Page 58 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“What sort of aid?” He kept his voice cool and disinterested.

“Why?” Tadhg smirked, though he still concentrated on his colors. “Do you want to make a deal?”

Rodney sniffed. “I could be convinced. It depends on what’s on offer.”

“There’s a great deal to be offered.” Tadhg held up the palette, looking back and forth between the color he’d created and Aisling’s clothes before attacking it again with his brush.

“And what is it that the Seelie Court gains in return?” Rodney was standing at Tadhg’s shoulder now, suddenly far more interested in his process than he’d been when the activity was first suggested.

Without hesitation, Tadhg said, “I am the queen’s artist, not her advisor. I stay as far away from politics as I am able.”

“Does their contribution have anything to do with the war efforts?” Aisling asked. She set her teacup aside and patted Briar’s head, though she was not so skilled at seeming impassive as Rodney.

“Of course not,” Tadhg scoffed. “They would no sooner fight to protect our court than we would their land.”

Aisling thought of those ill-equipped Solitary soldiers at Nyctara, fighting on foot while the Seelie warriors remained above the fray on horseback, dying for a cause that wasn’t their own at the ends of swords and wrapped in tendrils of Kael’s shadows. Rodney caught her eye again as though reading her mind. His reaction had been one of shock when she’d returned and told him what she’d seen.

“I would think adding their numbers to the Seelie ranks would be rather beneficial in this war,” Rodney suggested casually.

Whether or not Tadhg knew the truth, he didn’t let on. He never faltered; his expression and the constant movement of his paintbrush across the canvas gave nothing away as he responded, “The Seelie Court fights its own battles.”

“What did you mean yesterday when you said that there’s less space in the human realm for the Fae?” Aisling broke the silence that had settled over the archive. She was seated crossed-legged on the ground amidst stacks of books.

Rodney looked up from the brittle, faded scroll he was attempting to decipher. “Just what I said. Your world is a lot smaller now than it used to be. There’s not a lot of room for magic anymore.”

“That’s sad,” she murmured. His lament, whether or not he meant it to be, was heart-wrenching. It made Aisling feel guilty too somehow. As though she alone was responsible for the world’s modernization, its ever-expanding cities and the destruction of forests and lakes and glens and everything else that was once wild and untamed. Her jaw clenched involuntarily when shethought of how hard she’d worked to push magic out of her own life once she felt she’d outgrown her mother’s stories.

But Rodney only shrugged. “Just means we have to be better at hiding. Have you found anything?”

“No.” Aisling brushed a strand of hair from her face and tipped her head back to lean against the shelf. “You?”

“The only thing I’ve learned is that I’m shit at languages. I thought I’d retained more.” He rolled the scroll carefully and set it aside on a pile of others he’d already scanned and discarded.

“For not having spoken it in 29 years, you remember more than I’d have expected.”

He huffed a short breath through his nose in response. “How much longer do you want to keep at this, anyway?”

“We should stay until our time is up. I don’t want to give up early and wonder later if we’d have found something if we had kept working.” Aisling pulled another book into her lap half-heartedly. Her neck was sore and her eyes were tired and her brain was overfull of utterly useless information.

She’d just set another book aside, frustrated, when a series of soft knocks startled them both. Aisling clambered to her feet, toppling over a waist-high tower of books in the process. She angled her body to hide their mess when she pulled the heavy door open.

“Can we have just a bit more time?” Aisling asked the sidhe. A large, ancient tome was nestled against her chest. It had been opened and closed so many times over the years that the black leather of the spine was cracked and split all the way down. She held it as though her arms were all that kept its pages together.

“You have awhile yet. Here.” If she was bothered by the array of books and papers scattered around the room, she didn’t show it as she placed the volume carefully in Aisling’s waiting arms. Then, still with that same serene demeanor, she further lowered her whisper-quiet voice. “You might find it useful; just be gentle with it.”

Aisling opened her mouth to ask what she meant, but she’d already pulled the door closed behind her. The click of the lock sounded sure and final.

“What is that?” Rodney leaned back in his chair to peer at the book Aisling now grasped carefully. “It’s massive.”

“I’m not sure. She said we might find it useful.” She returned to her seat on the floor with the book cracked open across her lap.

His face fell. “Shit Ash, you don’t think she’s heard us do you?”

“I don’t want to think about it if she did,” Aisling responded sharply. Her palms were sweaty at the mere thought; she didn’t need to voice the possibility out loud.Could that have been why Laure was suddenly unable to meet the day before?She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek until that concern quieted.

The book in her lap was hand-written in the dense, curling font of the Fae language. When Aisling ran a finger over it, she could feel the indentation of each letter in the paper. She began flipping through page after delicate page in search of illustrations she might be able to understand. There weren’t many, and certainly none that she would consider in any way useful.

Just as she began easing the book closed, a swath of heavy black ink caught her attention. She opened it again and carefully teased the loose page from the binding. The illustration, still as sharpand black as it was the day it was drawn, divided the page into equal thirds. At the bottom, indistinguishable forms writhed and lurked in heavy shadows beneath the soil and thick, twisting roots. The middle third depicted figures within the bark of the trees and surrounded by wildflowers in a lush forest clearing. The top of the page was filled in almost completely: the night sky, deep and dark. Beings floated there—whether one or more she couldn’t say; it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began. It—they—were cloaked in stars, angled as though they were gazing down at the forest below.

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