Chapter Nineteen #2
Daniil’s face went entirely, unsettlingly blank. “What?”
“Midir took her.” The first teardrops dashed against her cheekbones. Damn it. She was crying after all. She dragged her sleeve over her damp eyes and fought to steady her voice. “That’s why I’m playing.”
After what felt like an eternity, he said, “My sister is here, too.”
Shea looked up at him through the loose strands of her hair. His face regained some of its color, some of its composure. His confession sat there in the silence between them, like a piece brought out to deliver a devastating check.
“She was a principal dancer at the Bolshoi Theater,” he added.
“The ballerina who went missing.” That was right.
Hadn’t she seen that on the news a few years back?
A Russian ballerina had been invited to perform in the Otherworld and never returned.
Shea hadn’t paid much attention to the news cycle at the time.
It had been too painful to be confronted with another instance of a young mortal girl stolen away by the fae.
“What happened to your sister?” The lack of pity in his tone, the lack of his own vulnerability, somehow grounded her.
It didn’t surprise her that Daniil didn’t know. Aideen had been nothing but a small-town curiosity, a local legend. Her abduction had never even made it to national news networks. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Then start talking.”
Where to even begin? Under the cold assessment of his stare, Shea went back to the start.
The strange circumstances of Aideen’s birth.
The way she’d been claimed at sixteen, hailed as the Queen of the Otherworld.
Shea faltered only when she got to the night she had challenged Midir to that fateful game.
The bargain, the battle, the despair, and—at last—the way Aideen had intervened to save her.
Aideen was always saving her. No one had saved Aideen in the end.
Daniil listened with surprising attentiveness. By the time she finished, his expression had hardened into utter contempt. “Our situations aren’t remotely the same. That was entirely your fault. You had a chance to stop him, and you lost it.”
At first, Shea had no reply. It was genuinely shocking—so beyond cruel and out of line, it circled around to being funny. She laughed, until she almost began crying again. “Thanks, Danya. I’ve only been telling myself that for six fucking years.”
He did not apologize, but the twist of his mouth suggested he almost regretted it. Almost. “I wouldn’t have made the same mistake. Cheating or not, I would have destroyed him. But at least now I understand why you choked in the second round. He was standing over the board and got in your head.”
“Yeah,” Shea said quietly. “He’s always in my head.”
“You shouldn’t have lost to me. You wouldn’t have, if you were more resilient.” He sounded very bitter about it. It almost touched her.
“What happened to your sister?” Shea asked.
“I don’t know. That’s the worst part.” He tipped his head toward the window.
“She was an incredible dancer. She worked so hard. Tried so desperately to meet her instructors’ standards.
Tried so hard, she started disappearing right in front of me.
Sometimes it felt like the only time you could really see her was when she was onstage. There, she was free. Happy, maybe.
“One of the faerie lords of Ireland—the Lord of Mag Mar—invited her to perform at his winter festival. I’d never seen her so excited.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime. A career-defining performance.
It never occurred to me that she might never come back.
” His hands tightened into fists. “There was nothing anyone could do. Not even all the money and power in the world. None of it meant anything. None of it…”
Shea nudged his shoulder with the toe of her sneaker. He glanced up at her, and she was surprised to find that he looked almost grateful. His dignity had remained intact.
“I’m sorry,” Shea said quietly. “There’s nothing to say that feels good enough. What’s her name?”
He hesitated. Then: “Irina. Yours?”
“Aideen,” she replied. “Thanks, by the way. I don’t think I said that.”
He recoiled. “For what?”
“Saving my life.”
He scoffed. “Don’t thank me for that. Like I said, it’s just principle.”
And what principle is that? she wanted to ask. But never would he admit to anything resembling goodwill toward humanity. She tucked away the knowledge that maybe he wasn’t so bad and vowed—for both their sakes—to never look at it again.
The quiet settled heavily over them again, filled only by the distant beat of the festival drums. Between them, understanding had bloomed.
And worse, more guilt she didn’t need. Already, she felt heartsick.
Why try to understand Daniil? Why offer Ciara things she couldn’t promise? Why sympathize with Lily?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
They were all competing with one another, and there was no way around it.
No overcoming what would happen when they denied one another their dreams. She understood now that this tournament was the same kind of game her mother had liked to play when they were children. Cruel, inescapable, and unwinnable.