A light appeared on the shore. Something flickering bright just where the trees began. A light-house, Wren thought at first, then realised what a stupid thought that was and how far his mind had wandered between cold and pain. It was firelight, though, that much he knew. He could not yet feel its warmth, though he dearly wished to.
He beheld, likewise, a thread linking Nell and himself with the cluster of figures on shore. Nothing of magic, but a common rope, which he now perceived tied around Nell’s waist. Following the line brought his eyes to his beloved. What a dashing figure he cut, Wren thought in his foggy mind—with the firelight behind him, strands of silver-shot ink whippingin the wind, and his strong arms hard at work hauling in the rope. Those who had held Shrike back now bent alongside him to reel Nell and Wren in. Amongst them Wren recognized the ambassador, a rather familiar-looking wolf who dragged the rope with its teeth, and the faun still wearing his cloak. Yet ever and again Wren’s gaze returned to his Shrike, his own northern star guiding him back home.
Then the rhythm of the line changed. No more fits and bursts but a steady and rapid slide. Wren’s final glance showed Shrike hauling hand-over-hand, his breath escaping his clenched teeth in plumes of dragon-smoke. Just a few yards remained between them. Even this felt insurmountable to Wren until the ice turned to rock beneath him and Nell tore her arms free from his frozen garments and, at long last, his Shrike descended like a thunderhead, his cloak billowing around them both as he swept over Wren and drew him up into his embrace.
On all prior occasions, Shrike’s embrace had sparked a kindling warmth spreading from Wren’s heart to the whole of him. But the icy plunge refused to leave Wren’s bones, and all he knew of Shrike’s embrace was his strong grip and his woodsmoke musk.
Shrike carried Wren as if he weighed no more than a leaf. He did not bear him far; a few strides into the wood toward the flickering light, now a crackling fire. There he laid him down with his familiar fur-lined cloak beneath him.
The fire had grown larger and brighter than Wren would’ve thought possible in the time it’d taken Nell to drag him to shore—though, he supposed, he had no real idea how long it’d been. Less smoke, too, than he’d assumed the snowy evergreen branches would’ve produced if cut fresh from the living trees. No sooner had he thought this, however, than a sharp crack caught his ear, and he glanced toward it to find the nymph in her gauzy chiton breaking a dead branch off a nearby pine. As hewatched, she reached up again into the green and wrapped her fingers around another living branch. It withered in her grasp, the needles fading from blue-green to green-yellow and finally the burnt orange of desiccation. With another crack, she broke it off, and threw both branches into the hungry flames.
The fire’s warmth seeped through the frozen wool of Wren’s outer garments to barely touch his flesh. Rather than bring comfort, it reawakened his nerves to burn and set him shivering.
Then Shrike’s hands fell to the buttons of Wren’s overcoat.
Wren’s jaw had clenched too tight to allow him to voice any protestations against the loss of his clothes. The cold felt bad enough with them on. Furthermore, in the increasingly wandering pathways of his mind, a sense of shame bubbled up. Nevermind how many fae had already beheld his naked body at Midsummer and Mabon both. All that left his throat, however, was a pitiful whine.
“Steady,” Shrike murmured to him—gentle, sympathetic, and swift. So too were his hands as he stripped off the sodden wool and soaked cotton. In some places they stuck stiff together despite the fire’s warmth; then Shrike took out his hunting knife, slicing through seams and cutting off buttons to cleave the overcoat, jacket, waistcoat and trousers from Wren’s shivering body. The glint of firelight off the knife’s keen edge put Wren in mind of his own pen-knife slicing through the snare entrapping the faun, though he found he had far more trust in Shrike than the faun had felt for him.
When Shrike came down to shirt and small-clothes, however, he halted. His eyes widened as they fell to Wren’s waist. His jaw clenched.
Wren, trembling like a leaf in a storm, couldn’t command his head to tilt down to try and see what Shrike saw. But the more Shrike peeled away his clothes, the stronger grew the burn of his wound. It felt as if the monster’s maw bit him afresh with everybreath. Trickling threads of something cold spilled over his side as a half-circle of knives stabbed again and again into his gut, searing as they withdrew. He’d never suffered anything like it in all his days. He hardly knew if he shuddered with pain or cold. Both, probably.
A hard swallow travelled down Shrike’s throat. Then, to Wren’s bewilderment, he set aside his knife and turned his clever hands to his own clothes. He cast aside his tunic and hose. His shirt pulled off over his head to reveal the body Wren loved so well, the myriad scars telling tales of valour. Yet rather than throw it down to join the rest of his wardrobe, Shrike kept his shirt in hand and took up his knife again. Swift strokes slashed the linen into strips.
Then the blade descended to slice the buttons off Wren’s own shirt-front and split open his under-shirt from stem to stern. Wren still couldn’t see what Shrike beheld beneath it all. He could see only Shrike’s own face and the haunted look in his dark eyes as his jaw clenched and unclenched. Yet he worked quick to wrap the strips of his own shirt around Wren’s waist. The cold ought to have numbed the wound, Wren thought. Instead, it burned, throbbing with new agony as Shrike pulled the makeshift bandage tight. A whimper escaped Wren’s throat. Murmured apologies fell from Shrike’s lips in reply.
The wind felt like a cat o’ nine tails scoring Wren’s bare skin. But not for long. No sooner did Wren lie bare than Shrike bundled him in his fur-lined cloak. The familiar sensation of the warm rabbit-fur paired with the scent of vanilla and woodsmoke reminded Wren of what he’d lost. He tried to explain and apologise for his own missing cloak, but his locked jaw would only unclench to chatter, and no words could escape him.
Shrike, in his own nakedness, slipped into the furred folds beside him and wrapped himself around Wren’s smaller frame. His long legs twined through Wren’s. His scarred chest pressedflush against Wren’s shuddering ribcage, careful to avoid the fresh wound. His strong arms encircled Wren’s narrow shoulders and held him fast. The warmth of him burned as bright as the bonfire. It seemed to flow from his heart into Wren’s own veins. Wren wanted to hold him in turn, to wrap his own arms around those broad shoulders, but his joints had gone stiff and would move only in fitful jerks of their own accord. The familiar rise and fall of Shrike’s breath filled his ears, with the fire crackling behind them.
“How did you find me?” Wren asked. He had to wrench his jaw open to do it, and his voice left him in the merest creaking whisper, yet Shrike’s keen ears perceived all.
“You heard it yourself,” Shrike murmured, his warm hand tenderly stroking Wren’s frozen brow. “The cracking ice. It resounded for miles.”
“Herne will be glad of it,” Nell said, tossing another branch onto the fire. “You found the quarry. Another successful hunt, thanks to the Holly King.”
“Nell,” Shrike said in a foreboding tone.
Nell glanced to him, then Wren, then Shrike again, before dropping her gaze to the flames and saying nothing further.
~
Shrike wanted murder.
Bad enough for his Wren to have fallen beneath the Eternal Ice. But to see him wounded set Shrike’s mind aflame. Wave after wave of fear chased by rage consumed him. He’d not felt its like since he’d beheld Larkin’s corpse crumpled in the midst of their cottage’s burning ruin. Wretched recollections of Rochester—when Tolhurst had dared lay a hand on his beloved—renewed themselves in Shrike’s mind as he gazed on Wren, once again the victim of unjust violence.
Flesh which had been marked only by the gentle dusting of beloved freckles now tore open in the ragged gashes of a monstrous bite. The blood had frozen into crystals like garnets along the edges of the wound. His nail-beds and lips alike had turned blue with cold. The icy pall of his face proved a sharp contrast against the memory of the endearing rosy hue that had bloomed not even an hour ago when the nymph had congratulated them on their successful midwinter rite. The lips disturbed Shrike most, having faded from a speckled peach to corpse-like translucence. He wished he could kiss life back into them. Yet his efforts to breath his own warmth into Wren’s mouth seemed to make no difference.
Whatever fell creature had done this would rue ever drawing breath when Shrike had done with them.
Yet it had slipped away beneath the ice, and even his own towering rage couldn’t force him to abandon his Wren in pursuit of vengeance.
Wren had protested the stripping of his garments, however feebly, which Shrike took as a good sign. It meant the madness had not yet seeped in to replace his lost warmth. As Shrike curled around him in the cocoon of their cloaks, Wren began at last to shiver—another good sign, for it meant his body hadn’t yet given itself up to a grave of ice and would fight back to cling to heat.
They didn’t fight alone. Nell, the ambassador, and the nymph all fed the bonfire’s flames, keeping it fierce and bright. The faun who wore Wren’s cloak—and how the sight of it on a stranger’s shoulders had startled Shrike—had vanished into the wood soon after returning it to Shrike’s care. The wolf, meanwhile, curled up at Shrike and Wren’s feet, and leant its furred warmth to their limbs.
Yet still Wren felt frozen in Shrike’s arms.
