Page 35 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“Indeed you are not. And yet you’ve made no attempt to run,” Kael observed.

Aisling bristled at the unspoken challenge in his words. He thought her complacent; weak, even. But it was resolve keeping her in the Undercastle, not weakness. If she’d been so weak as he assumed, she’d have fled that very first night he left the door unlocked. She couldn’t leave here empty handed, not after everything she’d been through and not with the threat to her home growing with each passing day.

Though, she considered, it may be to her benefit to let him think of her as the frail human he’d seen in his dungeon. As a curiosity, rather than a challenge. Naïve, as he’d called her in the night garden.

“I’m not so stupid as to think I could navigate my way out of there and find the Thin Place without being caught,” she lied. “You never answered my question.”

“Didn’t I?” he said dismissively.

She snapped then, both unwilling and unable to continue to play. She couldn’t take one more ambiguous, teasing response. “You answer very few of my questions, actually, though you expect me to answer all of yours. If my company and conversation is so intolerable, why bother wasting your time on me at all? Why don’t you just tell me what it is you want and get it over with?”

The pair stopped walking and turned to face each other. Kael’s jaw tightened as he regarded Aisling, his eyes once more icyand impenetrable. “If you are so dissatisfied with my responses, then why do you persist?” His tone cut through the air like a blade.

“Because I thought that if I kept trying, I might actually get a real, decent answer out of you instead of more vague, cryptic bullshit!”

Kael’s grip tightened unconsciously on the hilt of his dagger. “And what answers do you seek exactly, Aisling? Do you expect me to lay bare my soul to you, to share my every secret?”

“I expect you to make up your mind,” she shot back. “Either treat me as a person, or as your prisoner. You can’t have this both ways.”

He paused, then said coolly, “Your chamber is in that direction.” He nodded towards a smaller hallway that branched off the corridor. He’d corralled any hint of anger that had colored his feature seconds before, now hiding it under that neutral mask he so often wore. “You can find your way back on your own. Or you may leave. Do whatever you wish.”

Before Aisling could throw a response back at him, he’d turned and stalked off the opposite way, his figure quickly swallowed by the darkness as he retreated. She stood there for a time, staring after him. Wishing she hadn’t let her frustration get the better of her. She’d been so sure they were making progress, and now she thought she may have ruined it.

After their argument, Aisling was surprised when Kael was again at her door the following evening wearing the same stoic expression. “Itold you that I’d show you the library,” he said before she could ask. “I keep my word.”

The library’s shelves were carved into the walls of a cavern that glittered, like the throne room, with veins of quartz. It was small, though, and Aisling was dismayed by the selection she found there. Most of the books were similar to those Kael preferred: history lessons, tales of battle and strategy. Mentions of prophecy here and there, but only ones that had transpired centuries before.There had to be more.

When Aisling turned to ask Kael if there were other volumes elsewhere in the castle, she found him leaning his weight on one shoulder against a shelf, absorbed in a book he held open in front of him. With his chin tipped down to read, his moonspun tresses hung like a curtain around his face.

“Find something good?” She almost felt guilty interrupting him, but he hardly looked up. Instead of an answer, he just hummed. To see him this engaged in an activity that seemed so utterlynormalbrought a hint of a smile to Aisling’s lips unbidden.He wasn’t cold or angry or derisive this way; she might even go so far as to call him unguarded.

That was gone in an instant when the High Prelate entered the library and cleared his throat. It was loud in the quiet cavern. Kael snapped his book shut, already irritated before the male even spoke, and slid it back into its place on the shelf.

“Stay here,” Kael ordered Aisling before following him out intothe corridor.

She did, for a moment. Just long enough to let them round the corner ahead and begin a conversation in hushed tones. Removing her slippers to muffle the sound of her footsteps, she crept as close as she dared. In that short amount of time, their voices had already increased from harsh whispers to louder, biting tones.

“You said you’d try again with her once she was well. She appears well enough to me.” The Prelate did not attempt to hide his impatience.

Kael’s response was clipped and unyielding. “You misremember, Werryn. I said only that I would consider it.”Werryn,Aisling pronounced silently. She was mentally cataloging the names of each Fae she encountered there, though she’d yet to learn the full names of any besides Methild.

“How much longer will you toy with her? Taking her for walks as if she were your pet.” He spat the word and Aisling winced when the truth of it lanced through her. “You’re putting off the inevitable.”

“What I do with my prisoner is none of your concern.” Kael would be standing defensively at his full height now, towering over the older male, but the Prelate didn’t sound at all intimidated.

The words Werryn spoke next knocked the breath out of Aisling’s lungs and echoed in her mind like a discordant melody: “She could fundamentally change how you use your magic. Your whole relationship with it. Do you not want that?”

“Of course I want that, but I will explore it my way and in my own time.” Although Kael’s response held a thread of frustration, the hint of longing beneath it resonated far louder. Aisling dug the tips of her fingers into the rough rocks at her back.

“You are blind to your own potential; you always have been.”

“If I have been blind to anything, it’s only ever been your lust for power.” The pair’s harsh exchange concealed layers of subtext that were well beyond Aisling’s grasp, but it made her stomach turn all the same.

“Do not act as if you don’t feel that same hunger,” Werryn challenged.

“And yet I am the only one who bears its consequences. I will use the girl when I see fit and I will inform you after I’m through.” Then came the sound of rocks grinding under boots, and footsteps returning in Aisling’s direction. Kael’s voice, closer now, as if speaking to Werryn over his shoulder: “You are dismissed.”

The ground beneath Aisling’s feet shifted violently when Lyre’s words came back to her:you’re alive, but you shouldn’t be.This was Kael’s purpose for visiting her in her chamber, for allowing her this limited freedom. This was the answer he was seeking to the question he had refused to ask her. Aisling’s own motivations had been but a single thread in the tangled web of their interactions. He was attempting to grow closer to her in the same way that she was him. They were manipulating each other.

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