Page 21 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“You should have.” The smirk faded from Kael’s face until he wore a neutral, expressionless mask. “You won’t get another chance.”

Aisling’s eyes darted around the garden, trying to identify a way out that wasn’t the path behind him. But she couldn’t run. Even if her legs hadn’t been violently trembling, even if she managed to slip past Kael, there was little chance she’d even make it as far as the edge of the garden. He moved with all the speed and grace of a practiced warrior and with his long stride, he would be on her in seconds.

She had little choice but to let him take her.

Aisling was unsteady on her feet as Kael led her tripping down the spiral staircase. Several times she stumbled, and each time he waited until she’d almost hit the ground before tightening his iron grip on her elbow and wrenching her back upright. She could already feel bruises blooming over her neck, and she was sure she’d have more where the rings on his fingers dug into her arm.

Rodney would know.When Aisling didn’t return through the Thin Place, he would know something had gone wrong. He’d find help, or he’d come himself. She just had to survive until he did.

Wordlessly, they marched through the winding halls of the Undercastle. They were descending still, following the narrowing corridors down and down deeper underground. The air grew colder. Staler. Aisling could feel the stone walls pressing in on them. She thought if she listened hard enough, she might even be able to hear the creaks and groans of rocks settling against each other as the earth shifted aroundthe structure of the tunnels.

Kael kept a steady pace that forced Aisling nearly to jog alongside him to keep up. If she slowed down, she would fall, and she wouldn’t put it past him to drag her the rest of the way to wherever he was taking her. In fact, it would likely give him great pleasure to do so. His jaw was set hard and his eyes remained focused straight ahead, unwavering even when Aisling lost her balance or trailed behind. She kept her mouth shut. She wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t ask questions. She wouldn’t cry, despite the harsh tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

He stopped when they reached a heavy wooden door, guarded by two sentinels—malformed, grotesque redcaps that both raised their lips in a snarl when they saw the pair approach. One had a hand wrapped around a tall spear; the other, a broadsword that he let drag on the ground. Kael threw Aisling to the floor at their feet and she bit back a sob when her hip took the brunt of the impact. The redcap with the spear reached down and roughly hauled her back to stand. He stood only as high as Aisling’s shoulder, but was three times as wide, at least. His thick arms hung long, past his knees, and he carried himself as though they were almost too heavy for his frame. He yanked her around by her hair to face the king.

“Who sent you?” Kael demanded. “A Solitary faction? Or perhaps the Seelie Court has become so cowardly as to use their human pets for spies?”

“Neither,” Aisling gritted out. “I was curious, I’ve—” her words were punctuated by a sharp gasp as several strands of hair were torn out at the root. “I’ve heard stories. I was onlycurious.”

“And just how did you come by such a convincing glamour? The púca?”

She couldn’t implicate Rodney in this, not if there was to be any chance of him coming to her aid. “I waited by the Thin Place. I bartered with a sprite for it.”

“Curiosity is a poor excuse for deception,” Kael hissed. “You will pay for your lies.” He signaled to the redcaps with a slight nod of his chin before he turned on his heel and ascended the corridor, cloak sweeping behind him as a silent, trailing shadow.

In the bowels of the Undercastle, an overwhelming chill penetrated with piercing fingers to wrap around Aisling’s very bones. She rested on a damp floor of hard-packed dirt, which she couldn’t see, but could feel when her fingers curled against it.

“You’re ours now, girly,” the redcap had told her after the Unseelie King left her in their keep. The creature’s voice was guttural and his hot breath on Aisling’s face reeked of decaying meat and stale blood. “Got the perfect cell for you.”

That cell was little more than a hole carved into the stone wall of a longer cavern, scarcely wide enough for Aisling to lie down flat, and several inches too short for her to stand fully upright. Stagnant cave water trickled from the ceiling into a puddle in the corner that her hand found when they tossed her in like a discarded doll. Aheavy gate locked behind her—iron, she guessed, by the thick leather gloves one of the sentinels pulled on before swinging it shut. And when they returned to their post at the top of the stairs, closing the wooden door there, she was swallowed by the dark.

It was panic that gripped her first. Though she’d never before been particularly claustrophobic, something about the way that heavy, inky darkness pressed in on her forced her breath to come in short, uneven gasps. She clawed first at the too-tight neck of her sweater, then at the ground as though she might be able to dig her way out beneath the bars. She dug and dug until her fingers ached, and when she realized she hadn’t even managed to clear an inch of dirt, Aisling’s cries grew more frantic. It was the sound of those cries, ringing starkly off the stone walls, that brought her back into her own head. Slowly, slowly, she settled her breathing. Calmed her racing heart. She’d had her time to panic; it would do little good to indulge in that feeling for much longer.

Aisling was overtaken then by the cold, sinking feeling of acceptance: she’d played the game, and she’d lost. Scratches marred the wall at her back, a haunting calendar that marked the last days of a prisoner held there long before her. There was no real light here, no circulation of air or sounds beyond the steady drip-drip-drip to her left. She worked her jaw back and forth to relieve the pressure that had built in her ears—the dungeon was deep below the surface. Impossibly, hopelessly, oppressively deep.

Everything Aisling did was cautious. Calculated. Risks were weighed, outcomes assessed. But with the king, she’d been impulsive. And it had cost her. She was nothing more than a silly humangirl who thought she could play at Fae politics and come out on top. The prophecy, true or not, was a curse. It mattered very little whether she was truly the Red Woman; either way, she was a prisoner. Either way, she was completely at Kael’s mercy, and she knew all too well that he had none.

“You’re a human.” A thin voice snaked out of the shadows, breathy and low. Whether male or female, Aisling couldn’t tell, nor could she determine just how close to her they were. She didn’t answer. “I can smell you.” The speaker dragged out thes, making a long hissing sound that preceded the word.

“I am,” Aisling responded hesitantly. “What are you?”

“A prisoner,” the voice said, “like you. We’re all the same down here in the dark.”

“Are there more?” Blindly, Aisling ran her hands back and forth across the dirt as she crawled to kneel in front of the iron bars. She held onto them, leaning forward until they pressed against either side of her forehead. Her eyes scanned ahead, but she couldn’t discern a single shape or form before her.

A laugh then, bitter and weary. “It’s just the two of us, now. What do they call you?”

“Aisling,” she offered. She shouldn’t have, maybe, but it hardly mattered. In truth, though she was unsure just what she was talking to or what their intentions may be, she took some small comfort in knowing she wasn’t completely alone.

“You’d give up your name so easily?” Aisling could hear the surprise in their tone; clearly, this Fae was not well-acquaintedwith humans.

“My name has no power over me.”

“Still,” they asserted, “I hope you don’t expect the same in return.”

Aisling shook her head as though they could see her. Maybe their vision was better than hers. “I don’t. Why are you here?”

“Prisoner of war,” they said simply. “And yourself? What business might a human have with the Unseelie Court?”

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