Shrike didn’t look any less unsettled. ‘She’s unlike your mortal queen.”
“Dangerous, you mean.”
Shrike nodded.
“All the more reason for you not to face her alone,” Wren concluded.
A warm fondness came into Shrike’s considering gaze. With another nod, he relented and continued on towards the queen’s bower with Wren in tow.
The ring of knights at the tower’s roots made way at Shrike’s approach, though they cast suspicious glances at Wren as he passed through their ranks. The courtiers he encountered on his way up the spiralling wooden stair within the tower were likewise astonished by the presence of a mortal in their midst, judging by their wide eyes and hissing whispers. Wren’s own gaze flitted over them in search of anyone who looked particularly like a Holly King. None resembled the one Shrike had slain on the Winter Solstice—the only Holly King whom Wren had ever known.
The spiral staircase opened up to a feast hall likewise filled with fae gawking at Wren and Shrike. Shrike paid them no heed. He strode with purpose across the hall toward the balcony with its twin thrones; one empty, the other holding the queen upon whom Shrike fixed his fierce glare.
Wren followed his gaze and his path alike. Long had he harboured a curiosity to meet the one who wielded such influence over his beloved’s fate.
The Queen of the Court of the Silver Wheel bore the same strawberry-golden hair and emerald-green eyes as when Wren had glimpsed her from a distance on the Winter Solstice. Since then, however, she had discarded her silver-blue gown in favour of one in honeydew which shimmered towards white-gold at the peaks of its folds and ivy-green in its shadowed valleys. Embroidery in golden thread along its hems depicted the hunt of a unicorn. Her belt of slender bronze chain—a proper medieval gyrdel—draped around her waist to cling to her hips, with the remainder of its length trailing down her lap like a sword-blade dividing a waterfall of silk. It joined together links the size and form of ivy leaves with those delicate enough to resemble the vine, the leaves enamelled glass-green and the vine tarnished to a matching shade.
Shrike halted some paces before her throne and made a small bow. Wren hastened to follow suit. When he straightened up again, he saw the queen’s rosebud lips curled in something like faint amusement, and her emerald gaze flitted between Shrike and Wren with equal curiosity.
“Good morrow, my Oak King,” she said. Her voice, soft yet sonorous, carried command throughout the bower.
Shrike muttered something in kind.
“When I called upon you to crown me,” the queen continued, her eyes trailing across the breadth of his antlers from point to point, “I did not think to see you wearing a crown of your own make.”
Courtiers standing behind Wren and Shrike tittered. Shrike did not deign to so much as glance in their direction. Wren resisted the urge to do so.
“It becomes you,” the queen added when it became apparent Shrike had nothing to say to her idle observation.
Shrike gave his thanks.
The queen’s emerald-green eyes slid towards Wren. Instinct bid him lower his gaze. He found he could not.
“Pray,” the queen said to Shrike even as she fixed Wren with her attention like an entomologist might pin a beetle beneath glass. “Do introduce us to your companion.”
“Lofthouse,” said Shrike. “Of London.”
“Lofthouse of London,” the queen echoed, like a child toying with a new word in its teeth. “We bid you welcome.”
Wren attempted to thank her. His mouth moved in silence. He cleared his throat and managed a rasp in reply.
This seemed to satisfy her. She released him from her gaze and turned her eye toward something behind him.
Wren glanced back to see a pair of handmaidens carrying between them a crown woven from flowering boughs. Jewel-bright hummingbirds struggled feebly against their spiderweb bonds between the sprigs of aquilegia and foxglove.
At the queen’s signal, the handmaidens handed the crown over to Shrike, who accepted the charge with stoic indifference. In the span of a few strides he stood behind the queen’s throne. He lowered the crown onto her head in solemn silence. Then sank to one knee and bowed his own.
The resulting cheer from the throng assembled beneath the balcony startled Wren, who had forgotten the presence of almost all save Shrike and the queen.
The queen basked in their adoration. Then, to the astonishment of Wren and her courtiers alike, she rose from her throne and turned to Shrike. Their astonishment only increased as she dropt her delicate ivory fingertips to the curve of her hips and unclasped her gyrdel from about her waist. The green chain gently jingled as she wound it between her hands and held it out to Shrike.
A gesture which Wren knew must mean as much in the Court of the Silver Wheel as it had done in Lord Bertilak’s castle.
Shrike’s face remained cast in stoic stillness as he accepted it from her. He bowed. Her smile beamed down upon him.
Then he arose and turned to Wren.
And held out the gyrdel for him to take.
