Page 31 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“You’ve lost control.” The accusation directed at the king so flippantly by one of the Lesser Prelates ripped Kael out of his head.

He straightened up in his seat. “I’ve not lost control.” His practiced impassive tone now barely concealed a sharp edge of fury.

“No, he hasn’t—he never had control to begin with. Not really.” The High Prelate spoke as though Kael wasn’t in the room at all. Just as Kael made to protest, he was interrupted.

“Might the girl be the key to his finding it?” Lyre suggested from where he leaned casually against the back of a plush velvet armchair. “He may wish—”

“You will not speak of me as though I am not present, and you will not imply again that a human has any influence over my god-given magic!” In one swift motion, Kael rose and swept his arm out angrily over his desk. The glass jar flew across the room and shattered against a bookshelf. The sudden noise quieted the assembly at once. “You do not know the toll it takes to wield this magic. And yet, here you sit and speak ofcontrolas though it’s a simple matter.” His voice was laced with a bitterness that he’d never quite been able to rid himself of.

The room watched cautiously as a paper-thin filament of darkness curled out of Kael’s fist. Shuddering, he withdrew it before it could grow larger.

“You cannot deny that there is something that sets her apart, being that she has tethered you twice now and lived, while your own soldiers fell around you.” Werryn raised his hands as he tried to placate Kael, who dropped back down into the chair. “We could just try again, if only to be sure. What would be the harm in that?”

“Or perhaps,” another Prelate suggested, “it’s not control you need, but release.”

A derisive, humorless laugh fell from Kael’s lips. “Release?You were not in Nyctara, nor have you been present for any otherreleasebefore that. This magic is insatiable. It takes what it wants, and you would have me give it all that remains of myself.” His silver eyes slid to Werryn. “Is that how you intend to take my crown?”

“Your Highness, forgive me.” Werryn’s tone had gone from placating to pleading. “None of us wish to see you lose the throne. Only to fully reach the potential of your power. Is that not what you want,too? I know how hard you’ve chased it, and what that chase has cost you.”

Kael winced slightly. It was true that he had sacrificed almost every bit of himself, but it had never been entirely of his own volition—not when the encouragement of the Prelates bordered on coercion. He may have walked this path on his own, but they had pushed him to its beginning.

It shouldn’t have been possible that the presence of a human girl could so easily disrupt the careful balance of chaos Kael maintained. He could end this, as he had intended to on the battlefield: either with her death, or his own success. Given the price her body had paid after two encounters with his shadows, it would likely be the former. The thought twisted something unreachable in Kael’s stomach, such that one of his hands moved unconsciously to grip it.

“We need every advantage we can get in this war,” Lyre posited.

A muscle ticked in Kael’s jaw. The male was right, and he would try again. But not in their presence. This was his riddle alone to solve. “I am still recovering, and so is she. This is a discussion for a later date,” he said with cool finality.

Slowly, Werryn nodded and gestured for the Lesser Prelates to disperse. “Very well, Your Grace.”

Just as the girl had appeared before him as a mirror in the aftermath of the battle, he saw it again later that night when he entered her chamber. In her small form, chained to the bedpost, Kael caughta glimpse of his younger self: a figure controlled for the sake of power. And in that same reflection, he found himself no different from the Prelates who had subjected him to a similar fate.

“It snowed today, didn’t it?” she asked.

Kael blinked, and the mirror was gone. The girl was just a girl. “Your pardon?”

“I can smell it.”

It had, indeed, snowed the previous afternoon. Kael smelled it too when he woke, sharp and clean. He’d found a thin layer of it covering the night garden on his evening walk. But that a human could sense it from this deep underground was puzzling.

“I’d love to see it,” she said wistfully, shaking him again from his thoughts.

“You’ve seen snow before,” he said tersely. “It is no different here than it is in your realm.”

She shrugged and the chain rattled softly. “I just miss the outside.”

“You should have considered that before becoming my prisoner.” Kael moved to his chair, which Methild now left in its place for him beside Aisling’s bed.

Aisling huffed a short breath through her nose. “You say that as though this was my choice.”

“You made the choice to willfully deceive me, knowing that there would be consequences when you were found out.”When, not if. Though Kael should have determined her false that very first night, he was drunk and his mind had been clouded by his earlier failure in The Cut. But it was only ever a matter of time.

She turned away from him then to fix her gaze on the opposite wall. Cautiously, he studied her. She did look stronger, albeit still pale and thinner than she had been in the night garden. The abrasions encircling her arms were nearly healed, and her hair was no longer matted with blood where she’d split her head open. He noticed, though, that an angry bruise radiated from where she’d tugged against the shackle, rubbing the skin beneath it red and raw.

Kael sighed. He leaned forward and with deft hands unlocked the cuff and let it fall to the mattress beside her. She froze, still facing the far wall, when his touch lingered just a beat longer than it should have on her pulse. Her irritated skin was warm and her wrist felt small in his hand. Small, but not weak. He wouldn’t be so foolish as to underestimate her again.

When Aisling turned back to him, her eyes were filled with surprise and uncertainty. They were a captivating mosaic of hazel, blue, and brown, each hue blending seamlessly into the next. He hadn’t noticed their color before. She brought her arm to her chest and held her wrist gingerly, as if unsure of how to move it without the weight she’d grown accustomed to feeling there. “Why?”

He ignored her question. “I will have Methild bring something for that.”

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