Page 43 of The Red Woman and the White Bear

“Not tonight,” he said. Kael poured a goblet full to the brim anyway and left it on the folding map table.

Raif stood stiffly when Kael sat back down, hands clasped behind his back. “I am going to be forthright with you, Kael, because I respect you too much to be otherwise. This is a fool’s errand. A waste of time and energy. Ilindor is barren; there are no resources to make it a worthy claim.”

“Forthright, indeed,” Kael muttered into his cup.

Raif sighed and pulled a chair around. “What is this about?”

“Securing more land for my court.”

“Why are we here, Kael?” He was insistent; without reprimand, he was not going to let this go.

Kael drained his goblet and poured another, his expression growing darker with each sip. “Because I made a mistake. A colossal, damned mistake.”

“Surely nothing so irreparable,” Raif said reassuringly. He leaned forward, trying to catch Kael’s eyes. “Has this anything to do with a certain prisoner who I saw fleeing into the woods? If I recall, that wasn’t more than an hour before you gave our departure orders.”

“Aisling,” Kael pronounced her name slowly, like a curse. Like a wish. “The Red Woman.”

Raif fell back in his chair with a sharp exhale. “You’re certain?”

Kael nodded, tracing the rim of his cup absently. His skin felt too tight as it stretched and stretched to hold his magic. It raged within him against the last scrap of control he was fighting to hold over it now. Outwardly, he attempted to maintain a mask of disinterest, but the faint trembling of his hands betrayed him. If Raif noticed, he chose to ignore it.

“And you let her go.” Raif was beginning to see the mistake in sharp relief now: Kael had set free the one surefire threat to his kingdom. “Why?”

Kael didn’t answer immediately, instead allowing his thoughts to briefly drift back to their encounters, to the intensity of their connection. “She was unlike anything else. She settled me. Never in all my years have I been able to control my magic the way she allowed me to.”

“And you were afraid?” Raif guessed.

“She thought I could be something other than what I am.” Kael took a breath and clenched his jaw. “I cannot.”

They sat in silence for a time, only broken by the sound of more wine flowing into Kael’s goblet. Raif studied the king—the way his shoulders caved slightly inward, no longer confident and proud. He’d given something of himself to the girl and she’d run away with it. “Why did you let herlive?”

Finally, Kael met his friend’s gaze. He found no judgment there, only concern. “Because I could not live with myself if I had done otherwise.”

For Kael, this was as good as a confession. To admit to anything more, anything deeper, would be akinto admitting to his court that he’d never possessed true control over his magic until that night with Aisling. He didn’t—he knew he didn’t—but that was a secret he would take far beyond his earthly grave. A secret that would now be accompanied by another: that the Unseelie King had fallen for the Red Woman.

Before Raif could speak again, he was interrupted by a commotion outside the tent. Bellowing, and the clash of a sword against a sturdy shield. The pair rose simultaneously to their feet and stormed out into the night, both with weapons raised in anticipation of an attack.

The males of the Third Company were standing in a circle around a dying fire, two of them facing off in its center. Bran, one of the Company’s oldest males, towered over Cadoc, one of its newest. Bran had not drawn his sword, but parried each of Cadoc’s strikes with his shield easily. His face was contorted into a broad, wicked grin. The surrounding soldiers quieted and dispersed quickly once they noticed Kael and their commander approaching. When Cadoc whirled around to defend himself to them, Bran cracked him across the back with the edge of his shield and sent him sprawling to the dirt.

“What is this?” Raif demanded. He hauled Cadoc to his feet roughly by his collar and held him in place. “What in His name are you doing?”

Cadoc mumbled a string of apologies, but Bran held his ground. He looked past Raif to fix his glare on Kael.

“Our brave King,” he spat. He was drunk, and his words were slurred, but his conviction was firm. “So eager to risk our lives forsuch avaluableclaim as Ilindor. Did you not slaughter enough of us in Nyctara that you felt the need to drag us to the ends of your territory to do it again?”

Raif tossed Cadoc to the side and stepped in front of Bran. “Take a walk, soldier.”

Though the others had abandoned Bran to his own actions, Kael could feel them watching him carefully from a distance. Gauging his reaction. He sheathed his sword and clenched his fists at his sides.

“Your power is no longer under your command, is it? Your precious shadow magic seems to have a will all of its own.” The way Bran sneered the words—shadow magic—set those very shadows roiling under Kael’s skin. When he looked down to where his fingernails were sunken into his palms, the first wispy black tendrils were curling out of his veins.

Slamming his eyes shut, Kael locked himself down. His whole body vibrated with the effort of keeping the savage currents inside. He could deal with Bran another way, or let Raif deal with him instead. He’d be sent back to the Undercastle, maybe relegated to patrol the border somewhere equally distant and cold as Ilindor. But such thoughts did little to quell the crashing, crushing waves sucking Kael down, down, down, ever deeper into that vengeful sea inside of him. Because ultimately, Kael knew, Bran was right.

Aisling.If he could only feel a small fraction of her calm, he could tear himself away and he could prove Bran wrong in front of the entire Company. But there was none left.

Kael’s thoughts splintered. The agony that beset his body now was unlike any he’d felt in more than a century: a twisting,excruciating fire that consumed him to the marrow. It snaked down the left side of his body in winding trails from scalp to waist, peeling back skin and separating tissue from muscle. The pain tore his heavy glamour to shreds in an instant; he felt it dissipate into the breeze and the air on his uncovered skin was sharp and biting.

The last thing he heard was the chorus of horrified gasps that rippled through the camp as Bran’s limbs were ripped from his body by thick ropes of shadow, and the last thing he felt was Raif’s arm catching his weight as his knees buckled beneath him.

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