Fae recovered from injury far faster than mortals.
Shrike had always known this. Yet to have proof of it before him now, in the form of his beloved enduring day after day of agony, wrested his heart in twain.
The skull-crusher bite would’ve laid Shrike up, true enough, but he would have fully recovered within a few months, if not in a fortnight or two. It staggered him to hear from the chirurgeon’s own lips that his Wren would require years to regain his strength.
And for Wren to think of Shrike’s suffering when Wren himself lay overcome with pain was more than Shrike could well bear.
Everilda did not remain long in the cottage after giving her dire prophecy. Her removal didn’t improve Wren’s aspect. He grit his teeth and, with Shrike’s aid, sat up from the work-bench. His frustration remained evident in his stormy brow as he hobbled back to the nest. Shrike could tell he had no wish to lie down again, but his body demanded it, and so he acquiesced with a grimace, sitting back against the pillows and glowering at the wall.
Shrike knew not what to do. So he filled the tea-kettle and another mug of plain water for Wren besides.
The offering seemed to startle Wren out of his bitter reverie. He accepted the water nonetheless, alongside Shrike’s aid in drinking it, with a murmured thanks. Their silence resumed,though it didn’t feel half so comfortable as a silence between them otherwise would.
Wren broke it first. “What you must think of me—weak and useless—”
Shrike balked. “You’re neither.”
Wren’s rolling eyes came to rest on Shrike’s face.
Shrike didn’t oft feel compelled to speak. But the pain in Wren’s gaze demanded he give voice to his thoughts. “You’ve shown yourself strong enough to survive this. And strong enough to persist in pursuit of your recovery.”
Wren appeared to at least be considering the matter rather than dismissing it outright.
Shrike dared to take his hand. After a moment, Wren clasped his in turn.
“You don’t need to prove your strength further,” Shrike spoke on. “You deserve to rest. And to do so doesn’t make you weak.”
Slowly yet surely, the fury drained from Wren’s face. Indignant furrows left his brow. His jaw unclenched. He looked on Shrike with eyes no longer glinting with sparks of wounded pride but rather the soft, dark, warm gaze that Shrike loved so well. He brought his hand with Shrike’s clasped within it up to nestle against his hollowed cheek.
Then, with a gesture whose rapidity belied the force required to make it possible, he threw his arm around Shrike’s shoulders and drew him down into an embrace so he might bury his shuddering breaths in Shrike’s collar.
And Shrike, relieved just to have him alive in his arms, held him tight.
~
Wren next awoke when the sun had nearly reached its zenith.
Sunlight, however, had not roused him. A brusque entrance through the cottage door had.
He turned his head towards the clattering clamour and opened his eyes to discover Nell just inside the doorway knocking snow from her boots. She had her unstrung bow in one hand and a brace of ducks in the other.
“What?” she said as Shrike arose from where he knelt at Wren’s bedside and strode across the cottage making fervent signals for her silence. “Oh—pardon. But he’s awake now, anyway,” she added, peering around Shrike’s shoulder to look at Wren abed.
While Wren didn’t exactly enjoy her looking at him when he lay clad in his night-shirt and naught else, he didn’t mind it quite so much as he did others. For one, she and Shrike were friends, and over the past year that familiarity had begun to leak into her dealings with Wren. For another, she was fae; therefore Wren could feel tolerably certain she thought far less of his bare form than most mortals. And for a third, she’d seen it all before at Midsummer and the lake-shore both.
“It’s the fattiest thing in the forest,” Nell went on, heedless of Shrike’s efforts to quiet her. “Everilda said he needed something suety to keep him from wasting away.”
So saying, she raised her feathered prize to eye-level, though it seemed to Wren she did it more for his sake than for Shrike’s.
Wren glanced to Everilda, who remained seated by her instrument-case with her eyes cast down at her gyrdel-book. He supposed she saw no need to intervene between friends.
“How are you faring, Lofthouse?”
Wren, startled by the direct enquiry, jerked his head back to face Nell, who smirked on regardless.
“Well enough,” he answered, which had become the common reply.
“Glad of it,” she replied, and seemed to mean it sincerely.
