boiling hot water over the whole of it.

Wren glanced to Shrike to see what he thought of the steam rising off the wood of his work-bench.

Shrike, however, seemed not to notice anything out-of-the-ordinary about her actions. Instead he wound his arm through the crook of Wren’s and, once Wren had swung his legs out over the edge of the bed, gently drew him upright until he stood on his own two feet.

Wren leant heavily on Shrike and hobbled towards the work-bench. As he drew near it, he noted curious dark blotches in the wood-grain. Not knots, but rather sprawling irregular stains of a red so dark it seemed almost black, as if someone had spilt port wine.

Belatedly, he recognised it as blood.

And, as he was the only one with a gaping wound in his side which had just recently been stitched up by a chirurgeon, and no bloodstains appeared anywhere else in the cottage, he was forced to conclude that the chirurgy had occurred on Shrike’s work-bench, and the blood was his own.

Again he turned to Shrike. It felt natural to seek reassurance in his warm dark eyes. But Shrike didn’t meet his glance. Shrike’s gaze had fallen to the bloodstain, and the grim line of his mouth and the hard clench of his jaw bespoke his displeasure. A shudder overtook him—one Wren could feel with their arms so entwined—and he looked away.

A pang struck Wren. He knew not how to begin to apologise for despoiling Shrike’s work-bench. Nor did he know how to scrub out blood from wood. He wondered what it would cost to replace the stained planks. Surely someone in the Moon Market knew carpentry. He made note to investigate the matter when he had strength enough to wander out of Blackthorn under his own power.

But before he could even begin to compose an apology, Shrike had turned to him with a wan smile and, as if Wren weighed no more than the ethereal hart itself, picked him up to seat him upright atop the work-bench. Wren’s pulse fluttered for reasons beyond surprise or his invalid condition.

“Thank you,” Wren managed, startled but no less grateful. He couldn’t support his own weight. Still, with his arms arranged around Shrike’s shoulders, and Shrike standing firm and strong as any oak, he kept himself from collapsing.

Everilda, meanwhile, had gone to scrub her hands and arms from fingertip to elbow in the scalding hot water of the hollow stump.

“Now, then,” she said as she returned to the work-bench. “If you would be so kind as to remove your night-shirt.”

Wren balked. He’d only just got it back on. And now she wanted it taken off again.

Evidently aware of his reasons for hesitance, she added, “It’s nothing I’ve not seen before.”

Which was true enough. And yet, it did not make Wren feel any more comfortable. “Yes—well—still.”

Another moment of awkward silence passed whilst Everilda and Shrike waited with more patience than Wren deserved for him to say something sensible.

“Perhaps,” Wren added, more out of desperation than any good idea, “you might turn your back, and I could, er, drape… something…?”

Everilda raised an eyebrow, but after exchanging a glance with Shrike, she turned around nonetheless.

With Shrike’s assistance, Wren got his nightshirt off over his head. Then he carefully arranged it across his left thigh so the folds covered what he considered absolutely necessary. The resulting display was not what most mortal women would consider decent, but it would have to do.

Wren cleared his throat. “I’m ready.”

Everilda turned ‘round and took him in with a quick up-and-down glance. Wren thought he caught something like amusement at the corners of her mouth. Then she selected a pair of silver scissors from the myriad instruments she’d laid out. The stitches of the linen gave way beneath their blades. As she unwound the bandages from around his waist, the clean crisp outer layer gave way to another where dark spots of rust had soaked through.

Likewise, dark spots began to gather at the corners of Wren’s vision. His head felt curiously light. His breath quickened.

Gentle fingertips caught him beneath his chin. Wren acquiesced to their bidding, which forced his gaze away from Everilda’s work and up towards Shrike’s face.

“Don’t watch,” he murmured. “Look at me.”

Wren found this advice rather easy to follow, since he quite enjoyed looking at Shrike. At the moment, however, he couldn’t help noticing how pale Shrike had turned, and how his smile, while sincere, appeared nonetheless wan.

Still, the sight of it leant Wren strength, and he found he breathed easier whilst he gazed into Shrike’s eyes.

The sound of ripping thread and fabric continued. The bandages fell away altogether. Wren’s stomach lurched as his gut sank free. Something cold and wet trickled down his side. His skin itched in its wake. A scraping sensation ensued along the lips of his wound and forced a hiss from betwixt his clenched teeth.

“Your pardon,” said Everilda. “There is some cleaning yet to do.”

Wren, having helped Shrike treat his wound after the midwinter duel, braced himself for the sharp scent and sharper sting of vinegar.

He did not expect a singular and sudden stab from an unmistakable needle pricking one of the teeth-marks. Nor the unaccountable sensation of something withdrawing a quantity of fluid from within him. A whimper escaped him alongside it.

“Your pardon,” Everilda repeated, her voice low and not unkind. “Nearly done.”

The needle slipped out—a sickening feeling which made Wren’s stomach lurch again. The scent of vinegar filled his nostrils as cold liquid poured over his wound. Then a damp clout, likely soaked through with the same stuff, daubed away at the bite in much the same manner as he’d daubed Shrike’s wound after the winter solstice duel.

Several minutes passed and several clouts dampened and discarded before Everilda ceased cleaning the wound. Wren began to tremble despite Shrike’s support. Beads of sweat had broken out and trickled down his brow before Everilda daubed him dry. Then a tight belt of linen coiled ‘round him, binding up what felt as if it threatened to spill out, layer upon layer, until Everilda pinned it in place and took up needle and thread to stitch it secure. Wren felt glad of it, for he found it braced him up. Though he felt gladder still when Everilda stepped away and declared him fit to return to bed.

With Shrike as his crutch, Wren hobbled back to the nest. Everilda washed up at the copper tap and refilled the cauldron to set on the hearth. Then she brought her queer glass tube to Wren’s mouth again.

“Under your tongue,” she said, “an’ it so please you.”

Wren obeyed. The fish turned crimson and swam furiously toward the far end of the glass. Everilda tsk’d as she took it back from him to examine.

“Feverish,” she declared. “Not surprising, given the infection. I’m more surprised it didn’t set in earlier. But we’ve a cure for that,” she added, much to Shrike’s evident relief, his brow having grown more and more furrowed and knotted as she spoke.

The cure came in the form of a mug filled with water, into which Everilda dispensed a few drops of a viscous mauve liquid from a vial in her instrument case.

“Drink this,” she said as she handed the mug to Wren.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Tincture of mould.”

Wren stared at her.

“It consumes the infection,” she explained.

Wren didn’t doubt it. He’d seen mould consume more than a few books in his day. Which made him not quite so confident as Everilda appeared to be that the mould would merely consume the infection and not go on to consume his whole body altogether.

But a glance at Shrike showed no trace of surprise or suspicion in his fine fae features. And so Wren surmised this tincture of mould was yet another vagarity of the unknown magicks at work in fae medicine, something which had proved true through centuries of practice and yet made no sense to his mortal mind.

He accepted the mug from Everilda and downed it in one gulp. It had a chalky taste that clung to his tongue. He pulled a face as he passed the mug back. No sooner had it left his fingertips than Shrike held out another to take its place, this one brimming with hot tea that smelt of honey and chamomile. This Wren took with more enthusiasm. Its sweetness helped banish the miserable memory of the mould.

“You ought to take more plain water as well,” Everilda noted. “As much as you can stomach. It’ll help flush the infection from your veins.”

Shrike arose to fill a mug at the copper taps before she even finished her explanation.

 

~

 

By the close of the first se’en-night since he’d awoken from chirurgy, Wren had his surfeit of convalescence.

The pain wearied him, true enough, but Everilda’s anodynes kept the worst of it at bay. What irritated him most of all was the sheer boredom.

While the events of last winter might not have always proved pleasant, they had at least kept him occupied. This winter had begun well enough; his first Winter Solstice as the Holly King exceeded his expectations, and he’d hoped the season would continue on in that vein. The white hart hunt had seemed promising from the outset.

Now, however, he couldn’t even venture out-of-doors to stroll with his Shrike through the wintry wood.

Wren missed those promenades more and more with every passing hour. Shimmering branches sheathed in ice, lacework frost creeping over the ground, the soft snow settling over the whole forest in a reverent silence, the frozen fog of his breath contrasted against the snug warmth of his fur-lined cloak wrapped ‘round him, crafted by his beloved’s hands and a scaled-down match for the very same one which hung about Shrike’s own shoulders, and Shrike’s arm entwined with his beneath.

And then he’d gone and done just about the most idiotic thing possible in the Wild Hunt, paid full price for it, and shackled himself to the nest within Blackthorn cottage for the foreseeable future.

He did walk several times a day. Technically. But to take the same circular route about the one-room cottage hour after hour and day after day had begun to try his patience and sanity alike. Each stroll passed but a quarter-hour, which seemed both too long and too short by Wren’s reckoning. Switching between sunwise and widdershins helped some, though not nearly enough. To have his Shrike beside him, with their arms entangled and Wren’s head against Shrike’s broad shoulder, helped a great deal more.

Indeed, Shrike had become the one bright spot in Wren’s cold and lonely doldrums. Wren had known him sweet and gentle before. Now, in his hour of need, Shrike had become exceeding tender. Not just in the way he held him as they slept, or how he cupped the back of Wren’s head as he fed him spoonfuls of broth, or how he held his hand and stroked his hair and murmured reassurance whilst Everilda peeled back his bloodied bandages to clean the wound. But likewise in his encouraging smiles and his evident joy whenever Wren opened his eyes anew after far-too-many hours asleep.

Wren spent most of the first few days sleeping. Whenever he awoke, Everilda had her instruments upon him and then commanded him out of bed to either take another turn around the hollow stump or sit on the work-bench to redress his wound—often both—and by the time these ordeals had finished he felt so exhausted that all he could do was crawl back into the nest and slumber again.

By the middle of the week, however, he returned to bed to find he retained strength enough to remain half-upright leaning against the pile of pillows. After a quiet moment or two in which sleep didn’t come to claim him, he asked Shrike if he might have his copy of Gawain and the Green Knight to read. Shrike dutifully brought it to him. But when Wren opened the book, he found the words blurred before him on the page, and he could not will his gaze to remain on a single line. He furrowed his brow in consternation. No doubt the laudanum was to blame.

“May I?” asked Shrike.

Wren rolled his head across the pillow to regard him. Shrike had his hand held out for the book. Wren gave it over—or rather, he gave a vague gesture with the book towards Shrike, and Shrike understood at once.

Gently accepting the book from Wren’s feeble grasp, Shrike turned to the first page and began to read aloud. The mellifluous rhythm of the poem itself, uttered in the low rumbling burr of his beloved, soothed all Wren’s irritation. He relaxed against his piled pillows and let his eyes rest upon Shrike’s face to watch his dark gaze travel across the page and his perfect lips sound out the syllables. Thus he spent a more pleasant afternoon than he’d known since his rescue from beneath the ice.

Wren had grown accustomed to the luxury of bathing whilst in Blackthorn. His wound reduced him once again to the stand-up wash. Or rather, the sit-down or lie-down wash, for he lacked the strength to stand under his own power. Here again Shrike came to his rescue.

For the first few days whilst the infection still raged within him and his flesh blazed with fever, Shrike sat by him and continually bathed his burning face with lavender water. Even as the fever ebbed and he felt just a touch warm rather than boiling, Wren found he enjoyed the gentle ministrations. He liked less to have Everilda in the cottage watching them both in their intimacy. For the most part her gaze remained cast down in her gyrdel-book as she examined and added to her notes. Wren didn’t much like the idea of her writing about him, either, though he conceded it was probably necessary to track and plan his treatment.

Then, in about the middle of the week, the fever faded altogether. Everilda still made him drink the tincture of mould—against its return, she said, and Wren supposed he ought to follow her advice whether or not it made sense to him. But she no longer remained in the cottage at all hours. Instead she limited her appearances to dawn and dusk.

Which left Wren and his beloved blissfully alone together at last.

Everilda had washed Wren’s wound and its surrounding flesh whenever she refreshed the bandage. Anything further than that, however, Wren felt far more comfortable leaving in Shrike’s hands.

And what capable hands they were.

Even laying on the unyielding oak of the work-bench with naught but a roll of linen to shield him somehow proved soothing with Shrike lathering and rinsing his body. The heat of the hearth-fire, which Shrike had never allowed to go out since Wren awakened, kept the whole cottage so warm that no chill or draught touched his bare skin. The warm water sluicing the grime off his flesh felt almost as indulgent as a full bath in the hollow stump. And to have Shrike’s tender ministrations performing all filled Wren’s heart past brimming.

Three days without a morning shave had rendered Wren’s cheeks, jaw, and throat more than a touch bristled. Shrike had never plied a razor to his own face—at least, not that Wren had ever seen in the year they’d spent together. Yet Wren felt no fear with the blade at his throat held in Shrike’s fingers. And with the same slow, methodical care that Shrike took to his leather-work, he shaved Wren’s face as smooth as glass.

While Wren didn’t mind bathing on the work-bench, however, it seemed to trouble Shrike. More specifically, the dark blotches left behind by Wren’s bleeding body. Whenever Shrike looked on Wren himself, he smiled. The smile faded into a grim line whenever his eye alighted on the irregular rusty blemishes.

The third time Shrike’s gaze fell on the stains only to jerk away with a shudder, Wren could no longer bear it in silence.

“Forgive me,” Wren blurted.

Shrike blinked at him, bewildered. “Whatever for?”

“For ruining your work-bench.”

Shrike stared at him.

Wren gestured toward the largest stain, a sickening pool of dull crimson rust that had seeped into the wood-grain to form veins of gore.

Shrike’s face drained of colour. “It’s no fault of yours.”

“It’s my blood,” Wren protested.

Shrike served him an incredulous glance. “Aye. And that is why it troubles me.”

The laudanum forced Wren to form the obvious conclusion more slowly than he otherwise would—or at least, he hoped himself cleverer than he felt in that moment. He certainly didn’t sound very clever when he replied far too little and far too late, “Oh.”

A wan smile graced Shrike’s worried countenance. His weathered hand arose to cradle Wren’s jaw. His thumb caressed his cheek. “It’s my own horror to bear. I never meant to burden you with it.”

Wren still didn’t feel entirely exonerated. “Could we scrub it out in the spring? Or is it too far gone?”

Shrike hesitated. “Sand it out, mayhaps. If it’s not soaked in…” He trailed off with a hard swallow. It seemed even thinking on it long enough to speak of it proved beyond his endurance.

Wren summoned all his strength to catch him by the hand.

The touch seemed to startle Shrike. Still, it drew his mind out of whatever horrors bloomed behind his eyes in the remembrance of how the blood-stains came to be. He brought Wren’s hand to his lips and laid a gentle kiss against his knuckles.

“Let’s get you back to bed,” Shrike murmured, his low burr rumbling through Wren’s own chest. “Lest you take another chill.”

Wren felt more than satisfied to acquiesce to return to the nest and suffer to be tucked in with more tenderness than a heart could very well bear.

The following day, when Wren again felt somewhat stronger than before, he asked if Shrike would bring him his gyrdel-book and pencil. Shrike obliged him at once. Yet, much like Gawain and the Green Knight before it, Wren found that while his spirit yearned to draw, his flesh remained too weak to follow through, and the laudanum still muddled his head besides. He swallowed his disappointment and instead contented himself with paging through the sketches of last year’s spring and summertime. The thought of the coming vernal season comforted him; at least he could go out-of-doors then, when the days grew longer. The springtime rites would prove a welcome celebration.

But as his mind turned toward Ostara, he recalled what it had wrought for Shrike just one year ago.

The cottage door creaked open, interrupting his grim realisation. Everilda entered.

“Good morrow, my lords,” she said, shutting the door behind herself. “How do you fare?”

“Well enough,” Wren said, truthfully.

She smiled. “Do you feel up to a task?”

Wren exchanged a glance with Shrike, who seemed just as confused as himself. Warily, he replied, “Depends on the task.”

“Physical exercise,” she said. “To strengthen your body and repair the damage done to your muscles.”

The notion of doing something towards regaining his strength held great appeal for Wren. “Like walking, you mean?”

“Something like that,” Everilda said in a tone which suggested nothing of the sort.

The exercises proved more complex than mere walking. First she had him lie on the work-bench, on his back with his knees drawn up and his feet braced flat against the wood.

“Draw your navel down toward your spine,” she said as though it were a very sensible thing to say. “Don’t lift your head or shoulders. Hold until the count of three.”

Wren did as she bade him. It sounded easy enough. It felt much harder. His wound twinged as his muscles tugged against it. Nothing gave way, however, though she made him repeat it five times over.

Then, still on the work-bench with his knees drawn up, she told him to slip his hands beneath the hollow of his back. He tightened his stomach just as before and, at her instruction, flattened his back against his hands and canted his hips upward and inward towards his ribs. Again, he had to hold for three seconds, after which he must relent with a “gentle release.” It felt more ridiculous than painful. Still, five repetitions sufficed to send beads of sweat trickling down his temples.

“I’ve one more, if you feel up to it,” said Everilda.

Wren nodded, determined.

Again she bid him tighten his gut. Then she had him lower his knees to one side, then the other, holding each side until she said he might relax.

“Keep your shoulders flat,” she warned, not for the first time.

Wren set his jaw. If so simple an exercise as this would see him fit to stand under his own power again, then he’d not let himself fail, no matter how it tired him.

By the end of it, he felt as though he were back in the old warren watch-tower running up and down the stairs with the ambassador to train for the Summer Solstice duel. Everilda’s exercises, he thought, felt more gruelling and left him in a similar amount of pain, though he supposed the wound was to blame for that.

No sooner had Everilda announced he might cease than Shrike swooped in with lavender-water to bathe Wren’s sweat-streaked brow. Wren dearly appreciated it. Still, a pressing concern loomed in the forefront of his mind.

“Will I be well again by Ostara?” Wren gasped out.

Silence reigned in the wake of his enquiry. He rolled his head toward Shrike and beheld his brow knit in confusion and concern alike.

“Ostara?” Everilda echoed. She, at least, appeared to give the question serious consideration. “You ought to feel well enough to attend certain festivities by then. Though I would advise against dancing. We’ll see when the day draws nearer.”

Festivities were the least of Wren’s concerns. “But I’ll be able to tend the goats by then? See to the hens? The skeps?”

Everilda blinked at him. “You may tend them within the fortnight, if you feel called to do so.”