“Bucks?” Wren echoed.
Shrike shrugged it off and sat up. The room tilted. He grit his teeth through it and stood. He ignored the leaden feeling in his limbs as he performed his morning ablutions and dragged on his tunic and hose. More than once he caught Wren watching him warily out of the corner of his eye, but neither spoke.
Not ‘til Shrike went out, and the sunlight piercing his eyes alongside the slight breeze hammering against his raw brow combined to collapse him against the door-frame.
Wren’s cry of alarm rang in Shrike’s ears as he attempted to master himself. Then a strong grip took him by the shoulders. He let Wren half-carry him back to the bed, though he would only deign to sit on it rather than lie down. He didn’t open his eyes again until he heard the door shut against the sun.
A scraping sound across the room announced Wren had gone for the medicine chest. Bottles and vials clinked as he searched through it. He withdrew the same potion—laudanum, he’d called it—that he’d given Shrike after the Winter Solstice. Then he plucked the copper kettle down from its hook on the rafters and filled it at the tap in the hollow stump. The hearth-fire rekindled as he raked the ashes, and soon he had the kettle whistling over it. He returned to Shrike with a hand-thrown mug of tea. The soothing scent of lavender wafted up on the steam.
Shrike took it with no small gratitude and sipped. The sweet flavour of honey almost disguised an unfamiliar bitter note. Shrike supposed that belonged to the laudanum. And as he continued sipping, the throbbing pain in his brow dwindled and dwindled, until the last dregs reduced it to a dull twinge.
Wren, meanwhile, rummaged through his satchel. From its depths he produced a hand-mirror and held it out to Shrike.
Shrike took it. Throughout his centuries he’d heard of mirrors in stories and songs and glimpsed them in the hands of fae and mortal gentry. Then Wren had brought his to Blackthorn—a plain thing, he’d called it when he caught Shrike staring, merely a palm-sized circle of silvered glass set in an oaken frame and handle. Shrike had watched him ply his razor with it many a morn.
But he’d never held it in his own hand until now.
His face looked rather like it had in reflections of still water and in Wren’s sketches. There were but two difference—the bulbous, velvet-covered sprouts of a pair of antlers, one on either side of his brow.
“Ah,” said Shrike.
“You don’t seem terribly surprised,” said Wren.
“It’s a bit early for the first tines to split off,” Shrike admitted. He gingerly touched the tips of the new prongs, then pulled his fingers away with a hiss of pain.
“So,” Wren said, filling Shrike’s mug again—minus the laudanum—and pouring another for himself. “Antlers.”
“Aye,” Shrike replied.
“And this has never happened to you before?”
“Never.”
“So you don’t know how long they’ll take to grow in. Or how broad they’ll be when they do.”
“No,” Shrike admitted. Then, “Do you mind them?”
Wren looked at him as though he’d just asked something absurd. “I mind the pain they’ve caused you.”
Shrike chuckled into his tea.
“But, no,” Wren added with a smile of his own. “I don’t mind them.”
Shrike supposed he ought to have surmised as much, given Wren’s reaction to the Court of Hidden Folk, but it still relieved him to hear the answer.
“Do you?” Wren asked. “Mind them, I mean.”
Shrike shrugged. “They’re coming in whether I mind them or not.”
Wren blinked. “Fair enough.”
Shrike’s head-ache ebbed and flowed throughout the day. Sometimes just the barest whisper of pain and sometimes pulsing in agony with his heart-beat. He accomplished not half so much as he would have liked. When it peaked and he found he could bear no more, Wren put him back to bed. A warm clout soaked in chamomile tea over his eyes allowed him to catch some quiet rest, if not sleep.
The next morning, Shrike arose almost as exhausted as when he’d drifted off. A gentle probing of his antlers told him they’d grown out by another inch overnight. More worrisome was the look of alarm Wren cast upon him. In response to Shrike’s enquiring glance, Wren handed him the mirror.
Something had indeed changed in his reflection beyond the growth of his antlers. Deep blue bruises encircled his eyes, and his cheeks had hollowed.
“Isthatnormal?” Wren asked as Shrike passed the mirror back to him.
