And perhaps in presuming familiarity would grant advantage, he had erred.
This was the room where Wren had spent most of his hours at home.First with his mother whilst she lived.Then brooding alone after she’d passed on.But this was also the very room he’d been caught out in.His sketches foolishly left out for anyone to find with the unassailable arrogance borne of youth.
Wren didn’t think he’d entirely shed his arrogance, but he liked to think himself a touch more prudent now.This prudence was called into question as his mind fully dissolved into memory, leaving him stunned, silent, and still as stone in the library.
Jolted awake only by Shrike’s hand on his shoulder.
Wren bit back a yelp.He could not altogether suppress his flinch.A floorboard creaked under him.
“Your pardon,” Shrike murmured.
No doubt his words resounded like falling hailstones to fae ears; Wren just barely heard them.Still he didn’t trust his mortal vocal cords to match Shrike’ssotto voce, so he tried to indicate in his responding nod that Shrike had done nothing requiring forgiveness.
They’d confirmed the presence of Wren’s milk teeth in his father’s house by knuckle-bones before they’d set out from Blackthorn Briar.Now that they’d arrived in the house proper they required more precision.
To that end, Shrike produced an acorn from his cloak pocket to fashion a pendulum.
Wren held his breath whilst he waited for Shrike to perform the ritual.It took scarcely a minute.To Wren, however, that left him with entirely too much time to muse; more than enough for his mind to wander in so potent an atmosphere as this.He had assumed better of himself, that he cared as little for his father as his father did for him, and that to return to these halls would spark no feeling whatsoever in him.He’d spared no thought for them in over a decade’s absence.But in truth, he felt his mother’s presence lingering in the very beams, and the want of it made his chest ache.
The pendulum spun over Shrike’s palm.Then it began to swing.It ceased at an angle that suggested the house didn’t sit quite level, but Wren knew to mean it pointed towards the hall beyond the library.
Shrike met his gaze and nodded.
Wren gathered his courage and led the way deeper into the house.
A mortal banishment was hardly so strong as a fae banishment, as Wren had to explained to Shrike to forestall the latter preparing for enchanted eventualities (including Wren being flung bodily from the threshold should he set foot upon it; or turning to stone the instant his fingertips touched the door-knocker; or suits of armour springing to life to cleave the head from his shoulders; or his mouth filling with thorns should he ever attempt to speak of the house—this one Shrike had already known to be false, from how freely Wren told him of his ancestral hall; or entering its corridors only to find himself forever trapped in a portrait frame).Shrike’s relief had been palpable once Wren reassured him that a mortal banishment meant only that other mortals, and perhaps hounds, would set upon them if they discovered them there.Shrike remained confident he could defend Wren against any mortal foe, even if they were armed with iron, and even with Wren’s further stipulation that Shrike not slay anyone beneath the house’s roof.
Still, it was unsettling to tread upon the floor-boards amidst the haunting familiarity of somewhere he never thought he’d see again.Not that he could see it now, so dark as it was in the countryside with neither moon nor rush-light nor will-o’-th’-wisp to guide him.Yet though he never thought of it before he’d returned, his body recalled which boards creaked, which flagstones came loose, which doors stuck in their frames in the damp.The pendulum confirmed the path Wren forged; the milk-teeth and baby-hair were here still, either precisely where Wren had supposed or very near to it.
The master suite, as Wren had explained to Shrike before they set out, was his father’s domain and had been all Wren’s life.His mother had kept her boudoir for herself.His father had left it untouched after her death or at least had done so throughout Wren’s residence there and his stint at university.
Wren halted on the stair as the horrible thought occurred to him.Had his father remarried in the meantime?He’d not done so in the years between his wife’s death and his son’s dismissal, but perhaps losing his presumptive heir had induced him to remarry and beget another.Wren would never forgive him if he had, irrational a point as that might prove.
“All well?”Shrike murmured behind him.
Wren endeavoured to master his emotions.“Yes.”
The barest whisper had escaped his lips.Yet he knew it must resound in Shrike’s fae hearing.
And it sufficed to keep them both moving towards their goal.
Wren skipped the squeaking stair and alighted on the upper landing in near-silence—at least, to mortal ears.His nerves heightened as he crept along the corridor towards the master bedchamber.
The boudoir door had never appeared remarkable in his mother’s lifetime.Afterwards the sight of it inspired grief, and he’d kept clear of that corner of the household.He assumed he’d forgotten what it looked like.If asked direct, his mind could summon no image.
To see it now, however, felt like glimpsing his own reflection in a quiet pool.
Wren clenched his fist and shook it out to rid his fingertips of trembling.Then laid his hand on the knob.It turned easier than he’d anticipated.But when he gently pushed inward, he found the door locked.
He could only hope that was a good sign.If his father had left it undisturbed since his mother’s death, then finding the tokens he sought should prove easier than otherwise.Wren knelt and plied his lock-picking tools.
Even now, with ghosts looming in every shadowed corner and long-lost memories bubbling up from the depths of his mind, it cheered him to recall the bashful presentation Shrike had made him of these very articles.Before he'd made do with hair-pins and needles.Then, in their fortnight of planning, Shrike had gifted him a set of silver fae-made pins, wrenches, and skeleton keys.They worked smoothly and silently even in his unworthy mortal hands.And beneath their ministrations, the lock to his mother's boudoir sprang open with the faintest click.
Wren blinked, the spell broken, and found his Shrike gazing down upon him with an admiring smile.
He would’ve liked to reward his gallaunt with a kiss.Instead he arose, drew a deep breath, and eased the door inward.
The memories of his mother’s boudoir had grown stronger and stronger with every passing moment spent under his father’s roof.Wren had visited it seldom in his childhood, led there now and again by the nursemaid at his mother’s behest, never on his own.Those recollections shone all the brighter for their rarity.
