Chapter Fourteen
The day of the tournament’s second round dawned as gray and crisp as all the others that had come before.
In the daylight, the tournament hall was more impressive than Shea remembered: wide and echoing, with a crumbling stone ceiling that let in wide slabs of light.
Spectators filled the risers, and press—both mortal photographers and faerie portraitists—crowded the wings.
But it was the chessboards Shea could not look away from.
They stood in the center of the room, stately and imposing, like a row of marble statues.
The second phase of the tournament was a round-robin format, where each team would play one game per day. A win earned them one point, a draw half a point, and a loss zero points. Only the top-scoring teams would advance to the third round.
The fourteen remaining competitors had gathered in the antechamber of the tournament hall. Some of them stood stock-still; others paced. None of them spoke, and the silence pressed down on them like an oncoming storm.
Ciara jerked her chin toward the tournament hall and murmured, low enough for only Shea to hear, “It’s odd, don’t you think?”
“What is?”
“There is no space,” she replied. “How are we meant to confer with one another like this? The other team will hear everything we say.”
“I don’t know.” Shea frowned. “I’m sure Midir has something planned.”
“Almost certainly.” Ciara shook her head. “I do not like this.”
Midir’s voice echoed through the hall. “Competitors, you may enter.”
The crowd’s hushed conversations lulled as the players filed through the archway. Shea made her way to their assigned board like a general surveying the battlefield, her back straight and her eyes fixed straight ahead.
Shea and Ciara took their place in front of the white pieces.
Their opponents settled in across from them.
One was a young faerie grandmaster named Brigit of Dowth.
The other was Daniil Tsoi. The sight of his cold, imperious face did not spark the same loathing it once had.
All she could think of was the bitter, unflinching determination in his voice when he said, I can’t lose.
“Did you get a better answer to the Caro-Kann?” Shea whispered.
“Going to play something other than d4?” he countered.
Ciara pressed her fingers into her temples and sighed.
“Today’s format is unconventional,” Midir said.
Shea followed the sound of his voice to the front of the room, where he stood with his arms crossed neatly behind his back.
“Chess is often thought of as a solitary sport. Although players have teams to prepare them for their games, they win or lose alone, on their own merits, and must cope with the results alone. But there is a fascinating dynamic that emerges between two players when they sit across the board from one another. As you play, you must get inside your opponent’s mind—and crush it.
You must learn their strengths and weaknesses.
You must anticipate what they want and what they plan to do.
To play against someone is to know them completely. ”
That was what he’d done to her: read her mind and broken it. Shea fought back a shiver of revulsion. What was it Ciara had said? Chess opens a door between two souls.
“These things fascinate me,” Midir continued. “The tensions between players. Trust and betrayal. In such a competitive, selfish game, is teamwork truly possible? In this round, we will find out.”
There was an edge to his smile—one Shea did not like.
Before she could even begin to speculate what he meant by that, the fetter around her wrist flared hot with magic.
A single branch unfurled—and reached out to its match on Ciara’s.
They twined around one another in a neat spiral from end to end.
He’d bound them together again. This time, something felt wrong.
It was as though someone stood beside her in the theater of her mind, radiating a confusion both alien to and a double of her own.
“Well, here is the solution to the problem.” Shea heard Ciara’s voice clearly, but her lips did not move. “It seems our thoughts and feelings are aligned.”
Shea half rose from her seat in horror. This was an invasion.
Her mind was an inviolable place, her own domain.
No one since Aideen had walked its halls.
But there hadn’t been so many dark places and unopened doors back then.
To know Ciara could traipse through uninvited, rummaging through whatever she pleased …
She would find all of Shea’s vulnerabilities, all her fears.
Worse, she would sense Shea’s feelings: this inconvenient, undeniable attraction Shea could not stamp out. Ciara would never let her live it down.
“Get out.”
That earned her an indignant glare from Ciara. “Believe me, I’d love to. Your emotions are so loud. I understand it may be a challenge, but can you contain yourself for a few hours?”
Shea threw her thoughts in Ciara’s direction with force. “No guarantees. Let’s play e4.”
Each army stood frozen on the board, awaiting their marching orders.
Ciara advanced their king’s pawn two squares.
Shea had been honest with Daniil the other night.
He did struggle against the fantasy variation of the Caro-Kann.
She almost hoped he’d take the bait, if only to prove her wrong.
But he and his opponent responded by throwing down a gauntlet: the Archangel Variation.
Shea frowned down at the board, unable to contain her surprise.
Few people took risks against her anymore.
More accurately, few people wanted to play an actual game of chess with her anymore.
Nowadays, her opponents liked to prepare thirty moves of bizarre lines only a computer could devise—anything to keep her off guard and out of familiar territory.
Obsessive study had given her an edge in well-known positions.
But here was Daniil, playing to win with the black pieces. She respected him for it.
“Aggressive. He’s clearly prepared something.”
Ciara rested her chin in her hands as she appraised the board. Shea sensed her disappointment before she spoke. More infuriatingly, she felt it almost as her own. “There are a few good options we have here. But I imagine you want to shut down anything interesting.”
Shea did her best not to bristle. It didn’t help matters that Daniil was watching them with something like self-satisfaction.
He must have done this on purpose. He knew very well that Shea and Ciara would handle this position in completely different ways.
It was cunning of him to try to sow discord between them.
“I’m open to something interesting,” Shea said, a little defensively. “Are you confident in these types of positions? Actually, I retract the question. Of course you are.”
Beside her, Ciara preened. “I took a look at this line recently.”
She rattled off a few moves and sketched out the general strategy. Shea could see no real fault with it, and their time was slipping away. As much as she hated it, she’d have to trust Ciara’s expertise here. “Fine. Let’s do it.”
Ciara’s line was, indeed, interesting—and also plunged them into a quagmire of complications.
Minutes dragged into hours. Little by little, the other games adjourned, but the four of them battled on.
As the clock ticked down, they had little time to calculate and work through all the intricacies.
Her shoulders ached from hunching over the board, and her mind buzzed with exertion.
One mistake could make the whole thing unravel.
She glanced up at a flicker of movement over Daniil’s shoulder.
Midir stood behind him, observing the position with interest. His head tilted inquisitively, and a little smile curled on the corner of his lips, as though something about the game struck him as amusing.
As though he saw something Shea did not.
As though he knew she was already lost.
Dread pooled within her like the trickle of cold water.
She forced herself to look at the configuration of the pieces again.
Her mind went eerily blank. She experienced only a yawning incomprehension.
Nothing about this game made sense anymore.
She could not understand how they’d gotten here.
She dared to lift her gaze to Daniil, who regarded her with cool indifference.
Dark eyes, she reminded herself. Not green.
She was not playing Midir. She was not that overconfident little girl anymore.
But Daniil had prepared for this game. He’d led them here for a reason.
He saw deeper and farther than her, all the way to a humiliating checkmate.
He saw into her very soul, just as he had claimed on the boat ride here: If you’re in a worse position, you can’t hold your nerves.
You disintegrate. It felt prophetic now.
They were going to lose this game. She was bleeding out on the board. She was sinking, too fast, and—
A hand landed firmly on her knee. “Shea.”
The sound of Ciara’s voice—urgent, concerned, and a little desperate—brought her back to herself. Shea heaved a shaky sigh and glanced reluctantly over at her.
“There you are.” Ciara frowned. “We have to move.”
“Right.” Shea scrubbed her hands down her face. They had maybe a minute’s worth of sand left in their hourglass. “Right. Sorry.”
“Rook here?”
At a glance, Shea could not see anything wrong with it.
Ciara was right. They had to move. She placed the rook on the g8 square.
In an instant, Daniil made a face—half surprised, half disgusted.
Shea realized why only a moment later. Ciara did, too, judging by the outrage and self-reproach that crashed over them both.
Their last move had been a mistake.