Page 30 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“Because you likely do, but I do not wish to ask you the questions.” Kael began moving towards the door. This way, with Aisling chained to the bed as his captive, he maintained control of their conversations. It was infuriating.

“I hate the way you all talk,” Aisling snapped. “Why does everything need to be so cryptic?”

He didn’t answer. “I will return tomorrow with more books for you to choose from.”

Anger overtook the caution that Aisling had been trying hard to maintain and when she spoke again, her tone was biting. “Is it about why I’m still alive?” Kael froze with his back to her, spine and shoulders stiff. She could hear his teeth grinding from across the room. But he hadn’t left yet, so she continued: “The sylph said that the other prisoners had died to feed you. I’m assuming I should have, too, that night in the forest.”

She didn’t mention that Lyre had confirmed the very same during his clandestine visit. Unsurprisingly, Kael left without responding, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the glass of water on the nightstand. If nothing else, she knew how to get a rise out of him.

But he wasn’t the only one hoping to learn something. She was frustrated and wasting time—she was meant to be making progress towards unraveling the prophecy. Towards understandinghow she, as the Red Woman, was meant to end a war. She’d seen the conflict now firsthand; she understood the Shadowwood Mother’s urgency. That the Unseelie warriors had slaughtered the opposing army with such swift, decisive force left a frightening impression. The way Kael’s shadows tore through their bodies as though they were nothing, even more so.

Kael lurked in the dim corridor, awaiting Methild’s exit from Aisling’s room. He’d returned twice more before tonight, each time with a stack of books, but she hadn’t been at all interested in the choices. He supposed that his own tastes were dissimilar to hers: he preferred dense tomes detailing ancient histories. Books on war, on strategy. It was unlikely that she would be entertained by such things.

“She is better,” Methild’s croaking voice sounded even before she had fully closed the door. She dragged behind her a basket of damp rags. “Stronger.”

The king pushed himself off of the wall where he’d been leaning. “Has she asked you to unchain heragain?”

Methild shook her head. “Stubborn, though. Won’t hardly let me do anything for her anymore.”

Kael hummed. He could have guessed that she would be—stubborn. She’d seemed it from the very first time they’d met, even beneath the heavy glamour.

“How much longer do you wish me to tend to her, Your Highness?” The old faerie pushed her sleeves up over her bony elbows and re-situated her grip on the heavy basket.

“Until I tell you that you may cease.” Kael observed her haughtily, vaguely annoyed by the impatience in her tone. When he’d ordered Aisling into Methild’s care, she’d agreed to do so without complaint. As she should. Now, it seemed that she was displeased with the ongoing task.

Methild ducked her head. “Yes, Your Highness.” She skittered off into the darkness, her basket grating loudly against the rough stone floor.

“Such insolence from your own handservant.” The High Prelate swept into view. He was still hunched and bearing his weight on a cane after the injury during the battle, and all the more petulant for it. He’d been bedridden for three days. Three merciful days that had allowed Kael enough distance to quiet his rage. Now, he only considered plunging a blade into the male’s sunken chest. If he’d have seen him up and about sooner, he’d have done so without hesitation.

“You have no right to speak of insolence to me, Prelate,” Kael snapped. Werryn’s willful defiance of the king’s orders on the battlefield should have been grounds for execution, had there beenanother prepared to take his place as High Prelate. As it was, none of the Lesser Prelates were far enough along in their studies to step into the role. By design, Kael was sure. Werryn was no fool.

“Checking on your pretty pet again, are we?” he sneered.

Kael bristled at the implication. Since the uncontrolled eruption of his magic, and the deaths of nine of his own warriors, insidious whispers had begun to spread through the Undercastle like wildfire—no doubt fanned by the High Prelate himself. The tether had survived, yet again, while his own subjects had not. A tether that, when it came down to it, he hadn’t wanted to use at all, but that had captured his shadows all the same.

“You forget your place in this court.” The words were carried on a low growl as Kael’s hand dropped to his side. He wasn’t wearing his dagger there, but his fingers curled into a fist where its hilt would have rested. In the span of a breath, he could let his shadows free to finish what they’d started when they’d driven through Werryn’s gut. In this moment, nothing would have brought Kael greater pleasure.

“My place is at the foot of the Low One. I serve him before I serve you.”

“If your place is at His feet, then mine is at His left hand.” Kael drew up to his full height before the High Prelate, straightening his broad shoulders, and hissed, “You serveme.”

The only acknowledgement Werryn gave was a tight nod that made the hood of his robe slide back onto his shoulders. “I’ve gathered several members of the assembly in your study to discuss the girl, if you wouldcare to join.”

“Myprisoneris not yours to discuss.” Kael was nearly trembling with rage now, unaccustomed to such blatant impudence, even from Werryn.

“Be that as it may,” the High Prelate said over his shoulder as he turned to proceed up the corridor, “your display at the Nyctara front concerns us all. Your conviction after we completed the Nocturne ritual that you hadn’t needed a tether was clearly false. You’re weaker than ever.”

Werryn continued speaking as he hobbled away, leaving Kael with little choice but to trail after him, seething. In his mind, he was a small child again, following after a much younger Werryn and listening to the same lecture.I was chosen,he repeated again and again in a bid to block out those memories.The Low One chose me.

Four Lesser Prelates were waiting on the arrival of the High Prelate and their king just inside the door of Kael’s study. Having already been put in a foul mood, Kael’s teeth gnashed together at the sight of them uninvited in his space. He shoved through their tight group to take a seat behind his desk. These were the four furthest along in their studies and, incidentally, the four that Werryn kept closest. In their plain black robes, they traveled the halls of the Undercastle like a flock of ravens. They were as sharp and cunning as the bird, too. Lyre, in particular, seemed always to have the High Prelate’s ear. It was Lyre who had alerted Werryn to Aisling’s state in the dungeon upon his return. Between the two of them, conspiring from Werryn’s sick bed, they had arranged her move to the chamber she now occupied.

Installing Methild as her attendant was the simplest way Kael could think of to monitor the situation. She had nursed him back from near-death several times over, surely not with as much tenderness as she now showed the girl, but she was skilled in her caregiving.

Kael tuned out their droning voices, propping his chin on his palm and moving his fingers in idle circles against his scalp. When one grazed his lobe, a slight chill danced across his skin. The girl had been the last one to touch him there. It had been a small kindness—hardly one at all, really—but it had stuck in his mind all the same: the two fingers she’d pressed to his jaw to turn his head to the side. The cool brush of her hands against his hot ear. How gentle she’d been with him.

No one had ever been so gentle with him.

His eyes drifted to the jar on his desk, where the Luna moth lay lifeless and faded at the bottom. It had died by the time he’d ridden back from Nyctara, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw it out. Even in death, it was beautiful.

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