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T he only bar on Brook Isle had been a stalwart fixture since the early days of the mine.

The workers would gather there after their shifts, still covered in sweat and earth, and lament the better days when the lead was plentiful and easy to dig.

Ben’s had been new then, and usually crowded, but no less dim.

Now, the stools were timeworn and the bar scratched, the dark red vinyl booth seats cracked and peeling.

Smoking inside had been banned nearly a decade prior, but the stench of cigarettes still clung to every surface.

And until the handful of regulars arrived in the early evening, it was mercifully, blissfully empty.

Aisling had never been much of a drinker save for a short period of time when she’d first moved to the mainland, but as she sat on a stool at the far end of the bar, she found a strange sort of comfort in the feeling of a glass beneath her fingers.

The sturdy weight of it in her hands. Sometimes, it was filled with only water.

Other times, something stronger. Today, the beer was lukewarm and flat as she took another sip, but its flavor didn’t register regardless.

Even the burn of the rail whiskey she choked down next wasn’t enough to chase the taste of Kael’s blood—thick, sharp, coppery—from her mouth.

It had lingered there for weeks, and she knew it would last longer still.

Months, certainly. Years—at least in the nightmares that plagued her fitful sleep. It was especially strong today.

Briar stayed close to her there, having carved himself out a section of stained, threadbare carpet to curl up beneath Aisling’s feet.

They were regulars now, and the bartender cared very little that they spent the better part of most days in that same corner so long as Aisling made good on her tab before trudging back to her apartment after dark.

It was her stronghold, a safe haven where she could keep herself detached and hidden away from real life for a time.

Lida was looking for her, she knew, along with Seb and Jackson.

They’d try to make another pass at inviting her to visit the city.

But they wouldn’t think to check for her at Ben’s—especially not before noon on a weekday.

The boys wouldn’t pry, but Lida would see straight through any excuse Aisling threw at her.

Aisling could no more fathom crafting a clever enough lie than she could telling the truth, and Lida would believe neither.

So it was there she remained, emptying glass after flavorless glass to mask the ache and anger and tamp down the rampant noise of her thoughts.

She could tell it was Rodney who’d come in behind her by the steady thumping of Briar’s tail against the floor. She didn’t turn to look, instead ordering another glass of whiskey for herself and a beer for him. When he slid onto the stool beside her, he said, “You look like hell.”

Aisling ignored the gentle barb; she knew it was the truth.

She’d only put on a clean shirt because another bar patron had spilled his liquor on her the night before, and had tied her hair back rather than washing it.

It didn’t matter how hard she scrubbed, or how much shampoo she used—the acrid stench of smoke and burning flesh still clung to the strands like a ghost. She couldn’t rid herself of it.

“Lida came by the dock this morning looking for you,” Rodney added. “I sent her to the library.”

Aisling nodded her thanks. Sipping her drink, she drew her free arm tightly around her waist, shrinking into herself.

Taking up as little space as possible in the emptiness of the bar.

A long rumble of thunder rattled the glasses on the shelf, and the hanging lamps flickered once as a bolt of lightning arced through the storm clouds.

The flash of light brought a lifelike glimmer to the glass eyes of a six-point elk bust mounted on the wall.

It unsettled Aisling, the way the creature seemed to flit between dead and alive and back again in less than the span of a breath.

“Generator’s low on fuel,” the bartender warned. “If the power cuts out again, I’m closing down for the day.”

“We’re not staying,” Rodney assured him. His tone was pointed, and though Aisling didn’t miss the implication underlying it, she ignored it all the same.

“How was work?” Her voice was rough from disuse; she hadn’t spoken out loud more than a few words since her brief conversation with Seb two days prior.

Rodney finished his beer in several large swallows then fished a handful of bills out of his pocket and tossed them onto the bar. Aisling wasn’t sure whether they were real or glamoured, but she didn’t care to challenge him this time. “Come on, Ash. We’re going.”

“I’m not finished,” she rasped, brandishing her glass. Before she could protest, Rodney took it from her hand and slid it out of reach.

“We’re going,” he insisted again. “I need to talk to you about something.”

He grabbed Aisling’s coat from where it had fallen to the ground and grasped her elbow firmly, pulling her to her feet and draping the heavy down jacket over her shoulders.

She wavered, unsteady for a moment, before she regained enough balance to pull away from him.

Briar was up in an instant. He pressed himself against her hip, keeping her stable.

Aisling slid her arms into the coat sleeves and followed Rodney begrudgingly out of the bar.

Another bolt streaked across the sky and shot down towards the earth, this one so bright she had to squint against the flash of white light.

The cracking noise it made when it hit the ground set her teeth on edge.

“I wish they’d hurry the fuck up,” Rodney grumbled under his breath.

His safety orange hair rose with the static that surged through the air, growing stronger with each lightning strike then ebbing in between.

He reached up to flatten the strands back down into place, but the brush of his hand only made it worse.

He steered Aisling to his car, which he’d left idling when he went inside to find her.

He hadn’t intended to stay long, clearly, and she was grateful for the warmth when she dropped into the passenger seat.

Though it wasn’t enough to penetrate the chill that clung permanently to her bones, it at least warded off the goosebumps that the cold wind outside drew over her skin.

“Your place or mine?” he asked, despite already aiming in the direction of his trailer. Aisling let him go.

“I’ve got no food at mine,” she mused. She rested her forehead against the cool window as he drove through the center of town.

The snow that had fallen earlier on in the month still clung to the ground in places, the once-white drifts now a dirty shade of gray, half-melted and heavy.

The island seemed to long for a fresh blanket of snow to wash it clean, to hide under until the warm sun of spring brought life back to it.

Aisling wished for it, too. Gray was her least favorite color.

Rodney’s trailer, though familiar as ever, seemed distant to Aisling when they pulled up and parked beside the porch steps.

It felt to her as alien to her as her own apartment, and the library, and the forest, and the shore.

The bar was the only place on the island that didn’t feel that way, if only because she could count on one hand the number of times she’d been there before that month.

It wasn’t a part of the old life she was now so separate from.

It didn’t remind her of who she was before: before she was the Red Woman, before she’d fallen in love with the Unseelie King.

Before she learned how it felt to take another’s life.

And so it took her several long, long minutes to work up the courage to get out of the car. Rodney had found her too soon; she hadn’t had the time to drink all she needed to steel herself for this. The short walk up the steps was sobering enough to sap her buzz entirely.

Inside, Aisling remained with her back pressed against the door while Rodney kicked off his work boots and hung his jacket on the back of a chair.

His mess made the already-small trailer even smaller, and she was an outsider amidst it all.

She hadn’t been there since they’d returned.

Though he was periodically able to track her down, Aisling had been avoiding Rodney just as much as she had her other friends.

So here, as he stood before her under the warm trailer lights, Aisling finally took a moment to size him up.

And it took every ounce of effort not to turn around and walk straight back out into the storm.

He’d had a vested interest all along. If the crueler Fae had begun crossing through the Veil, it would have threatened Rodney’s way of life, too.

His adopted home. He needed the Red Woman to succeed as much as all the rest. So he’d kept her in the dark when he learned the truth about what her destiny meant for Kael, just as he’d left her imprisoned in the Undercastle before that.

Rodney was as self-interested as the rest of them.

Aisling looked at him, suddenly, as she might look at a stranger. He was her best friend, and yet she felt like maybe she’d never known him at all—not really. She thought she should hate him for it. She did, some days. But now, she just felt terribly, terribly alone.

He saw it in her eyes, that abrupt distrust. The way she, instead of moving to settle in on the sofa or take a chair at the kitchen table, rocked back on her heels and pulled her coat tighter around herself.

“Ash, I—” he started. Stopped. Cast his gaze away, toward the windowpane, then down at his feet. Aisling followed his stare. There was a hole in the side of one of his socks.

“What do you need to talk to me about?” Aisling cut him off coolly before he could finish his thought. She always hoped she hadn’t inherited her father’s cynicism, but now it reared its ugly head. She wasn’t ready to hear another apology.

Rodney took a breath, then blew it out through pursed lips. “I had a visitor today.”

“Anyone that I know?” Though she tried to keep her voice impassive, Aisling knew she hadn’t succeeded when Rodney rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and looked up at her from beneath a furrowed brow.

“A messenger from someone you know. Lyre sent a sprite with a note—he wants me to arrange for you to speak with him,” he said, pulling out a chair and dropping into it.

There it was again: that metallic taste coating her tongue. It came and went in waves, always seeming to grow stronger when she thought of the Wild. She swallowed it down hard. “Why didn’t he just come himself?”

Rodney nodded toward a small scrap of parchment rolled up on the table. “He said he’s tried coming by your apartment. Twice.”

Aisling had become so accustomed to ignoring her friends’ knocks on her door over the past several weeks that if Lyre said he had been there, she was inclined to believe him. She might have added another lock or two though, had she known.

“Did he say why?” Surely, if Merak had succeeded in opening the door to Elowas, the storm would have ended.

As if to punctuate her thought, another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.

The trailer lights cut out, briefly, before the generator kicked on noisily outside.

Rodney rolled his eyes, though Aisling wasn’t sure if he was reacting to the interruption, or her question, or both.

“No. Does he ever?” Rodney sighed, then added, “Won’t you at least sit down? Look, Briar’s already made himself at home.”

Aisling glanced toward where Briar was sprawled out on the couch, having grown accustomed to the storm so that each burst of lightning or rumble of thunder no longer sent him darting to her side.

Traitor. When she joined him, perching stiffly on the edge of the cushions, he shifted to rest his chin in her lap.

Rodney flashed a satisfied smile then moved into the kitchen.

“Last night’s pizza?” he asked, bent over with his head in the refrigerator.

“I’m not very hungry,” Aisling said. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get her appetite back—not while everything she put in her mouth was overpowered by the lingering coppery tang.

“It was a rhetorical question. You’re eating.

” Rodney slid the pizza out of its box onto a baking sheet and put it in the oven to heat before turning back to her.

“All of it. Then you’ll stay here until dinner, and you’ll eat again.

Then I will drive you home. So you may as well take off your coat and get comfortable. ”

Aisling huffed and leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees. Her breath rustled a plastic bag on the coffee table. The corner of a box poked through a hole in the material, just enough that she could make out that it was hair dye. Indigo blue.

“Sick of the orange already?” she asked, reaching to pull the box out. She brandished it when Rodney looked over.

“Oh,” he said sheepishly. Softly. “That was meant to be a surprise. You said you liked the blue better.”

A lump swelled in Aisling’s throat that she swallowed back harshly.

It was guilt that was stuck there. She felt like a spectator, watching someone else dismantle her life and leave her friendships to wither.

There was so much raw hope around her—she’d seen it in Seb’s eyes, and now plain on Rodney’s face.

Some tiny voice urged her to reach out and grasp onto the lifelines they were casting her, over and over again.

Whispered that they wouldn’t keep casting forever.

But there was a much louder, much colder voice that seemed always to eclipse the other. One that told her it wouldn’t make a difference how many lifelines she seized or, sometimes, that she didn’t deserve to reach for those lifelines at all.

So instead of telling him that the orange had grown on her, Aisling just nodded and tucked the box back into the bag.