Then, with a great deal more work on Shrike’s part than on his own, he stood.
His legs felt equal parts stiff and insubstantial. Ethereal, his mind supplied, though he moved not even half so graceful as the white hart. He leaned heavily against Shrike and made his way with slow staggering steps out from the bed. When they reached the hollow stump, he laid a hand on its rim and kept it there to guide him as he went. His other arm remained locked in Shrike’s.
By the time they made it back around to the nest, Wren’s legs trembled. Shrike laid him down feather-gentle. Beads of sweat trickled from Wren’s brow. Shrike dipped a clout in a bowl and washed Wren’s face in cool water that smelt of lavender.
Wren had never suffered any real injury in all his life. Not even a broken bone whilst climbing a tree or riding, which might have at least proved himself a man to his father. His experience with illness remained limited to a bout of pox as a child; he remembered little of it beyond his nursemaid keeping him abed when he’d much rather have been up playing with his tin soldiers. Good fortune had seen him escape the cholera outbreak at Oxford unscathed.
All of which meant the plunge beneath the ice and the ferocious bite came as something of a shock.
The alternate numbing and burning of the frigid waters had dulled the pain of the attack when he’d received it. He realised it now that he’d reawakened in the warmth of Blackthorn cottage and found the ripping agony of monstrous teeth throbbing through his side despite the laudanum’s attempts to dull it.
Wren had assumed—as he supposed all gentlemen assumed—that if he ever did get caught up in the throes of dire illness or injury, he would simply buck up and press on and push through it.
Instead, he found himself weak and pathetic and rendered utterly dependent.
What must Shrike think of him? Shrike, who until Wren had come along had stitched up all his own wounds with gritted teeth and nothing more?
Everilda seemed pleased, at least. No sooner had Shrike laid Wren down than she approached the nest with her instruments again. Wren submitted to the tube beneath his tongue and her listening to his gullet. Both produced results she deemed satisfactory, adding, “I’ll return by noon if you don’t need me before.”
She packed up her instruments as she spoke. With a nod to Wren and another to Shrike, she departed the cottage—much to Wren’s relief.
Shrike, meanwhile, descended on him the moment the cottage door shut behind her and laid another kiss on his lips. Neither pain nor exhaustion could keep Wren from kissing him back. He would have kissed him forever, for the sheer joy of it, but Shrike withdrew, and Wren hadn’t the strength to follow him.
“I gave her forewarning,” Shrike said, turning to the fire, “that you might not feel at ease in the company of a strange woman.”
“Oh,” said Wren. He added a belated, “Thank you.”
Shrike smiled as he ladled something fragrant from the cauldron set in the hearth into a clay bowl. The savoury scent wafted up to fill the cottage. Wren hadn’t felt hungry before. Now, as Shrike brought the broth to him, he realised he’d grown ravenous.
With Shrike’s continued assistance, he sat up braced against a pile of pillows. All his strength went toward remaining upright. This left him nothing with which to grasp or raise the spoon from the bowl. So it was left to Shrike to bring both to Wren’s lips and dispense spoonful upon slow spoonful to his withered Wren.
Whenever Shrike happened to glance away—either down to the bowl to procure another spoonful, or, when Wren’s exhaustion overcame his hunger and it became apparent he could consume no more, off to the stone slab beside the hearth to set the half-empty bowl aside—Wren searched his face. A furrow of worry appeared now and again between Shrike’s brows. Nothing more as of yet. Wren dreaded the inevitable arrival of disappointment, disgust, and disdain in Shrike’s eyes.
But as Shrike returned to him, he inevitably did so with the small handsome smile Wren loved so well.
As Shrike raised his hand to brush his knuckles against Wren’s brow, Wren summoned all his strength to catch him by the wrist. He intended to drag him down into an embrace beside him. The most he could manage, however, was a feeble tug.
Shrike took the hint regardless.
He bent to grant Wren a kiss, all the sweeter for its brevity. Then he withdrew and busied himself with his tunic ties. Tunic, shirt, and hose all fell away, leaving his beloved form bare beneath Wren’s gaze. At last, he slipped beneath the quilt and furs beside Wren. Wren had shivered again as the bedclothes shifted. But the shivers left him when Shrike curled around him, careful to avoid his wound, yet nonetheless embracing him with all the warmth Wren craved. It required very little from Wren to coax another kiss out of him.
“I’m sorry,” said Wren as their lips parted.
Shrike furrowed his brow. “What for?”
“It’s my fault you lost your chance at the white hart.”
Shrike continued staring at him for another moment or two. Then his hand came up to brush Wren’s hair off his brow and trail down his cheek in a tender caress.
“I did almost lose my heart,” Shrike murmured. “But he is found again, and reawakened, and now all is well.”
~
Wren awoke that very evening to find Everilda had returned to haunt the cottage.
At least, he assumed it was the same evening. He at least felt confident it was evening, given the moonlight streaming in through the eastern windows.
She sat on the edge of the hollow stump and made low conversation with Shrike, who no longer lay naked beside Wren in bed but had evidently got up in the intervening hours to don his clothes and now knelt before the hearth stirring the cauldron. Wren wondered how many hours Everilda had spent here whilst he slept. She’d promised to return at noon. The thought of her watching him in near-silence for so long unnerved him. Had she arrived whilst Shrike still lay naked abed beside him? The fae didn’t look askance at such things, Wren knew, but she wasn’t fae.
