Chapter Seven
Shea awoke in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room.
The bright wash of late morning sunlight only heightened her disorientation.
Where was she? When she shot upright and found the wooden fetter staring back at her, reality crashed down over her.
Right. This was her room now. She was in the Otherworld.
And last night, she’d watched someone die.
She couldn’t banish the memory. She thought of chess pieces lying in a pool of blood. She thought of roots burrowing into her veins and twining into her bones. One wrong move, and she’d be ripped apart from the inside out, just like him. Her stomach threatened to turn again.
Enough, she scolded herself. Move on. What good would it do to dwell on it? Someone else would mourn him. All that mattered was the next round. All that mattered was getting one step closer to Aideen.
She dragged herself out of bed and got ready for the day. In front of a wooden vanity, she scraped her hair back with gel. After a moment’s consideration, she left last night’s earrings in: teardrops of jet. They caught the light like the edge of a knife and reminded her of dark, too-canny eyes.
“Good morning.”
Shea swore in surprise. She turned to find Ciara perched on the windowsill, as languid as a sunning cat.
The window hung just slightly ajar, as if it’d been nudged open by a gentle breeze.
Had Shea left the latch undone? Not that it should’ve mattered, really, considering it was a fifty-foot drop to the ground below. So how the hell had Ciara gotten there?
“I understand I am a sight to behold,” said Ciara, “but you’re staring.”
At that, Shea remembered that maybe she ought to be offended or outraged. Ciara had, after all, broken into her room. “What are you doing here?”
“Straight to hostility, I see.” Ciara slid off the windowsill and stalked forward. “Far be it from me to expect anything resembling warmth from you, but you cannot even be bothered with pleasantries?”
Shea smiled coldly. “Maybe when you give me a reason to be pleasant.”
“Impossible. I’m quite certain that there is no pleasing you. Oh, but these are nice.”
Ciara reached out to touch one of her pendant earrings, and the backs of her bejeweled knuckles just barely grazed Shea’s cheek.
Even after Ciara withdrew her hand, the scent of her perfume lingered: hyacinth and honey.
Shea’s skin prickled with the memory of her almost-touch.
She realized, a moment too late, that she’d stopped breathing.
Clearly, Ciara had noticed. Her eyes twinkled with the same amused fascination as when she’d complimented Shea’s haircut.
It made sense now. This was some kind of tactic—or worse, a joke.
Of course a player as dangerous as Ciara would exploit any weakness she could find.
Shea bristled all over with resentment and humiliation.
“Tell me what you want,” said Shea, “or get out.”
“I? What I want!” Ciara touched a hand to her collarbone, the very picture of indignation.
“To be accused of selfish motives. To be ordered about in my own home. You wrong me, Shea. I will have you know that I came to fill you in on what you missed, since you ran off in such a great hurry last night.”
Shea shot her a repressive look. “I kind of needed some air.”
“Yes, I suppose your game was rather explosive.”
“Real nice,” Shea said dryly. Family wasn’t exactly high on her list of values, but the joke felt in poor taste, even by her low standards. “Wasn’t he your cousin or something?”
Ciara shrugged. “I never liked him much. Nor any of the others.”
Shea considered ignoring her, but curiosity got the best of her. “How many cousins do you have?”
“Oh, hundreds, I’m certain.”
“Hundreds?”
Ciara raised an eyebrow. “Between consorts and spouses and hapless mortals over thousands of years, one accumulates quite a number of cousins. How many do you have?”
“Zero.” Shea couldn’t fathom a family of that size. “I take it you’re the youngest.”
“Indeed I am.” Ciara preened. “There are almost fifteen hundred years between Midir and me. In truth, nobody was expecting my father to sire another child. He was quite old, even by the fae’s standards.
My birth caused some alarm, considering he was preparing to choose his successor from among his many descendants.
They needn’t have worried. Midir was always the clear choice. ”
Ciara sounded so bitter every time she mentioned Midir. Shea and Aideen had had their arguments, but she couldn’t imagine resenting her. As innocently as she could, she asked, “Are you close? You and Midir?”
“Midir provides for Tír nAill’s grandmasters as befits their station.” Ciara made a little moue of displeasure. “We play chess together from time to time.”
That was a resounding no, and it confirmed what Shea suspected.
If Midir really cared for Ciara, why would she have to compete for his boon?
Ciara’s sudden and uncharacteristic reticence felt like a well-timed defensive move: solid and, for now, unassailable.
Still, it felt good to have her on the back foot for once. “Have you ever beaten him?”
“No.” Ciara looked troubled but barreled onward. “At any rate, it was unfortunate, the whole business with my cousin. A rather stupid way to go, if you ask me. Ah, but you have distracted me. I came to tell you about the next round.”
Shea eyed her suspiciously. First, Ciara had warned her about the fae’s insistence on hospitality. Now, she was willingly providing Shea with information she could’ve easily withheld. “Okay. Why the sudden generosity?”
Ciara looked affronted. “As I said yesterday, sportsmanship is a value I now hold in the highest esteem. But if you don’t want to know…”
“I do,” Shea cut in.
Ciara smiled, benevolent and gratified. “The next round will take place in a few days. The format is partner chess.”
“Partner chess?” Shea couldn’t keep the disgust out of her voice.
It was a gimmicky two-versus-two format.
In the mortal world, the tournaments were usually live-streamed so that casual viewers could watch each duo bicker as they talked through their moves and strategy.
Here, she couldn’t imagine the appeal, unless the arbiters were going to allow them to strangle one another for the crowd’s amusement. “Really?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Ciara paused. “Today is the Fraughan Festival. Are you familiar with it?”
“Why would I…” Learning about the Otherworld’s holidays hadn’t exactly been part of her training protocol. “No. Of course I’m not.”
“Of course you’re not,” Ciara echoed pityingly. “It is a summer harvest festival—and a celebration of love. We will all be attending this afternoon.”
Shea glared at her, mystified at the change in topic. “Wow. What a treat.”
“Your sarcasm is registered and unappreciated,” Ciara said primly. “I mention it only because that is where we will choose our partners. My brother has something of a sense of humor.”
Which meant they had to choose today. What a nightmare. Shea would have to be strategic about this decision. On such short notice, it was an impossible ask—made more impossible for the fact she hadn’t the foggiest idea who had even survived eliminations last night.
It occurred to Shea that Ciara was still standing there. The princess wore an expectant sort of look on her face, one that began to fade the longer Shea stared incredulously back at her. An inchoate dread swirled within Shea. “What?”
“Very well, then. I suppose I must be the one to humble myself.” Ciara sighed heavily. As though speaking under duress, she said, “I am … amenable to some sort of arrangement between us.”
“Amenable?” Shea echoed. Her head spun as she turned over Ciara’s words.
An arrangement made it sound like something sordid—or some sort of marriage-of-convenience proposal, straight out of an old-timey romance novel.
Ciara had found yet another way to mock her.
It was almost impressive how enterprising she could be when it came to spite.
Shea’s outrage returned with a vengeance. “Well, I’m not.”
Ciara’s mouth fell open in astonishment.
Soon, her expression clouded over with genuine hurt.
It lasted only a moment, however, before fury swept it all away like a sudden tempest. Wind gusted through the open window, sending her curls flying about her like a flame.
Her hair seemed to shake loose embers and sunlight. “May I ask why I am thus rejected?”
“You can’t be serious!” Shea cried.
“Gravely! I should like to hear your reasons.”
Shea laughed, full-throated and disbelieving. Oh, where to begin? She’d disliked Ciara for so long, she could hardly believe she had the gift of telling her exactly why.
“Look at yourself.” Shea swept her hand out in front of her.
“You’re a terrible loser. You’re entitled.
You’re shallow. You behave badly, and you keep getting away with it because everyone is either afraid of you or worried that casual viewers will lose interest in chess without your star power.
It’s unfair, sure, but if that was all I had against you, I could live with it.
But no. It’s personal, because you made it personal. ”
Neither of them had gotten over the first game they played together.
They were both fourteen years old, and they’d been matched in the third round of a tournament in Prague.
The first time Shea saw her, she remembered thinking Ciara bore no resemblance to her brother.
That was until Shea sat at the board, and Ciara looked at her like she was an insect: beneath her notice, too insignificant to trifle with.
Then and there, Shea knew she had to win.
For her opening, she’d chosen an obscure sideline of the Ruy López, one designed to take Ciara out of her comfort zone as quickly as possible.
Ciara had sat slumped in her chair, moving her pieces with a sort of flippant disinterest that made Shea’s temper flare even hotter.
Ciara had either prepared something against this line, or she was too cocky to notice the blade hovering over her neck.
It made Shea angrier than she’d been in years.
So angry, in fact, she forgot to think. For ten glorious moves, Shea played how she used to when she still loved the game: relentlessly, combatively, the equivalent of dragging someone into a fistfight by their hair.
The sequence ended with a haymaker: a queen sacrifice.
At that, Ciara’s facade cracked. She drew in a sharp breath, as though Shea had punched her.
She stared down at the board for a long time, her clock tick, tick, ticking into the tense silence.
Shea saw the exact moment Ciara calculated what Shea already had: That the attack was devastating—and there was nothing she could do to stop it from crashing through. When she finished contemplating the hopelessness of her situation, Ciara finally looked up at Shea.
Shea had expected a resignation. Instead, Ciara’s stunned expression morphed into one of inarticulate fury.
The box-dye black of her hair began flaking away and rose above her like a cloud of soot.
As the natural red shot through root to end like a flashfire, she slammed her palm flat on the table.
All the pieces rattled, quaking at her sudden outburst.
“Impossible,” she’d hissed.
It was the only victory Shea had relished in years.
But Ciara had exacted punishment for being so thoroughly humiliated.
Every time they’d played since, Ciara had lost on purpose.
She didn’t even try to hide it, with her insistence on dubious lines and intentional blunders.
To make matters worse, fans mistook their disastrous games for some kind of inside joke.
They drew record numbers of spectators, and official chess social media accounts went viral every other week making content out of “chess’s most iconic frenemies.
” Just thinking about it made Shea’s blood boil.
“For years, you have made it your mission in life to insult and embarrass me,” Shea went on. “So, yeah. My answer is no. Everything you do is for attention or your own selfish amusement. Why would this be any different?”
They were standing very near now, almost chest to chest—so close, Shea feared that Ciara would be able to feel the thundering of her heart. The very air between them seemed ready to spark and catch flame.
All at once, the wind died, and Ciara’s hair settled against her shoulders once more like the petals of a wilting flower. Her eyes went vacant, like chips of dull glass, and she smiled coldly. “Well, now. I see you have the right of me.”
When next Shea blinked, all that remained of Ciara was a swirl of butterflies. Their wings were a vibrant, iridescent blue ringed with black. Most of them fluttered out the open window, but one landed delicately on Shea’s lapel.
What have I done?
It was like an aggressive attack on her opponent’s king had fizzled out: all her initiative killed, her position ravaged by her own recklessness, all her energy spent for no real gain.
It’d felt good in the moment. Now, she felt no satisfaction.
No relief, either. She felt only, to her horror, the tiniest twinge of guilt.