Page 37 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“Come with me,” Kael said. He almost reached out to take her hand, but stopped himself and balled his instead at his side.

Kael led Aisling quickly through the twisting corridors, down branching side passages so narrow they had to walk single file, and through the vast caverns that opened up around them. The deeper into the Undercastle they went, the more trepidationbegan to overwhelm his thoughts. He didn’t speak, nor did she. The only sound around them was the quiet draft that circulated through the caves.

Though some parts were dark, lit only by ancient torches with struggling flames, Kael knew the way by heart. He moved surefooted over rubble and around stalagmites along the path his feet had carved over hundreds of thousands of trips back and forth. The scrambling sounds of Aisling behind him, though, reminded him to keep his pace slower than he would have alone.

Finally, the pair entered a distant cavern. Small, and lit by moonlight. A little-known way in and out of the Undercastle. Kael went first, lithely climbing to the top of a boulder beneath the opening in two large strides. Then, he turned and offered his hand to Aisling. When she took it, and gripped it tight, his lungs squeezed as though she’d gripped him there as well. This time, he didn’t let go.

“It isn’t much further,” he promised once they had stepped outside. They were in the darkest part of the forest, yet she seemed unafraid. Only a few more minutes of picking through the underbrush and the pair drew to a stop.

“I’ve not brought another to this place before you.” Kael’s heart raced in his throat. He remained a few paces behind when Aisling dropped his hand and stepped forward to explore the small forest enclave. Silently, he watched her take it in: the gurgling stream that wound in and out of gnarled roots and reflected the trees above. The ferns sprouting along its bank and the moss carpeting the ground that glowed a soft turquoise, enchanted by the same magic as the plants in the night garden. The rich, dark smell of damp earth.

“None of your other faerie girlfriends?” she teased, glancing back over her shoulder to where he was standing. “You have a reputation, you know. One that you lived up to the night we met.”

Kael blew a short breath through his nose in response; he was glad for her humor to ease the tension. “I suppose the púca told you all manner of stories about the dangerous, alluring Unseelie King and his consorts.”

“Was he wrong?” The corner of her lips twitched up. When Kael chose not to answer, she turned to the stone ruins, the remnants of what once must have been a grand moon gate. Now, it was barely that, but still strangely devoid of vines or moss or lichen. “What was this place?”

Kael moved to stand beside her, looking up at it too as though seeing it for the first time. It always felt like the first time, even though he’d been visiting it for centuries. “I’ve never been able to determine its origin. It was here long before I ever found it.”

“It feels special,” she whispered.

“It comforts me,” he admitted. “I come here often.”

“Just to sit?” Aisling lowered herself onto the bottommost broken stone step before the arch. Kael did the same.

“To think, to pray. It’s quiet; sometimes I can feel the Low One even stronger here than I can before the altar.” He spoke about his god without thinking, but realized when he felt Aisling shiver beside him that she likely did not hold such a positive view of the deity after her experience in The Cut. “I have been King for a long while. This is one of very few places where I can escape that.”

She hummed, drawing her arms around her waist. “Was your father a good king?”

Kael angled himself so that their knees nearly touched and shook his head. “My father was a lord. Our crown is not passed by bloodline, but by magic. I was born with the ability to wield shadows, as was given to me by our god Himself. A gift.”

“You don’t seem like you think of it that way,” Aisling challenged.

He could feel her studying him with narrowed eyes, so he kept his own focused on the movement of the stream. “I am grateful for it.”At times.

“And your mother?” She was leaning closer now, curious about a past that Kael hadn’t spoken or even thought of in a very long time.

He drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “She was a vessel for me, just as I am a vessel for this.” He’d never known the female who had given her life to birth him.

Aisling was quiet for a moment while his words sunk in. “Who raised you? Methild?”

“I was given over to the Prelates before my mother was cold in her grave,” he said, fighting to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “From the moment my magic was discovered, I was theirs to cultivate.”

They sat silently then, bathed in the sounds of the forest and of their own steady breathing. It was a still night. Cold, but without the bite of the winter wind, it was tolerable. Kael leaned back and propped his elbows against the step behind him.

From this position, Aisling could see every bit of him, every detail, down to the pale blue veins beneath his skin where the sleeves of his tunic rode up. She studied his arms, those veins and arteries andcapillaries that became a spiderweb of inky black from his fingertips on up when his shadows grew too strong. For a half-second, Kael allowed her to trace her finger over one on the inside of his wrist before he pulled away.

“What does your magic feel like?” she asked softly.

“Agony,” he said. “Ecstasy.”

“Show me,” she urged, still in that same soft voice.

Kael sat up and looked at her sharply. “No.”

“You want to understand my effect on it, I know you do. So try.” Aisling was looking at him insistently. Earnestly. She was offering herself to him. The very thing she’d fought against, she was now asking for.You can be better. She said that she didn’t want to be used as a weapon, but this wasn’t that. This was something else entirely—a chance for him to test his magic away from the Prelates, away from the battlefield. Not in the service of the Low One or of anyone else but himself. And she wanted to give that to him.

Still, he hesitated, indecision warring in his chest. “I won’t—”

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