Page 50 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“Manticores,”Rodney hissed. “Don’t speak to them.” The edge of fear in his voice drew a chill down Aisling’s arms, raising goosebumps. She drew them tightly across her chest in an effort to give the creatures a wide berth as they walked between their motionless forms.

“The queen is unavailable tonight, but dinner will be sent to your chambers.” The guard said the words coolly without glancing back at the trio. “We do not keep the palace lit at night, so do not wander.”

Indeed, the interior of the palace was quiet and dark. The guard carried a single candle to light their way, which she left in a candlestick on a table between two steaming plates of food before leaving Aisling, Rodney, and Briar alone.

They dined together quietly in the small room. Rodney had sniffed Aisling’s food, peering at it from all angles, looking for any hint of enchantment. Even once he’d deemed it safe, she could do little more than push it around her plate. Briar ate most of it.

Aisling was afraid, the false bravado she’d so skillfully projected having disappeared along with the warmth and the sunlight of the afternoon.

So she didn’t bother to argue when Rodney later crept through the door between their adjoined rooms, a pillow tucked under his arm. Didn’t tell him to leave when he nudged Briar over and settled in on the far side of the bed, his head by Aisling’s feet. Though she knew she should have forced him back through the Veil when she’d decided to stay, as she laid there listening to the sounds of his slow breathing and Briar’s soft snores, Aisling could hardly imagine facing this alone.

Aisling awoke just as dawn was beginning to break, having slept far more soundly than she’d expected. Briar and Rodney were still fast asleep sprawled on the bed beside her, so she carefully eased herself off the mattress and slipped out of the room before pausing in the hall to pull on her shoes. The palace was beginning to wake around her, and much like evenings in the Undercastle, the halls were filled with sounds of lesser faeries bustling back and forth to ready those they served.

In the light, Aisling was able to take in the Seelie palace more fully. The details that had been hidden by darkness the night before now danced around her. The palace was more opulent than she could have imagined, almost Baroque in its elegance and scale. The crown molding framing each space was hand-carved with swirlingfiligree patterns, coated in shining gold leaf. Chandeliers dripping with crystals refracted the sun in rainbow patterns across damask wallpaper.

She had to crane her neck to admire the frescoes that adorned the ceilings, all in soft, faded pastel shades depicting scenes of nature and magic intertwined. Marble statues of ethereal beings frozen in time peppered the corridors, tucked into corners and alcoves. Though most of them were missing various body parts, their serene beauty was no less for it. Aisling didn’t let her eyes linger on any of them for too long for fear they’d turn to meet her gaze.

The guard had chosen a wing to house Aisling and Rodney that was not too deep into the palace. Aisling had memorized the turns they took from the front door and was able to retrace that path without error. A carryover, she realized, from her time spent memorizing the routes in and out of the different spaces she’d been held in the Undercastle. She would never be that lost, helpless prisoner again.

Laure was waiting on the front path astride a large white stallion. Its mane was woven through with flowers, just as her own long black hair was this morning. She held the reins of a second horse, this one a soft dappled gray.

“Good morning,” she greeted Aisling with a kind smile. “I hope that you found your accommodations comfortable. I do apologize that I was unavailable to show them to you myself.”

Aisling quickened her pace as she passed between the manticores, then slowed her approach to the horses. They paid her little mind. She turned then, to take in the exterior of the palace. It was just as grandiose as the interior, with scarcely an inch left untouched byornamental scrollwork and sculpted reliefs. “It’s beautiful,” Aisling said. It was, in a way, though she found the sum of all its parts to be slightly overwhelming, too.

Laure leaned down to offer her the reins to the gray horse. “Do you know how to ride?”

Aisling’s mind briefly flickered to the two times she’d been on horseback: once, with an anonymous soldier cantering out to the Nyctara front, to what she’d been sure would be her death. The second, gripped by a fading Kael racing back to the Undercastle, still not convinced she’d be alive beyond nightfall. She shook her head. “No, but I understand the concept.”

She hitched a leg up to wedge the toe of her hiking boot into the stirrup, then hauled herself up into the saddle while Laure kept the horse still. Its back was broad between her legs, much wider than Kael’s skeletal mare.

“We’ll ride slow; there’s no hurry.” Laure guided her horse to turn and proceeded at a comfortable pace. Aisling had to do very little beyond remaining upright; her horse followed Laure’s and fell into step by its side.

They rode in silence for a time, the quiet of the valley punctuated by lilting birdsong and distant laughter. Aisling wondered when the music would begin, whether it was an everyday occurrence. As swaths of morning fog drifted lazily across the mountainside, Solanthis appeared almost to be floating on the white mist, rather than anchored to the rough stone.

Laure’s body moved as one with her horse, graceful and steady. She wore a velvet cloak of sage green clasped at her breastbonethat hid her wings and fanned over the animal’s hindquarters. Turning in her saddle, Aisling met Laure’s sparkling amethyst eyes.

“Why is your Thin Place so heavily guarded?” She’d been curious about the number of sentries posted there; four seemed too many for their relative strength. Certainly for visitors like herself and Rodney, unarmed and wholly unprepared for confrontation.

“The Unseelie Court tends to hide their entrances in places that keep people out on their own. As we choose more pleasing locations for ours, we must use different methods of protection.”

“I didn’t know that you chose the locations.” Aisling’s horse huffed in annoyance when she tightened her thighs against it for balance as it trotted through a small stream. “Does that mean you can move them, too?”

Laure nodded. “We can, but rarely have need to. They are simple enough to close, but establishing a new opening is a difficult task.”

“Then the one that I came through—it’s been there awhile?” Aisling chewed on the inside of her cheek. She pictured her mother making that hike, greeting the dryads, and passing through that thin skein of magic.

“I would imagine so; I don’t believe we’ve moved any in a century or more.” Laure answered as though she knew already what Aisling had been waiting to ask.

“My mother came here, I think. It’s exactly how she described it.” A sad smile played on her lips when she looked across the boundless meadow.Bathed in golden sunlight.

“What was your mother’s name?” Laure asked.

“Maeve,” Aisling said. “Maeve Morrow. She looked a little like me, I think, or rather I look like her. But her hair was redder than mine.” She’d always wished growing up that she could trade her honey hair for her mother’s auburn waves.

Laure thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Human visitors are more common here than you might assume. I am sorry sweetling, truly.”

The quiet that followed was laced with a disappointment palpable enough that Laure reached across the space between the horses to brush her fingertips over Aisling’s arm.

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