Page 27 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“Oh.” The disappointment was crushing. Aisling would have given anything to see her friend’s sly smile and that shock of orange hair. Vaguely in the back of her pain-addled mind, Aisling wondered whether this was the acquaintance Rodney had been intent on finding—though she couldn’t recall the name he had given her. But the Prelate didn’t offer any further insight into his relations with her friend. With the sheer effort it took to keep herself standing, she was unable to formulate a clear thought, much less ask any further questions. For now, she was simply content to be led away from her prison and to trust that the male was telling her the truth.

He led her slowly to a chamber, small and simple, similar to the plain stone room where Aisling had lain with Kael. The bed was a welcome sight, and with the Prelate’s support, she sank onto the soft mattress. Her body trembled with exhaustion and pain. The male pulled a tiny vial from a pocket inside of his robe and held it to Aisling’s lips.

“Drink,” he instructed. Another flare of fire at the base of her skull was enough to override all rational thought, and she did as she was told. The shot of liquid was thick and cloying and almost immediately brought her eyelids to flutter closed. Every sore, knotted muscle in Aisling’s body relaxed, the tension dissolving into a warm wave of relief.

The calm didn’t last long, though, and once Aisling was alone she grew hot and anxious. With the draught having dulled some of her pain, she felt sure this was her window to escape. She tried to sit up quickly but swore when she found that her body didn’t possess the strength. Rolling onto her side, she tried again, moredeliberately this time, using her hands and elbows to bear her weight. She had to stop and rest halfway before she could make it fully upright. With one hand still steadying herself on the mattress, she shoved the heavy blankets off her legs and swung them over the edge of the bed. The room pitched and reeled as she struggled to her feet, but her eyes remained focused on the heavy wooden door at the far end. It cracked open just as her knees gave out and she collapsed back onto the mattress.

A slight female bustled in then, slender arms hooked through the handle of an overlarge wicker basket half her size. The faerie was scarcely taller than the doorknob and looked to be nearly as old as the Shadowwood Mother. A hob, Aisling guessed. Her thin nose wrinkled at what was certainly Aisling’s own odor: sweat, dirt, and stale blood. Aisling tracked her path as she flitted around the room lighting candles, but her vision couldn’t quite keep up with the movements of her head and it blurred around the periphery.

“Methild Nym,” the faerie said. That she’d given the entirety of her name so freely to Aisling meant that she was already under the servitude of another, likely a courtier or maybe the Unseelie King himself. “I’ve been sent to look after you. May I?” Her thin lips curved into a pitying smile and she waited for Aisling’s permission before approaching.

It was a welcome surprise, being asked for her consent. Throat still raw from her earlier retching, Aisling managed only a weak nod.

“Your head plagues you,” she observed. Aisling’s head throbbed as though responding to the mere mention of the pain. The female’s touch was cautious as she laid a damp cloth across Aisling’s forehead.She shivered and drew the blankets up around her shoulders. With twig-like fingers, Methild parted Aisling’s matted hair and spread a thick salve over the wound there. Aisling winced, expecting some discomfort, but the herb-scented balm brought nothing but relief.

“We’re unaccustomed to visitors from your realm,” Methild remarked with a touch of wistfulness while she worked the medicine into Aisling’s scalp. “You are a rare thing, indeed.”

She spent the rest of her time in the chamber working in silence to wipe Aisling down with wet rags, lifting her limbs and turning them this way and that to scrub roughly at the dried mud that had crusted over her skin. If she had any energy left at all, Aisling might have been embarrassed by the intrusion, or at the very least uncomfortable with the attention. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d allowed herself to be cared for in this way. Now, she didn’t have much choice. In her current state, she could hardly even help the hob by holding up the weight of her own arms.

Methild scurried in and out of the room a handful of times to refresh Aisling’s water or reapply the salve, but Aisling hardly registered it. She was adrift in the feverish recesses of her mind, somewhere between home and kaleidoscopic memories of the ethereal Nocturne revelry. It all seemed so much darker in her head: the pointed, leering faces of Fae spinning around her in double-time while somewhere unseen the Shadowwood Mother laughed and laughed at her frantic dancing.

The next time Aisling consciously opened her eyes, though, she felt better. Still weak, but her stomach no longer ached and her skin no longer burned with fever. Her migraine, too,had largely subsided. Her mind felt less like a battleground and more like her own.

When a cool hand pressed against her forehead, her heart leapt into her throat. She hadn’t heard the scuffling of Methild’s rough slippers on the floor; she thought she’d been alone in the room.

Kael was seated nearby, his form rigidly perched on the edge of a chair. A book was cracked open over his knee where he’d turned it to mark the page when Aisling stirred. His expression was indecipherable in the dim light.

“Your fever has broken.” Kael’s voice, while far from kind, was unexpectedly soft. Aisling’s surprise to see the Unseelie King sitting at her bedside, addressing her in a tone not laced with malice, was obvious on her face. His lips curved in a faint, almost wry smile and his posture shifted as he began to rise.

The king’s movement startled her, and with shaky urgency Aisling attempted to sit up. She was more successful in her effort this time, but only made it partway before Kael’s hand landed on her shoulder, urging her gently but firmly back against the pillows.

“Let me see your hand,” he requested, holding one of his own out to her. It caught her off guard, and reflexively she withdrew it from beneath the blankets and placed it in his. Aisling hadn’t noticed before how rough his callused palms were. So distracted by the feeling of Kael’s hand on hers, she had no time to react when, in one swift motion, he locked a manacle around her wrist. He leaned down to secure the other end to the bedpost.

Aisling’s pulse quickened, a mixture of shock and betrayal knotting her insides. She looked up at him, her eyes searching his facefor an explanation. In his gaze, she found an odd sort of blend of pragmatism and something that might have been sympathy. But if it was, she was surely imagining it there. She understood, then, that she was still his captive. Albeit in a more comfortable prison, but still trapped all the same.

“You’re stronger now.” His explanation, curt and unyielding, arrived like a cold gust of wind. “I will not risk you attempting to escape.”

Tears welled up in Aisling’s eyes, distorting Kael and the room behind him as sobs of frustration and helplessness shook her shoulders violently.

“Please,” she choked. “Please, no, I swear I won’t.” The words got caught in the grip of her dry throat, constricted by anguish. By panic. She could do nothing but beg.

Kael dropped her hand back onto the mattress. It was an abrupt dismissal, a clear indication that her pleas were heard but would remain unanswered. As he left, the sound of a lock sliding into place on the outside of the door was the final echo of his cruelty.

Though time passed and her strength returned, the weight of the manacle on Aisling’s wrist never lessened. She’d been in the chamber for five days, and was in the dungeon cell for two before that after Kael had ridden her back from the battlefield. She had gleaned this information from Methild, who now informed her first thing upon entering the chamber whether it was morning, noon, evening, or midnight.

There in the Unseelie Court, Aisling learned, most of the Fae rose in the evening to go about their business. In the absence of sunlight in the Undercastle, her body began to slowly grow accustomed to this timetable, too. By the fourth day, when Methild came in for her evening ministrations, Aisling had just risen after sleeping straight through since she’d closed her eyes that morning.

The wizened faerie had with her the basket of wet rags again, but this time Aisling insisted on cleaning herself. Her movements were stiff and slow. Methild stood by with a look of impatience, obviously keen to do it herself in a more efficient manner. After tapping a toe on the ground for several minutes, she instead busied herself dragging Aisling’s waste bucket out into the hall to be removed. Aisling tried to ignore the slight female’s grunts as she hauled it from the room. Whatever scraps of dignity Aisling had hoped to cling to went out with it.

Methild returned, wiping her hands on a dingy apron, with a Fae soldier in tow. He held a large pail filled to the brim with water that sloshed onto the floor as he walked. Methild shot him dirty looks over her shoulder each time she heard it splash on the stone. He left after he set it down where she indicated, having given little more than a passing glance at Aisling. From her apron pocket, Methild withdrew a small glass bottle.

“Come,” she said, “let me help you with your hair.” Methild had braided it back, but when Aisling felt along her scalp the strands were stiff with dried blood and the sticky remnants of salve that hadn’t soaked in.

The soldier had placed the bucket close enough that Aisling could kneel before it, but only just. She had to extend her arm all the way outward at the end of the length of the thick chain to reach it. The strain made her shoulder ache.

“Can you undo it?” Aisling pleaded with Methild. “Just while you wash my hair? You could even ask the guard to wait by the door.”

Methild hummed, lips pursed, then shook her head. “I must follow orders.”

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