19. A Small Mercy
A isling sped down the corridor, eager to put as much distance as she could between herself and Lyre and that looming, malevolent painting that had made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end each time she glanced up at it. Her hands still shook despite the way the conversation resolved. It had gone better than she’d imagined it would, yet she was unsure of Lyre’s true intentions, of his trustworthiness. Something in his countenance left her feeling uneasy; his cunning grin made her want to take a shower.
She had little time to dwell on it, though, as she drew nearer to Kael’s study. Aisling slowed her pace when it came into view and took a steadying breath. She tried to focus instead on the feelings that had filled her the night before, hidden away in the forest with his lips pressed hungrily against hers. His breath in her lungs, and the sounds of his pleasure in her ears. The thought carried her to his half-open door and across the threshold.
“Aisling,” he said, looking up from an aged map spread flat on his desk. The way he said her name filled her veins with a million tiny sparks, and the way a furtive smile unexpectedly warmed his face eased the tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders. “I was beginning to think my map hadn’t been clear enough.”
“This is hardly a map.” She brandished the slip of parchment for effect before rolling it back up and tucking it carefully into her pocket. He’d written it just for her; she wanted to keep it.
Aisling paced around the perimeter of Kael’s study. There were more books there, organized neatly in a system she couldn’t identify. They looked to be older, more valuable perhaps than those in the library. These were all leather-bound with gilded printing on their spines. Some were written in English, and some in the same Fae language she’d seen on the pages that littered the Shadowwood Mother’s thicket. She wondered briefly what it would sound like to hear Kael speak it. She imagined it would be beautiful, full of pretty words and lilting tones.
“More history books,” he provided. He’d been watching her make her way around the room from his seat.
Aisling hummed. “My favorite.” Once she reached his desk, she looked down at the map. It, too, was labeled in the same foreign language. Harsh, jutting mountain ranges cropped up between dense forests. Rivers flowed down from the peaks, and there was a lake somewhere to the west where several of them joined. Dotted borders crisscrossed the terrain. All of the names and locations were handwritten in a script that closely resembled Kael’s. She traced a finger over the closest set of markings.
Kael rose from his chair to stand beside her. He kept his eyes on the map as well. “Last night…” When he trailed off, Aisling braced herself for a curt statement of regret. He started again: “Last night was—”
“Magic?” She winced at her own poorly executed attempt at humor. Instead of correcting her, Kael silently slid his hand across the map and placed it over hers. When she spread her fingers in response, he curled his to lace them through the spaces between. The act of intimacy, however subtle, made the ache that had been growing in Aisling’s chest flare painfully. She squeezed his hand tightly, squeezed her eyes shut tightly, then pulled away.
Kael looked at her, brow furrowed. “I apologize, I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”
Aisling shook her head and turned sharply back to the books to hide the tears prickling in the corners of her eyes. He had put his trust in her; he had let her see so much of him. The guilt of keeping her secret gnawed at her insides hungrily. Relentlessly.
I can be the Red Woman and I can be his, she thought to herself again. Then again, and a third time still. And even if she couldn’t, she needed him to hear it from her. If Lyre reneged on their agreement, Kael would undoubtedly be the first one he’d tell. She needed to take control of her narrative before the Prelate could twist it himself.
“Is something wrong?” The overt concern in Kael’s voice only deepened the ache. Aisling circled around to stand in front of his desk, unconsciously using it to enforce the distance between them. He paused for a moment when he saw the pallor of her face before he stepped around it, too.
He moved with a languid, carefree sort of grace that would have been entrancing had it not been for the threatening flex of his corded muscles. He carried himself this way not just because he was Fae, but because he was a battle-tested warrior—as Aisling well knew. Trepidation tightened her throat and stilled her tongue under the words that were poised there, waiting to be spoken. He could strike her dead quicker than she could blink. But the way he had looked at her—he wouldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t.
Aisling took two steps back and said, “I need to tell you why I’m here.” Kael made to speak, but she raised a hand to stop him. If she didn’t get it out now, she’d lose whatever nerve she had left. “The real reason. What I told you about my mother, that’s all true. But her stories aren’t what brought me here.” She glanced up at him, but his expression was unreadable.
“Go on,” Kael said coolly.
“When I asked you before about prophecies…” She stopped. Cleared her throat. Started again: “I’m here looking for information about a prophecy.”
“Which.” A statement, not a question. As if she were still just as connected to him as she had been in the forest, she could feel the way his body was becoming tense, the way his heart hammered against his ribcage. The way his shadows smoldered beneath his skin.
Aisling recounted, as she had to Rodney, the story of her meeting with the Shadowwood Mother. She knew it by heart now, which helped her get it out despite the voice in her mind that begged her to stop, to keep mouth shut, to take it back.
Finally, her story ended. Thick, stony silence settled between the two. Minutes passed. When Aisling looked up, Kael’s eyes, which since the night before had borne a quiet softness for her, had hardened. He’d drawn himself up to stand tall and rigid, every bit the unyielding king he was promised to be.
“So it is you who would see the downfall of the Unseelie Fae. The destruction of my kingdom.”
She shouldn’t have expected less. She’d misled him and earned his trust under false pretenses. She was the enemy. Even still, his response lit a small ember of anger in her. It was Kael and his unquenchable bloodlust that kept the battle raging. His insatiable quest for power over the totality of the realm that prevented peace.
“It would seem that you’re able to do that just fine without my help.” When Kael didn’t entertain her comment with a response, she held his gaze for a moment before she added, “And besides that, the resolution of your war is hardly destruction. ”
“The Red Woman is not welcome in my court. I should kill you where you stand.” He pronounced the words slowly with lethal calm.
Aisling shook her head, certain. “You won’t.”
“That’s twice now you’ve betrayed me. You will not be granted a third opportunity.” The way his fingers brushed over the hilt of the dagger sheathed at his hip did not go unnoticed. Aisling’s confidence dimmed.
“You won’t kill me.” She wavered, less certain this time .
Far faster than she could comprehend, he lunged across the study. Several books cascaded from the shelf overhead when Aisling’s back slammed against it, her head meeting stone with a loud crack. Kael’s face was inches from hers, teeth bared in a menacing snarl. His fingers curled around her throat. They twitched once, then again, before he dropped his hand back to his dagger and narrowed his eyes.
“Run.”
That word—that singular syllable—sent a cold shot of fear straight to her bones.
So Aisling ran.
Each loud slap of her slippers on the stone floor echoed like a death knell as she ran blindly through the corridors of the Undercastle. She shed her cloak as she went; she’d be faster without it weighing her down. She knew the path to the spiral stairs well enough by now that she didn’t have to question where her feet carried her, and soon enough she’d reached its base. But she couldn’t slow.
She took the steps two at a time, tripping and cracking her knee on a sharp edge twice on the way up. Warm blood seeped through her pants and collected around her ankle. But she couldn’t slow.
Outside, the cold air only tightened her lungs further. If Kael had sent guards in her pursuit, she was unable to hear them over the ragged, heaving gasps that sounded more like sobs than breaths. But she couldn’t slow.
Aisling aimed for the tree line and prayed that she would be able to find the Thin Place once she was inside the forest. It was dark, and snow was falling, and everything looked the same no matter which way she turned. She staggered ahead, dizzy and disoriented. Her movement sent a flurry of glowing white orbs spinning from where they had been resting soundly in the low-hanging branches that Aisling carelessly batted out of her way.
They twirled around her, giggling when their tiny fingers caught the hem of her shirt and tore out strands of her hair. One flitted close enough for Aisling to make out a female figure with skin like frosted glass. The light they emitted seemed to come from within their small bodies, and their wings fluttered so rapidly to keep them aloft that Aisling couldn’t see them at all. She could hear them, though, as they whizzed past her ears. She swiped at the beings erratically, knocking one from her shoulder and two from where they’d wrapped themselves in her hair. They shrieked—an ugly, grating sound—but eventually fell behind as she continued to run.
It took her far longer than she would have liked to find the Veil, which glimmered faintly inside a hole in the trunk of a giant old pine. Its gnarled roots grasped cruelly at her ankles as she approached and threw herself headlong through that sticky sheen of magic.
And then she was back in the old mine, back in the forest she knew as well in the dark as she did in the light. It was night there, too, though snow hadn’t yet fallen on Brook Isle. Aisling stumbled out of the cave, earning another several bruises in the process, and sprinted with renewed speed once she exited its mouth.
This was her world, her woods. It smelled of home: of earth and sea and just faintly of car exhaust and chimney smoke. But now, heart racing and legs burning, the shadows of the towering pines felt oppressive. The keening and cooing of the birds, threatening. “Here!” they seemed to call as she pushed through the undergrowth, “She’s over here!” She had to pause every few paces to remind herself to breathe.
Aisling angled her path toward the road. Once her feet hit gravel, she stopped at last. She doubled over, hands on her knees, and retched onto the ground. Her stomach violently expelled the bile she had struggled to keep down since her confrontation with Lyre. Once she was able to stand again, she closed her eyes and strained to hear any sign of chase: twigs snapping, branches cracking, galloping hooves striking the dirt. She’d crossed out of the borderlands, she knew, though it would have hardly made a difference to a soldier acting on his king’s orders. As she waited in the dark, she found only the quiet hum of the forest. The birdsong softened; the trees no longer appeared ominous.
She wouldn’t be so foolish as to think he hadn’t ordered her execution; not after the hatred she’d heard in his voice. Run. It haunted her, that cold tone. So different from the kindness that had been there only moments before. But she deserved it. She deserved every ounce of hatred he could find in his heart for her.
Limping, Aisling finally turned away from the trees and headed in the direction of town. Every inch of her hurt. Vaguely, secretly, she thought that it might not be the worst thing if a sentry were to burst from the woods and run her straight through with a spear. Maybe then someone else would be declared the Red Woman, and she’d be free of the ache in her chest that now seemed like it might be permanent.
It would be a small mercy: death.