Page 22 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

Aisling let the question hang in the air for several minutes, considering how to answer, or if she should answer at all. She didn’t trust the owner of the voice—hiding in the murky shadows, it could belong to anyone. They could be a faerie sent by Kael to get information, or something more sinister that lurked here for the sole purpose of toying with his captives.

“I made a mistake attempting to get close to the king. I thought I had control,” Aisling admitted carefully. “But I underestimated him.”

Her admission earned her another gravelly chuckle. “The Unseelie King has a way of unraveling even the most carefully-spun webs. Count yourself lucky you’re still alive.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” Aisling muttered, her fingers tracing the wrought-iron bars.

“Survival is a gift for as long as you can hang onto it,” they advised, voice tinged with melancholy. “They’ll come for you eventually.”

Aisling let her eyes fall closed as her heart sank. When the bars began to hurt her face, she crawled back to her place against the wall and slid her hand out across the stone until it found the rivulet of water. She collected some in her palm, then brought it back to splashacross her cheeks. It was undoubtedly dirty, but it felt good all the same.

“What happened to the others?” she asked into the void.

“They were taken to feed the king,” the voice responded.

Aisling’s blood froze solid in her veins as a dagger of fear plunged through her gut. She hadn’t thought she could feel any more afraid, but those words once again sent her heart hammering violently against her ribcage. “What do you mean?”

“Just that.” Their tone was dispassionate; they’d long since accepted this as their fate. “His magic is an entity unto itself. It needs to consume. Life—breath, blood, bone—makes it stronger. That’s if it doesn’t tear you apart first. He was born to carry it, both a blessing and a curse. It hungers, it yearns, and it demands sacrifice.”

The weight that had settled on Aisling’s chest constricted her lungs once more and her hands balled into tight fists in her lap. The thought of Kael’s insatiable magic feeding on the lives of those who crossed his path filled her with dread. No longer could she deny the dangerous predator lurking beneath the king’s allure: she was trapped now below the den of a monster both ancient and formidable.

Unable to quiet her racing thoughts or slow her speeding heart, Aisling stared out into the unrelenting abyss. The voice didn’t speak again, but neither did Aisling engage it further. She counted the seconds in her head as they passed, a distraction at first from the silence, but as the number crept higher and higher, so too did her anxiety grow. She quit somewhere around four thousand and instead focused on the sound of the water. She kept onehand underneath it, catching each droplet and letting it flow from her palm, concentrating on its coolness. Its steady, consistent rhythm. She willed her pulse to match it. At one point she might have even dozed off for a while, but in that darkness, it was hard to discern when the color behind her eyelids was just as black as it was with her eyes open.

When the door at the top of the stairs opened once again, the barest light that filtered in was very nearly blinding. A figure descended—not one of the redcap guards, but a slight male in a robe that looked several sizes too large. Aisling watched him approach, eyes wide and fearful. Through the bars, careful to avoid touching the metal with his bare skin, he tossed a wad of white cloth towards her.

“Put it on,” he ordered. Aisling held it up in front of her. It was a shift dress made of paper-thin cotton, already marked with dirt from where it had landed on the ground at her feet. The male turned his back so that she could change, her movements awkward in the small space. “Remove everything.”

A fresh wave of paralyzing fear resigned Aisling to comply. Her cheeks burned with shame as she unhooked her bra and slid down her underwear, utterly exposed beneath the diaphanous fabric. She cupped shaking hands over either breast, shielding herself from the male’s gaze when he turned around. But he didn’t so much as glance at her; instead, his eyes seemed to look straight through her. He stopped her before she could step out of the cell and shook his head.

“Shoes, too.” Aisling kicked off her shoes and balled her socks into them, as though she’d be back. She doubted she’d be back.

“I am sorry, my friend,” the reedy voice whispered from the depths as the male led her up out of the dungeon.

Aisling didn’t bother attempting to get her bearings as they walked, but she imagined where he could be leading her. The throne room, maybe. There would be a crowd there to watch her execution at the hand of the king. Or would she be eaten?It hungers, it yearns, it demands sacrifice.Was she to be the sacrifice? The loose skirt of the dress rippled around her violently trembling body. She thought of her friends. Of Rodney, of Briar. Only Rodney would know what had happened to her, the rest would wonder if she’d returned to the mainland without saying goodbye. Briar would think she’d left him alone. The tears she’d refused to shed in front of the king were unstoppable now, carving new tracks over her dirt-stained cheeks.

The male, who kept a slower pace than Kael had, led Aisling to the foot of the spiral staircase and beckoned for her to climb it ahead of him. The soft swishing of his robes sweeping across the stone behind her was oddly soothing.

Back above ground, it was night—whether again or still, Aisling wasn’t sure. But it was frigid, and even though the fresh air was sweet as it filled her lungs, the cold gripped her and intensified her shivering. She hated,hatedhow weak she would appear when she finally stood in front of the king: reduced to a shuddering, tear-soaked mess in a dirty, too-thin garment. More still, she hated how much pleasure it would likely bring him to see her this way—afraid. Afraid ofhim.So Aisling raised her chin. Straightened her spine. Squared her shoulders. There was little she could do about theshivering, but she clenched her jaw shut so hard it throbbed to stop the noisy chattering of her teeth.

The male took the lead again, directing her toward the tree line. Her eyes darted across to where she thought the Thin Place waited, and suddenly she understood why he’d made her remove her shoes. She couldn’t outrun him barefoot, not when each stick and jagged stone that dug into her soles made her wince with every step.

He stopped her in a moonlit clearing, where a handful of other males in similar robes stood on a circle carved into the dirt. Thick, snaking tree roots wove under and over the ground around their feet. One of the robed figures was stooped over, lighting candles one by one. At the head of the circle was an altar of sorts—a large triangle formed of branches lashed together with fibrous twine. It was with this altar at her back that Aisling was forced down onto her knees. In front of her, sitting cross-legged amongst the roots in the center of the circle, was the Unseelie King. All the resolve that she’d mustered on the walk over disappeared at once. Aisling dropped her head to study the ground and squeezed fistfuls of the dress against her thighs.

There was a heaviness in the clearing, one that wasn’t entirely natural. The air was difficult to breathe in a way that it hadn’t been just on the other side of the tree line. Aisling squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force deep breaths into her lungs. Her chest and back ached with the effort.

Then, the silence was broken by a low voice at the altar uttering an invocation in a language entirely unfamiliar to Aisling. It flowed lyrically, the lilting words almost entrancing in the way they werewoven together in one long, unbroken phrase. The air grew thicker still, squeezing her from all sides in a suffocating embrace. Against her better judgment, curiosity and dread drove Aisling to raise her head just slightly to take in the scene in front of her.

Kael was dressed simply in black cloth, a contrast to her dress and the silver-white of his hair that flowed loose down his back and framed either side of his face that he kept tipped slightly forward. The expression he wore wavered somewhere between concentration and pain and his knuckles blanched white as his long fingers dug into his knees. His lips moved along with the voice behind Aisling to form the shapes of consonants and vowels, stringing them together voicelessly.

The night around Aisling shifted and flexed with the power of the incantation and a strange dance of shadows began to unfold around Kael—fromKael—wisps of darkness that swirled and pulsated like living things. Aisling’s breath hitched; this was the magic the voice in the dungeon had warned her of. That insatiable, sentient thing that needed to consume. As the currents reached out to her, she was frozen in place. She felt a scream building in her throat, but no sound escaped her lips.

Tracing the path of his magic as it moved, Kael’s frosted eyes met Aisling’s and for a second, less than a second, the air stilled. The shadows pouring from his skin slowed their tempestuous dance and hung suspended, frozen, inches from where they had begun to curl towards her arms. The connection between them was ephemeral, yet it sent electricity coursing through Aisling’s body. She felt both drawn to and repelled by this unfathomable force thatresided within the Unseelie King. His eyes widened, almost imperceptibly, before he dropped them back down. The moment he did, his shadows resumed their aggressive movement.

Aisling, too, lowered her head once more, transfixed by the threads of shadow that now drew roughly across her skin. Her body could scarcely register the power that was ensnaring it, and the touch of the magic felt somehow both searing hot and ice cold. The shadows slid along her bare arms, writhing against her, creeping ever closer to her neck. Aisling squeezed her eyes shut and pursed her lips, imagining the tendrils seeking out a way to burrow into her. To strangle her from the inside out.

A tremor rolled through the clearing and even the roots of the trees seemed to tighten their grip on the earth, grasping for stability. Over the chanting that filled the air around them, calling to the twisting shadows, Kael growled: “Finish it.”

Aisling braced herself, but her end never came. The invocation slowed, quieted, then stopped altogether. Though she kept her eyes closed, she could feel the shadows sliding back down her arms, the energy being drawn away from her. The pressure eased and breath flooded back into her lungs in a loud, ragged gasp. Angry red abrasions on her skin oozed blood that dripped down her wrists into the soil. When she dared to open her eyes, she saw that Kael remained hunched over and out of breath. He may have been trembling harder than she was.

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