“I have a favour to grant you,” said Wren.
And before Shrike could do more than blink, Wren had pulled a fistful of something green out of his waistcoat pocket and pressed it into Shrike’s palm. Silk, Shrike realized, shimmering smooth, still warm from Wren’s own bodily heat, folded up so tight one might at first glance mistake it for a cluster of summer leaves, and of so bright a colour that it seemed the sun shone through its folds. He shook it out to reveal a scarf, its yellow-green body painted with a swirling ivy-leaf pattern in darker hues.
“I had supposed,” Wren said, “that if green worked for Gawain’s gyrdel, then…”
“It’s perfect,” Shrike replied.
A shy smile flickered across those beautiful bespeckled lips. Shrike bent to kiss them again, and Wren obliged him. Then he folded up the scarf and tucked it between his armour and his tunic—just over his heart.
For the first time, as Shrike strode off through the motley crowd, he did not venture forth alone.
Wren walked beside him.
Wren’s freckled face remained a stoic mask save for his dark eyes flicking ‘round in wide wonder. The crowd parted for them as they went. Each individual recognizing Shrike told their neighbours, sending up a tide of whispers to foretell his coming. They stood thickest at the rim of the duelling field to secure their view of the coming battle. Thereafter the crush abruptly ceased, none daring to step on the hallowed ground.
And on the edge of the field stood the queen’s bower.
The knights circling the bower’s roots withdrew as Shrike approached. Shrike halted some yards off. He shot Wren a speaking glance. Wren served him an understanding one in return. The handclasp they shared bespoke as much passion as any embrace. Then Shrike forced himself to release his grasp, to tear his gaze away from Wren’s handsome upraised face and turn towards the queen.
The hemlock remained evergreen even on the darkest winter night of the year, though little moonlight filtered down into the bower through the branches overhead, laden as they were with sparkling snow. The mid-winter feast proved as abundant as the autumn harvest, though pomegranates and ghost-apples replaced peaches and blackberries. Courtiers gazed on Shrike with undisguised intrigue. He ignored them as he strode to the twin thrones on the balcony.
The queen’s strawberry-gold hair, emerald eyes, and rosebud cheeks hadn’t changed a whit since the equinox tournament. Nor had the small and knowing smile on her lips. She’d traded her grass-green gown for a silvery-blue as befit the season. In her lap she held a crown woven from oak branches, their scarlet leaves coming to sharp points and the acorns polished to a gleam.
The Holly King did not sit beside her, but rather stood behind his own throne, his blue knuckles clenched white on the back of it. Tendrils of frost spread from his fingertips over the wood. Instead of the suit of armour that befit his prior rank of knight, he wore just a chain-mail hauberk beneath his tabard. Holly berries shone bright as blood on his crown.
“Good morrow, my Oak King,” said the queen. “We are gratified to gaze upon you. We had feared you might miss this day’s ceremonies, for you’ve been so oft absent from court of late.”
A cold smirk twisted the Holly King’s lips. Shrike bared his teeth in a semblance of a grin.
“Kneel, my Oak King,” the queen commanded. “Your coronation is nigh.”
Shrike dropped to one knee and bowed his head. The queen’s spider-silk gown whispered as she rose from her throne and approached him.
A moment after, the weight of the oaken crown settled on his brow.
~
Wren supposed he’d expected to find something akin to the tilting-yard of Templestowe where Ivanhoe had fought for Rebecca’s honour. The queen, with her strawberry-golden hair and emerald-green eyes, bore little resemblance to the dark beauty of the virtuous Rebecca. At least none that Wren could see from his position beneath her bower, craning his neck up at her amidst the fae throng. Nor did she seem particularly persecuted by her court or in need of rescue by either her Oak or Holly King. Indeed her Saxon beauty appeared more akin to Rowena, noble and proud. Wren supposed if one were the sort of man to admire women, one might as well consider her worth dying for. He tore his eyes away from her piercing emerald gaze to regard her other champion—Shrike’s fated opponent.
The Holly King was no Sir Brian du Bois-Guilbert, either. Frost covered his tabard like torn lace, and his pale blue flesh resembled no earthly complexion. His eyes shone as bright a crimson as the ruby berries on the wreath adorning his brow. He stood eye-to-eye with Shrike, which Wren misliked, having hoped the fight would prove more uneven in Shrike’s favour.
Likewise, the dead and barren field held no lists for a joust. The coming duel would be fought on foot in hand-to-hand combat.
The general throng of fae had fixed curious eyes on Wren the moment he and Shrike had entered the court. Yet none approached. Either the memory of Shrike’s arm in his, or his kiss upon Shrike’s mouth, or the presence of Shrike’s cloak around Wren’s shoulders warned them all off.
While ice sheathed the barren branches overhead, and blue frost limned the dead grey grass underfoot, and Wren’s breath turned to fog before him, and only Shrike’s fur-lined cloak prevented his freezing, few fae appeared dressed for the weather. Indeed, a certain nymph with frost-veined wings seemed to thrive upon the cold, her laugh like the merry chime of icicles clinking together on the branches waving overhead. Fauns capered in breeches that covered just the thighs of their fur-tufted legs. A hulking ogre with a broken tush wore a shirt of flowing silk painted with poinsettia leaves. And then there was the raven-haired elf-maiden in a tunic of iridescent blue feathers, whom Wren thought he recognized as an archer from the Wild Hunt, gorging herself with a drinking horn in one hand and the leg of an enormous bird in the other. The only exception to the misrule seemed to be a small, slight figure flitting about in a mottled grey leather cloak—half storm-cloud and half moonlight—with a thick fur ruff. Wren followed their progress until his eyes fell upon a certain cluster of merriment.
Several blonde young women in peasant blouses had gathered around a fair-haired young man whose evening coat and top hat would not have looked out of place strolling through the West End. The ladies’ low-cut necklines bared soft-sloping feminine shoulders and the swell of their bosoms. They created such an overt display of pastoral milk-maid fantasy that even Wren couldn’t help taking notice of them. Having the sort of eye that wandered away from maiden’s bosoms rather than towards them, Wren also noticed, as they lifted the hems of their skirts in cavorting, a glimpse or two of cloven hooves and a swish of something dun and tufted he thought might be a tail. When he at last tore his gaze away from these more interesting features, he noticed the young man glaring at him. Perhaps he thought Wren unwelcome competition for the ladies’ attention. Or perhaps, Wren thought as he peered closer at the young man’s face, he recognized him.
“The Oak King is crowned! The Oak King is crowned!”
The cry rippled through the crowd, jerking Wren’s eye away from the gathered fae and up towards the queen’s bower.
~
“Arise, my Oak King, and go forth in victory.”
Shrike stood. He avoided the queen’s gaze, instead alighting upon the Holly King. “Shall we?”
