Page 38 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

Aisling interrupted him. “You won’t hurt me.”

“You don’t know that,” Kael insisted. He had before, and he would again. It shouldn’t matter; he shouldn’t care. But it did, and he did.

“Yes I do. Don’t tether to me. Just let me be here with you.” There was no fear in the girl’s voice and no apprehension in her eyes. Kael was unsure where she derived her confidence in him from, but it was misplaced.

Though torn, he nodded tightly. Kael moved to kneel on the soft moss and drew several deep, shaky breaths. Aisling leftthe step to sit cross-legged before him. Although she was closer than she likely should have been, he couldn’t find it in himself to ask for more space. He wanted her there.

The woods around them hushed in anticipation of what was to come. Jaw clenched, Kael lowered his head and closed his eyes and called upon the shadows that had been fighting to emerge since his confrontation with Werryn. They came violently to the surface, those savage currents, in a bid to tear into anything within reach.

When he felt their familiar sting he dropped one hand to the earth, but before he could dig his fingers into the moss Aisling slipped her own hand into it. He felt her other, then, on his cheek. Her palm was soft and cool as her fingers grazed his hairline. Kael tilted his head to lean into it. Her touch was steadying; he focused on it with all that he had.

With Aisling’s hand in his, Kael found himself releasing the tight grip he kept on his magic. The shadows, once frenetic and wild, slowed their chaotic dance. Instead of lashing out, their tight coils unwound lazily. The obsidian tendrils drifted from Kael as steam rising off of water, carried on the breeze and swirling in the ebb and flow of the forest’s energy. He didn’t dare open his eyes for fear of breaking the spell.

He didn’t once feel his shadows pull towards Aisling, so he let them explore. Through them, he felt rough tree bark and the ice-cold water of the stream. The prick of pine needles and sticky sap and the impervious stone ruins. Never before had his shadows felt so much like an extension of himself. Even in battle, where he felt themost at peace, they were merely a projection of his rage. This was something different entirely.

Cautiously, slowly, he called them back. As they curled into his skin, he winced. Still uncomfortable, though not quite as painful. Kael opened his eyes to find Aisling’s and his breath caught. She’d tamed his magic—she’d tamed him.

The calm he felt was overwhelming. Aisling caught him when he fell forward, guiding his head down to her shoulder and supporting his weight. She snaked her arms around his waist and slid one hand up to pass gentle circles over his back.

Held tight in her arms and wrapped in the sweet, oppressive quiet of the night, Kael wept like a child.

So the Unseelie King had a heart, after all. One that was wrapped in layers of barbs and buried as deep as the Undercastle, but it was there. It was a fractured, blackened, withered thing. Beating, but maybe only out of spite.

As he’d held onto her tightly, Aisling realized that the fear and the darkness that she felt in The Cut and then on the battlefield, as his shadows wound around her limbs, hadn’t been hers alone. Those things were inside of him, too. So this time, she forced herself to be calm, and she forced that same calm into Kael. If one was in control, so was the other. It wasn’t magic, not really, but it was something that seemed awfully close.

Lyre was right.

You have a connection, he’d told her during his most recent visit, just hours before Kael came to walk with her for the first time.Explore it; it will bring you closer.She continued to let that closeness develop and promised herself that it was strictly in pursuit of information about the prophecy. It was a game of manipulation, pure and simple.

He acts as though he feels something for you,Lyre had whispered.Do not fall for it. Though if he truly does, it would only be to your advantage.

Aisling thought herself a fool, softening as she had for her cruel captor—until he took her in his arms and swept her into a kiss that sent her world spinning off its axis and derailed her carefully-laid plans. Of course she wanted answers. But more than that, she wantedhim. So she gave in without hesitation. And when she took his hand and let him use her, she wasn’t sure anymore how much of it was manipulation. The line had grown so blurry so quickly that she was left feeling raw and confused as Kael’s breathing gradually slowed from the ragged sobs that wracked his body.

His eyes were still glassy when he finally raised his head from where it had rested heavily against her shoulder. Something new glimmered in them now—hope, maybe. Aisling watched as they played down her face to stop at her lips. Kael brought a hand up and brushed her hair back over her shoulder, paused for a beat, then slid it down the side of her neck.

She was rendered breathless by his touch, fierce yet impossibly gentle. His callused hand grazed her skinso softly, but she could tell by the urgency of his movements that he wanted more. Heneededmore. She did, too.

Slowly, he guided Aisling to lie on the plush bed of moss. Her body settling against it sent ripples outward across the glittering turquoise, as if she were a pebble dropped into a pond. She might have been enchanted by it if her attention hadn’t already been captured by Kael, his face hovering just above her own. In the next breath, his lips were on hers and her hands were tangled in his hair. The arch in her back pressed their bodies close, so tightly that she couldn’t discern whether the wild hammering in her chest was her heart or his. Maybe it was both.

Aisling wrapped one leg around him, digging her heel into the back of his thigh, and Kael loosed a low groan into her mouth. The sound of it resonated in their kiss and made her teeth vibrate. He sat up in one swift motion and brought her along easily to straddle his hips. Aisling fumbled with the hem of his tunic, both of them reluctant to break contact even long enough to strip off their shirts. The cold air against her bare skin brought every single nerve ending to life. It made each trace of his hands down her back, across her chest, and up her arms feel like raw, pulsing electricity.

“I want you.” The ardent need in those words he whispered against her neck drew a tightness to coil in Aisling’s core. She kissed him again, this time dragging her teeth lightly across his lower lip before taking it between them and biting down. Kael’s hips surged upward in response, grinding against her fervently.

When he eased her onto her back again, Aisling felt the hunger in his eyes raking over her body. For the first time since Nocturne,Aisling’s thoughts weren’t racing ahead. She wasn’t strategizing or manipulating or weighing pros and cons, good and bad. Her focus was singularly fixed on the trail of flames that his lips ignited on her breasts, the weight of his body pressing her into the earth, the searing heat blooming between her thighs.

“I want you,” he repeated, growling this time as though angered by the admission. “I am consumed by you, every night. Every hour.” Kael was relentless in his ministrations, chasing kiss after feverish kiss to punctuate his words. Where his fingers dug into her hip, she was sure she’d bruise.

But as those fingers slid to the waistband of her pants, Aisling pressed her palm to his chest. He lifted himself off her slightly.

“Kael,” she whispered the warning. He leaned in once more, eyes closed, and pressed his forehead against hers.

“You’re right,” he said. Then a second time, even softer: “You’re right.”

It was too much, too soon. He was too vulnerable; so was she. Aisling didn’t know what to do with all the things she was feeling now: what to name them, where to keep them inside of her. They’d come on so suddenly—or, rather, she’d realized them so suddenly. If she were honest with herself, they’d been growing deep in her chest, the smallest seed, having taken root when he’d brushed his fingers across her cheek for the very first time. Blooming greater and greater with each glimpse of his softness, with each small kindness he showed her. Never large enough for her to acknowledge until now.

Kael rolled off of her and they lay side by side in the moss, sucking in labored breaths that poured from their mouths as thick fog inthe night air. They stayed there in silence until Aisling’s teeth began to chatter; the sweat that coated her skin did her no favors as the temperature continued to drop around them. Kael redressed her almost reverently, then himself, and pulled her to her feet.

The walk back to Aisling’s chamber was loaded with wordless tension. Kael led her back with their fingers interlaced tightly, but when they reached her door he only pressed an earnest kiss to the crown of her head before leaving her alone in the darkness.

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