So excited to finally share these with you!
LauravianArts designed six cozy cottagecore stickers featuring Shrike and Wren from Oak King Holly King.
Check out the full set on my official Etsy storefront! (And stay tuned for future merch drops…)
Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!
~
Butcher cleared his throat and held out his left hand. Dark lines wore through his weathered palm like tree-rings, and his long fingers bore more than a few calluses. It looked more like a sailor or farmer’s hand than the hand of a thespian or an aristocratic eccentric. “Tonight I join the Wild Hunt to slay the beast that has devoured the children of the Court of Moons. If you will venture out with me, I will show you that all I spake of rings true.”
This, then, was the trick. No shell hidden beneath a cup or ha’penny pulled from behind an ear. Just a fairy tale to lure Wren out of the city. To what end, he couldn’t fathom.
Yet even as his rational mind supposed that such an adventure could only end in mugging or murder, his Romantic soul stretched its withered wings and soared at the notion of leaving the suffocating fog of Staple Inn behind to venture out into the wilderness beneath the full moon.
Furthermore, if he did end up murdered, it meant he’d never have to copy out another account-book again. And if he must end in murder, Wren supposed he’d rather have a strapping specimen like Butcher slide the knife into his heart.
~
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Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance collection, Tales from Blackthorn Briar, a sequel to Oak King Holly King featuring hurt/comfort and many happily-ever-afters – available wherever fine books are found!
~
“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.”
~
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Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!
~
“Larkin had fled across the countryside,” Shrike went on. “More concerned with the knights gaining on him than the path ahead, he fell through a fairy ring. He stumbled through the forest—he knew not for how long—until he heard a child wailing and followed the sound until he stumbled upon me. I remember I had fallen out down from the tree. The other fledglings had pushed me out of the nest.”
“The other fledglings?” Wren interrupted.
“Aye,” said Shrike, confused by Wren’s confusion.
Wren hesitated, not wishing to offend, before he ventured what felt like the obvious question. “Were you born a bird?”
Much to Wren’s relief, Shrike didn’t appear offended. Merely befuddled. “No.”
“But you were born in a nest,” said Wren. When Shrike confirmed this with a nod, Wren added, “From an egg?”
“Aye,” Shrike said as if no one had ever questioned it before.
Wren supposed such circumstances were common in the fae realms. That conclusion didn’t prevent his mind from reeling. “Do all fae come from eggs?”
“Some do. Others grow in flower buds, or on the under-sides of leaves, or beneath toadstools, or in hollow logs—or sometimes in bonfires or particularly sooty chimneys. And,” Shrike added with a sceptical twist of his mouth, “some are born from other fae in the same manner kits come from vixens, or a fawn comes from a doe.”
“Or as human babes come from human mothers,” said Wren.
Shrike’s eyes widened with dawning horror.
~
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Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!
~
In the moonlight, and without his hood, Wren could see Butcher’s ears quite clearly. Now there was no mistaking them for waxwork. He could see, as well, the black woollen tunic Butcher wore and how it clung to his muscular frame, tied off with a belted leather gyrdel at the waist and hanging down not much farther than that. Nothing covered Butcher’s thighs save medieval hose, likewise black, and his black cavalier boots came up to his knees; a motley assortment of costuming eras in a monochromatic assembly.
Wren shut his mouth but kept on staring in wide-eyed wonder at his new surroundings. He’d never seen so many stars in his life. Had seen none, in fact, since he’d moved to London. The silence was new to him as well. Moreso than the muffled angles of Staple Inn, the forest had no wagons rattling endlessly over cobblestones, no people shouting, no bells ringing, none of the millions of incidental human sounds that tumbled all on top of each other every minute in the city. Just the rustling of pine needles in the wind.
Then he heard it.
An eerie sound, a howl that began low and swooped upward to end in a triumphant blast that echoed throughout the forest as if from miles off. A hunting horn.
Butcher took hold of the stag’s antlers and dug his knees into its flanks. The stag leapt off once more, darting to and fro between the trees at harrowing speed, along no path Wren could perceive. He clung to Butcher’s waist, his chest flush with Butcher’s spine, the closest embrace he’d known in more years than he cared to count.
~
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Thrilled to announce that art prints of the gorgeous cover paintings for Mr Warren’s Profession, Oak King Holly King, and Tales from Blackthorn Briar are now available through ThistleArtsStudio’s etsy shop!
What other bookish merch would you like to see?
Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!
~
The terrible impact rang out across the field like a thunderbolt cleaving a tree in twain.
Wren’s hands flew to his mouth. The crowd leapt and cheered, surging in a bloodthirsty tide. The young man amidst the milkmaids let out a particularly gruesome guffaw. Wren didn’t dare breathe. It seemed the world had ceased turning the instant the blow fell.
The sword had struck Shrike in the side. The Holly King’s blade came away crimson. And the horrible noise, the crunch of metal against boiled leather and bone—
But Shrike rolled.
At first it seemed as though the force of the blow had thrown him aside, but as Wren watched him tumble, he realized Shrike had purposefully dodged. Not entirely, not quite fast enough for that, but dodged all the same, and when his feet came under him again he staggered upright.
And Wren’s hopes rose with him.
~
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Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!
~
“Nell reminded me,” Shrike added as Wren gazed at the mask. “I need something to disguise my oddities from mortal eyes.”
“They’re not oddities,” Wren said without even considering the matter, the words spilling forth from his heart rather than his head.
If Shrike minded, it showed neither in his face nor his speech. “I need your help to finish it.”
“How?” Wren blurted. He’d felt desperate to alleviate Shrike’s agonies since they’d begun and equally hopeless he might ever do so in his own mortal failings.
Shrike reached out his forefinger and tapped the centre of the mask’s brow, where a smooth field devoid of veins spanned between the two antler valleys. “It requires a cunning sigil.”
Wren’s unease increased. Even after all the hours they’d spent in each other’s company, hours in which Wren thought it woefully apparent his own mortal skill couldn’t hold a candle to Shrike’s fae mastery, Shrike thought him some manner of wizard. “What ought it to look like?”
“I know not,” said Shrike. “I’ve no gift for glamour. I’m ill-accustomed to seeming anything other than what I am.”
Wren had spent more than three decades disguising his truest self from society’s judgment. Shrike could not have chosen a more experienced practitioner in the art of deceit.
~
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Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance collection, Tales from Blackthorn Briar, a sequel to Oak King Holly King featuring hurt/comfort and many happily-ever-afters – available wherever fine books are found!
~
A gentleman stood at the bottom of the stair.
Not, Ephraim realised with a sinking heart, Lofthouse or Felix. The gentleman stood far too tall to pass for either—more in line with Tolhurst or Butcher. As he turned his face upward to meet Ephraim’s stare, he revealed a face which couldn’t have seen many days beyond thirty years. And a handsome face, at that. One that bore a sun-kissed brow, dark yet twinkling eyes, a long nose with a noble arch, a jaw strong enough to attract notice even beneath the close-trimmed black beard, and full lips beneath the moustache that wore a smile like sunshine breaking through storm-clouds.
Ephraim’s pulse gave an uncomfortable flutter, as it sometimes did when he arose too quickly from his desk.
“Good morrow, sir!” said the gentleman in a hearty tone. Ephraim couldn’t quite place his accent—a very slight one, with a touch of a burr and a hint of a lilt which defied all efforts to pin it down. The deep bass of his voice thrummed through Ephraim’s own ribs in a manner which made his knees feel weak for reasons beyond rheumatism.
Ephraim put these feelings away into a little locked drawer in his mind, as he always did, and cleared his throat.
~
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Tales from Blackthorn Briar comes out today – which means you can celebrate Mabon with Shrike and Wren!
Shrike, the fae Butcher of Blackthorn, and Wren Lofthouse, a mortal Victorian clerk, are bound together by love and fate. Their continued adventures (and those of their friends) are told in this collection of fantastical tales following the story of Oak King Holly King, including…
Mabon
• Wherein Shrike and Wren repay their debt to the Court of Hidden Folk.
Mr Grigsby’s Clerk
• Wherein Mr Grigsby finds a replacement for Wren – and perhaps more than he bargained for.
Jack in the Green
• Wherein a certain Horse Guard wanders into Blackthorn Briar.
Winter Solstice
• Wherein the Holly King surrenders to the Oak King.
The Holly King’s Peril
• Wherein Wren and Shrike discover danger in the wilds of the Fae Realms.
The Ballad of Daniel Durst
• Wherein Daniel embarks on his authentic life in a bold new land.
Discover it now wherever fine books are found!
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Sebastian Nothwell 