“No, thank you,” Wren replied automatically.
Her eyes slid over to Shrike and ran him up and down, but he only shook his head.
“May we pass?” Wren asked, as she didn’t seem inclined to move out of the way.
“I’m afraid not,” she replied, her smile growing more mischievous. “As newcomers to our brugh, I cannot let you cross without dancing—and one cannot dance without a partner.”
More huldra and other fae turned towards her as she spoke. By the time she’d finished, many had halted their pursuits to gather and gawk with intense interest at Shrike and Wren. If this unnerved Shrike, Wren found no sign of it in his stoic face. Wren, meanwhile, felt as if they could all see his pulse leaping in his throat. The heat of the so many bodied gathered so near dizzied him. He’d felt his garb insufficient for the blizzard without, but his wool suit was far too much for the orgy within.
“But how fortunate for you!” the huldra continued. “We’ve many eager dancers amongst us—you need only speak your preference. Or point,” she added with another smirk, “if your reserve overpowers your speech.”
A maiden with cloven hooves peeking out from beneath the hem of her skirt put her hand on her ample hip and cocked her head at Wren as he glanced past her. A flaming redhead with antlers growing from their temples and freckles spattered across their bare shoulders winked at him. A lithe faun with ram’s horns coiled in his curls caught Wren’s eye and smiled. Wren found himself mirroring the expression and, with more effort than he’d expected to expend, turned his gaze toward Shrike.
Shrike likewise glanced over the crowd of waiting dancers. His profile looked severe and handsome as ever, though Wren noted a hard swallow traveling down his throat as his eye fell on a strapping incubus.
“Butcher,” said Wren.
Shrike’s gaze snapped to meet his in an instant.
Wren swept the cloak out of the way with his left arm, held his right hand up to Shrike, and bowed. “Will you do me the honour of this dance?”
Gasps and whispers sprung up all around them.
Wren dared to glance up from beneath his lashes and found Shrike’s grin gleaming above him.
“Aye,” Shrike replied, and heartily clasped Wren’s hand.
Wren used the handclasp to draw himself upright and draw Shrike flush to him, chest to chest. Whispers grew louder, interspersed with titters and hushed exclamations of frustration, amusement, and wonder. Yet none moved to stop them. Wren kept his own gaze fixed on Shrike’s dark and beautiful eyes.
“Would you be willing to withdraw as I advance?” Wren asked. The feeling had just returned to his legs after trudging through the snow. He hoped their strength would soon follow.
Shrike had strength enough for two, and more besides. A shy smile crossed his handsome lips and sent flutters through Wren’s heart. He nodded.
Wren took a deep breath and plunged them both into the dance.
A blue roan incubus bent his horned head over a long box-shaped fiddle laid across his lap. His dark hair fell like sheets of rain over his face as the curved bow leapt and dove between his splayed thighs. Beside him, a brawny huldra draped in furs beat a skin-drum, and a faun played pan-pipes that seemed to scream with wild joy.
Their music bore little resemblance to the tinny tepid tinkling of the piano-forte at school, where Wren had learnt the quadrille and cotillion from a rheumatic dancing master amidst a dozen other boys who made no secret of their disdain for the practice. Wren, who even then understood he enjoyed dancing with his fellows far more than he ought, had all-but-trembled with repressed elation, stumbling through steps he knew by rote rather than following the notes and rhythm of the song.
But now, in the company of satyrs and incubi, he need not hide his desires.
And to dance with Shrike was to know desire, indeed.
The damp and trembling hand of a boy had been replaced by the firm, warm grasp of a man. Shrike’s fingers threaded through Wren’s own, the caress of his rough palms and calloused knuckles sending sparks up Wren’s arm to ignite his heart. His woodsmoke and vanilla musk lent welcome familiarity to the strange scent of their surroundings. Despite the wild throng whirling ‘round them, Wren found his gaze did not stray from the dark eyes looking down into his own.
Wren abandoned any attempt at quadrille or cotillion. They hadn’t enough couples joining them to accomplish either—at least, none Wren thought would know the steps—and besides, Wren had no wish to relinquish Shrike to another partner. Instead, he found himself flowing from step to step, each quicker and more daring than the last, until he whirled in a joyous tempest of his own making, and Shrike sailed through alongside.
While Shrike might have had no formal dance training, he possessed a great deal of natural grace, which more than made up for Wren’s lack of the latter and abundance of the former. The frantic fiddle and shrieking pan-pipes sang through Wren, demanding he leap to meet their peaks and valleys. The ceaseless skin-drum quickened to match the feverish pulse of his own heart. The queer and unfamiliar music played on his nerves in ways the tinkling piano-forte could never imagine.
For a moment, he could even forget he’d come here to rescue the most undeserving cad in all the realms.
And yet Felix remained.
“There,” Shrike murmured, glancing towards something over Wren’s shoulder. His voice carried through the noise of the music and the crowd to Wren’s ear like the call of a hawk over the moors.
Wren spun them both—an entirely natural movement, yet another thread in the weaving dance—and tore his gaze away from Shrike’s face to look where he’d indicated with the jut of his jaw.
Felix looked not as Wren had remembered. Nor did he look quite as Wren had thought when he first glimpsed him across the mead-hall. While he wore a sanguine expression as the huldra insinuated themselves into his eager embrace, his hollow cheeks and sunken eyes belonged to a consumptive. The torn buttons of his shirt revealed not just collar-bone but breast-bone and ribs as though many months starved. Indeed, Felix almost unhinged his jaw beneath the huldra’s kiss, as if he intended to swallow her whole to sate his hunger.
