18. Untethered
S o 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 wanted him . 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 skin so softly, but she could tell by the urgency of his movements that he wanted more. He needed more. 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 in the 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.
Once, and only once, had Aisling’s mother confided in her about the allure of the Fae. She’d come home with a stupid, dreamy smile on her face and stars in her eyes and spoke of a faerie who had twisted flowers into her hair. She said he had tasted of overripe berries when they kissed. She’d drawn him, too, but had never shared that sketch with Aisling. Her words, as beautiful as they’d sounded, stuck with Aisling as more of a warning than a promise. She’d been lured away from her family, from her husband. Surely it could only have been the result of sadistic trickery.
But now Aisling wore that same stupid grin and saw those same stars. As she lay in bed, willing herself to sleep, she couldn’t help running her fingertips across her lips. Brushing them over the bruises forming on her hip. Those she pressed into, relishing in the slight pain that made her wince. Her mind was a cloudy haze of emotions that swirled lazily, all of them too far out of reach for her to grasp. She let them play as her eyes fluttered closed, though it wasn’t long before one filtered through all the rest: anxiety, suffocating and intense .
Sleep remained out of reach, and she spent the day tossing and turning in the bed until she couldn’t stand it any longer. In the early evening hours, Aisling bundled into her cloak and pulled on her slippers and left her chamber to roam aimlessly through the halls of the Undercastle.
Preparing for the rest of the court to wake, servants flitted through the corridors like elusive shadows. Hobs, with their spindly limbs and permanent expression of impatience, carried written messages and baskets of linens and tubs full of hot water. Wide-eyed imps with skin the color of raw egg yolk darted from one hidden corner to another with brooms and tiny hand tools. Aisling stuck close to the wall, doing her best to stay out of their way as they rushed past. None paid her any mind—they didn’t even seem to notice her there. Or, if they did, they pretended not to.
Beneath the cloak, Aisling’s frame trembled. The shakes had beset her mid-afternoon, after she’d woken up for the hundredth time, and she hadn’t yet been able to quell them.
She knew now that she’d been granted complete freedom. She could have left. She could have ascended those worn, winding stairs and headed straight for the Thin Place. She wouldn’t have even had to run, as it seemed there was no longer anyone monitoring her. Not even Methild, who Aisling suspected had been asked to act as her sentry since Kael began leaving her door unlocked. But now, she was held there by two things: her purpose, and the king. Though in a much different way, she was still his captive.
As she walked, she replayed scenes from the night before in her mind. He had exposed himself to her in such a raw, painful way. He’d allowed himself to be utterly vulnerable, despite the lengths he went to in hiding that side of himself behind layers and layers of bitterness and cruelty. That armor he wore of an unyielding and invincible ruler, however well he’d conformed to it, concealed someone made fragile by years of feeling out of control.
She could relate. Aisling hadn’t felt as though she’d had a modicum of control since the moment she’d been pulled into the prophecy, but Kael’s surrender made her even more determined to reclaim it. She could be the Red Woman just as much as she could be his.
Having felt nearly invisible since leaving her chamber, Aisling was startled when a hob cornered her and handed her a tightly rolled sheet of parchment. Join me in my study, it read in thin, looping script. There was a crude map sketched below showing the way. She was grateful that it was oriented around her chamber and the library or it would have been nearly as useless as the message itself. It was undoubtedly from Kael, though, and the thought of seeing him again—of being alone with him again—brought a flurry of butterflies to take wing in her stomach.
But she was stopped midway by a strong hand that gripped her wrist. Aisling jumped and whirled around to find Lyre. He gave her a wan smile and pulled her hand to rest in the crook of his elbow.
“Let’s you and I take a walk,” he said. Something under his genial tone made Aisling’s skin crawl. The way he kept her arm pinned against his side felt incongruous with his overly friendly demeanor.
“I was on my way to meet Kael,” she argued when he began leading her in the opposite direction from the study. “He’s expecting me.”
“He can wait.” When she looked up at him to protest, she noticed for the first time that his eyes seemed to reflect the low light of the torches like mirrors. Like the eyes of a cat.
Lyre led her around the corner and through a door deep in a shadowy alcove. Had Aisling passed it on her own, she never would have known it was there. This chamber felt colder than the corridor. Symbols, and runes like those carved into the forest floor in The Cut, were etched into the stone walls. There was a large painting at the far end of a dark entity, with shadows rising from it similar to Kael’s. She recognized it without having to ask: the Low One. Aisling shivered. She knew that Kael valued his connection with the deity highly, but the foreboding figure left a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Once inside, Lyre released her arm and took a seat in a high-backed chair. He gestured to another, and after a moment’s hesitation, Aisling sat on its edge. She pulled her cloak tighter around her body as though she could hide her discomfort from his shining, searching eyes.
“I’ve heard whispers,” he began, his voice low and measured. “Whispers that I’ve found to be…interesting.”
Beneath the cloak, Aisling dug her nails into her palms. “Whispers?” she prompted. She was so full of secrets now; he could have learned about any one of them.
Instead of elaborating, he hummed. “You must know that I am quite well connected, not only within this court. I think you’d find my reach to be rather impressive.”
“I don’t have time for riddles, Lyre.” She made to stand, but a sick curiosity held her in place. She wanted to know what he knew.
“I’ve learned much from my connections over time that I’ve used to secure my place here. For example, were you aware that Kael’s father was merely a lord, and his mother gentry?”
She repeated what Kael had told her the night before: “The crown is passed by magic, not blood.”
Lyre nodded his approval. “And how do you think that infant, born in the farthest reaches of our territory in a dominion that has since been claimed by the Seelie Court, was discovered?”
He was bragging now, and Aisling was quickly losing patience. “What does this have to do with me?”
“My connections tend to have a way of illuminating certain things.” He rose then, circling behind his chair to pace leisurely. “Things like your true identity.”
Ice flooded Aisling’s veins and her lungs constricted painfully. Though she had long feared this moment, knowing that her secret was not as concealed as she had hoped, nothing could have prepared her for the sharp terror of hearing the accusation out loud.
Lyre stopped his movement and doubled over at his waist in an elaborate bow. “It is a true honor to make the acquaintance of the Red Woman, in the flesh.”
Aisling swallowed hard, unable to choke back the lump forming in her throat. Her mind raced in an attempt to come up with a story to cover her lie. But all rational thought had gone out of her head, along with the ability to string together a coherent sentence. “How?”
“It is a rare thing here, the hatching of Luna moths. Each year, we’re blessed with one, maybe two. But this year, they filled the night garden. Every leaf, every stone, every tree was covered in them.” He resumed his pacing, running a hand across the spindles of his chair each time he passed. “And then, changes on your side of the Veil. The Shadowwood Mother has been sending sprites to do her dirty work for countless years; it was not difficult to realize that if I kept a close watch over them, one might eventually lead me to something of interest.”
“You send hunters after them?”
Lyre narrowed his eyes. “On occasion, if a patrol happens to spot one crossing between realms, they may take it upon themselves to follow behind. It is no secret how handsomely I reward those who bring me valuable information. It took a while for me to determine how these events were connected, but all things become clear with time.”
“Who else knows?” Aisling pronounced each word carefully, but her efforts to keep her inflection steady were in vain.
Lyre’s sly grin widened. “I, more than anyone, understand the value of secrets. I haven’t told a soul, and I don’t plan to.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?” she demanded, slowly forcing her panic into submission. “What do you want?”
He sat back down and crossed one leg over the other. Absolutely at ease with the power he now held over Aisling. “Protection, my dear girl. In this treacherous court, one can never have too many allies. I want your guarantee that when the storm comes, you will ensure my safety.”
Silently, Aisling weighed her options. Trusting Lyre was a gamble, but it seemed she had little choice in the matter. As he said—the Unseelie Court was a dangerous place; having an ally, even one as slippery as Lyre, might be her best shot at navigating it. Instead of answering right away, she redirected: “Rodney seemed to think you would be able to help me. What do you know about the prophecy?”
“I study many things, prophecies included. Call it my own attempt to stay one step ahead of fate.” He paused and winked. “But of yours—less than I should, truth be told. I know that it has been around for a very, very long time. I also know that Kael ordered all mention of it stricken from our books. Those pages were torn out and burned centuries ago.”
Her brow furrowed. “But you know it; you must know something. What do you make of it?”
“That it is you who must be responsible for ending this war and restoring our broken realm, likely only by seeing to the end of our court. Though,” he added, “being that you are here, I would imagine you already put that much together.”
Kael’s face, the trust she’d seen flickering in his eyes as they’d knelt together on the mossy ground, flashed in Aisling’s mind. Where would the end of the Unseelie Court leave its king? She shook her head sharply to clear the thought.
He chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “But then, prophecies are rarely as straightforward as they seem. One interpretation is as right or as wrong as the next.”
Finally, Aisling found it in herself to stand. Trembling still, but at least steady on her feet. She straightened her spine and stared Lyre down. “I promise your safety if you keep my secret. And if you continue to use these connections of yours to learn more about the meaning behind the prophecy.” Her request was as good as an admission: she still knew nothing about how to fulfill her role. She was as clueless now as she had been from the start.
Lyre rose, too, and opened the heavy door for Aisling to leave the chamber. “You have my word.”