“Easy,” Shrike murmured, though his own heart flung itself against his ribcage as if it meant to break free.“It’s all right.Are you hurt?”
Wren shook his head and rasped, “Only my throat.”
With that, he tried to rise.Shrike stayed him with a palm on his chest.But for all the beating Wren had taken, the fight had not nearly gone out of him.
“We must go,” Wren croaked.“Now.The neighbours will have heard something?—”
“We will,” Shrike assured him.“Catch your breath first.”
Wren ceased struggling against Shrike’s hold.He kept breathing, each one stronger than the last, returning proper colour to the face beneath his freckles.Beaten and broken but alive, gloriously alive, and every breath eased the ache in Shrike’s heart.
Shrike could ask for no more fit reward than this.To cradle Wren’s bespeckled face in his fingertips.To lift him into his arms and clasp him close, to press him tight into his chest, to pry open his own ribcage and cocoon Wren within it and armour him with his very bones against all perils.
But Wren required other things of him.His manuscripts, for one.The curious relic chained ‘round Tolhurst’s neck, for another.Fetching these took mere moments.Yet every moment even an arm’s-length away from his Wren proved agony.
Until, at long last, whilst townsfolk gathered below with lanterns and voices raised in ever-increasing alarm, Wren permitted Shrike to bundle him into his arms and carry him away across the rooftops to the stable-yard and thence down the well into the Grove of Gates.
The path to Blackthorn Briar was short and swift if one knew it well.Shrike knew Blackthorn like his own heart.Yet any span felt far too long whilst his Wren suffered.He strode on.
“I can walk,” said Wren.
His voice emerged feeble after his ordeal but nonetheless strident—a tone Shrike recognized as the one Wren used when he would not suffer argument.
So against all his better instincts, Shrike set him down.
Wren stumbled a half-step, laid a hand on Shrike’s shoulder to steady himself, drew upright, and strode on.
Which left Shrike with no choice but to follow.
Shrike had never feared the forest.Nonetheless a dread grew within him now.For himself he feared nothing, but Wren walking alongside him seemed altogether far too exposed, already wounded and wearied by the night’s trials.If Shrike could hear his ragged breath, what else could hear his heartbeat pounding through the wood?
Shrike knew only one cure for this ill.Bring him home.Secure his Wren safe and sound behind the briars, where no one—not Tolhurst nor any of his ilk—could trespass without the thorned vines rending them asunder, as Shrike wished he might rend Tolhurst asunder even now.The swift sheathing of the misericord had come too quick.The briars would strangle and flay him in a single blow.There were briars enough to strip the flesh from his bones if he had but dared to try the stronghold of Shrike’s heart.
And to that end Shrike hastened on to meet the briars.
Those self-same briars withdrew from Shrike and Wren’s approach.The vines knit together tight behind them as they went, closer than ever before, almost on their heels.The cottage came in sight, limned in silver by the moon.Shrike resisted the urge to sweep Wren off his feet again and carry him across the threshold.His hands clenched and unclenched at his side, bereft of purpose, until he could bear it no longer and slipped ahead of Wren—quiet so as not to startle him, swift so as not to deprive Wren of his protection for a moment longer than absolutely necessary—to throw the door open and ascertain the cottage held no skulking threats before his heart ventured within.
It remained just as he’d left it.No unfamiliar footprints on the floorboards.No rafter cobwebs broken.Not so much as a wrinkle out of place amidst the furs that warmed their nest.A few dust motes danced in the moonbeams streaming through the windows.Nothing more.Quiet.Calm.Safe.
Wren followed him into the cottage.Shrike bolted the door behind them.No doubt the briars would draw nearer to the cottage whilst they slept.Assuming Shrike could sleep at all.
Shrike turned from the door to find Wren poised before the hollow stump, one palm braced against the rim.A shiver ran up his arm.He raised a trembling hand to his rumpled cravat, already half-untied, and fumbled with it.Shrike knew not whether he meant to straighten it out or tear it off altogether.
But the flicker of movement drew his eye to Wren’s throat, marked red and raw with the brand of Tolhurst’s fist just beginning to bloom into bruises.
A glimpse sufficed for Shrike to feel that same fist claw through his own ribcage to crush his heart.He could do nothing for that.The shivers, however, he might vanquish.He strode to the banked hearth and stoked the embers back into flame, spreading warmth and light alike throughout the cottage.
Then he turned to find Wren just where he’d left him.Staring into the flames now, their flickering autumnal reflections the only light in his dark gaze, but not seeming to see them.
Shrike fetched the chair from his workbench and set it before the fire.
Still Wren did not move.
Shrike laid a hand on his shoulder.
Wren flinched.
A barb tore through Shrike’s heart.
