“Did it work?” Wren asked.
Shrike raised his brows. “You cannot claim you felt nothing.”
“No, indeed, I felt quite a bit,” Wren admitted, and couldn’t help smiling at Shrike’s soft laugh in reply. “But did it work as intended? Do you feel stronger? Invulnerable?”
Shrike answered him with a long and lingering kiss. Wren’s bruised lips ached deliciously.
“I feel,” Shrike murmured when he broke away to let Wren breathe, “as if I could carve the Holly King’s heart from his chest and eat it.”
~
Shrike drew the clerk—Wren—nearer to him, drinking in the intoxicating scent of human exertion. Wren’s spell-craft had succeeded far beyond Shrike’s wildest hopes. Yet even without the sigil, Shrike would have considered the night well-spent. Wren nestled his head in the crook of Shrike’s collar. Shrike inhaled his masculine musk and trace the curious curve of his ear.
“You’ve truly never crafted a sigil before?” Shrike murmured, hardly able to believe it.
“No,” said Wren.
“I’ve never given a lover my true name before,” Shrike confessed.
And though mortals gave away their names like trees shedding dead leaves, the reverent expression that broke over Wren’s face showed he understood the gravity of what Shrike had given him.
Wary as Shrike had felt about it earlier, now that he’d done the thing, relief rather than dread suffused him. Wren had given over his own name freely, along with his body and his spell-craft. Wren had shed his own blood and spilled his seed to protect Shrike.
“You said it didn’t hurt you to hear me speak your true name,” said Wren. “But it could, couldn’t it?”
“It could be used against me,” Shrike admitted. Perhaps wiser fae than himself would leave the explanation at that, but if he trusted Wren with his name, he felt he could do no less than trust him with the whole truth of it. “One who knows it may command me.”
“I’ve no wish to command anyone,” said Wren. “Nor tell anyone else, either. It will never leave my lips for any ears save yours.”
Shrike kissed him for it.
“Why did you tell me to call you Butcher?” Wren asked. He quickly added, “I know why you didn’t give me your true name straight off. But why Butcher, specifically?”
“Because that’s what folk call me,” said Shrike. Nevermind why they did. “The Butcher of Blackthorn.”
“Is that your trade?”
“Leather-working is my craft,” said Shrike. “By necessity I’m a hunter and a warrior of no small skill. Both require me to carve meat from bone, and of all of these, Butcher sounds best with Blackthorn.”
“And what is Blackthorn?”
“My brugh,” Shrike replied. “In the fae realms.”
“I’d like to see it,” said Wren, to Shrike’s surprise.
“I’d like to take you there,” Shrike replied, and kissed him again to seal the promise.
Wren’s eyes did not reopen after the kiss. He smiled instead, mumbled something, and insinuated himself into the bend of Shrike’s arm, their legs entwining in the folds of the cloak.
“Wren?” Shrike murmured.
Wren stirred not, save for his low and steady breaths. Shrike didn’t dare raise his voice further, lest he disturb the man’s peace. He contented himself with running his idle fingers through Wren’s soft chestnut locks, counting his freckles like stars, until Shrike, too, lapsed into slumber.
~
Winter
Chapter Ten
