Chapter Eight
Shea sorely regretted not asking where this Fraughan Festival would be held. Outside the cold stone embrace of Midir’s castle, she found only a herd of cattle grazing in their paddocks. A few shaggy white dogs stood watch over their charges, their tongues lolling.
Shea was surprised to see how many fae bustled about the place, hauling buckets across the yard, repairing fences, brushing out the cows’ brilliant coats.
There hadn’t been nearly this many servants at the opening ceremony.
Clearly, Midir valued his cattle. Ciara probably had some explanation.
Then again, Ciara would likely never speak to her again.
A fae nearby was pitching hay into a wheelbarrow while a steer nosed at him for attention. Apparently unafraid of its massive horns, he shoved its head away with fond exasperation. Shea must’ve looked hopelessly lost, because he said, “You’re one of the chess players?”
“I am.”
“Head on up the mountain.” He jerked his chin toward what, to Shea, was a hill. Whatever. She would offer no argument. “His Majesty and the rest of them are meeting at the trailhead. You’ll make it if you hurry.”
“Got it,” she said. “Thanks.”
She unlatched the gate that led to the trail—and ensured it had shut behind her when someone yelled, “Close it!”
Shea trotted along the path, dodging wayward stones, until she found the competitors gathered at the tree line.
Only sixteen of them, an even mixture of mortals and fae, remained.
The fae dressed more casually than they had yesterday, in airy muslins and straw hats, and they’d woven summer flowers into their hair.
“Welcome.” Midir’s voice carried above the group’s dull murmuring.
He stood alone beneath a canopy, looking golden and resplendent even in the gloom.
“Our mortal guests may not know that few crops grow in Bri Leith this time of year, except for the fraughan—the bilberry. The fruit is small and grows hidden in the heather. They are quite difficult to find; it might take all afternoon to fill one basket.”
As he spoke, servants materialized to hand everyone in the crowd a woven basket. Shea accepted hers with great reluctance.
“Eventually, with foragers spending long hours together, harvest days became known as courting days. On both sides of the Veil, many matches were made during harvest season. And as the Lord of Bri Leith, mortals came to venerate me as a god of love. In return for their labor, I would bless their matches.” He sounded almost wistful.
“It was a fitting title. I have always been a fool for love. It has been both my salvation and my downfall, as it soon may be for each of you.”
Curiosity pricked at her. What exactly did he mean by his downfall?
After the wrongs he has suffered, Ciara had told her, he protects his privacy quite jealously.
“In the spirit of the Fraughan Festival,” Midir continued, “you will choose your partner for the next round, and I shall seal that match. Do not return until you’ve made your decision—and you’ve collected enough fraughan to fill your basket.
As the High King of the Elfmounds, a portion of the heath-fruit is due to me. ”
With that, they began their trudge up the hill.
The trail was lined with pink heather and well worn from hooves and boots, but the damp earth made for a treacherous climb.
A few of Shea’s fellow competitors bent their heads together conspiratorially, already deep in conversation as they walked.
Others knelt alone on the ground, searching for bilberries among the dense thickets.
As Shea contemplated each player’s strengths and weaknesses, she spotted Daniil scowling down at his empty basket.
No, she thought. Anyone but him.
But as much as she disliked him, he was ranked fifth in the world. There were worse allies to have. Cautiously, she approached him. “Hey.”
He turned toward her and immediately looked like he regretted it. “Fury.”
“Enjoying yourself?”
“No, as a matter of fact. I don’t enjoy being insulted.”
“I think it’s supposed to be fun.” Foraging did make her feel almost nostalgic.
She and Aideen used to pick wild strawberries in their yard, and sometimes, if they were lucky, their grandparents would take them to an orchard to fill cardboard boxes full of apples and plums. Aideen would climb up to the highest boughs and toss the choice picks down to Shea, and they’d gorge themselves beneath the dappled shade of the trees.
“If servitude is your idea of fun, you’re no better than a dog.” Frustration edged into his voice. “We came here to play chess. This is nothing but a power trip, making us kowtow to his ridiculous whims and—”
“I agree with you.”
He eyed her warily.
“I’m frustrated, too.” She knelt beside the heather and searched until she found a bilberry bush hidden underneath. “But we have no choice but to play along.”
With a huff, Daniil knelt beside her. They worked together in silence for a few minutes, until Shea at last talked herself into asking.
She glanced over at him and studied the line of his profile, the hard set of his jaw.
He looked absolutely murderous, but it wasn’t like she’d find a better opening.
She opened her mouth, and without preamble, he said, “No.”
“I didn’t even say anything.”
“You don’t have to. It’s obvious what you want. I’m not going to be the one carrying you to the next round. It was pure luck that got you this far.”
Shea bristled. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
An idea seemed to strike him. Behind his glasses, his eyes shone with malice. “I’m not completely heartless. Admit I’m the better player, and I’ll consider it.”
“Go fu—”
“Can you two act like normal people?”
Both Shea and Daniil startled.
A girl had folded herself against the roots of a tree, her knees tucked into her chest and her nose buried in an almost comically large book.
It took Shea a moment to place her: Lily, the girl she’d met just before the opening ceremony.
She did not look up at them. She only chewed on her lip ring as she read.
Her basket sat beside her, already filled half to the brim with bilberries.
“Normal,” Daniil repeated skeptically. “Coming from the girl who crawled out of a graveyard.”
“Ha, ha.” Lily flipped to the next page in her book.
“Who even are you?” he pressed. “Some depressed international master?”
“He’s not capable of being normal,” Shea interjected. “As you can see, he’s not a normal person.”
“Then can you settle for being civil?” Lily asked. “I can’t focus with you two whispering menacingly at each other.”
“We are being civil,” Shea replied, at the same time Daniil said, “I’m just being honest.”
Shea fixed him with an irritated look. Daniil shrugged. “I don’t run a charity. There’s nothing to gain in working with a player who’s afraid to sit next to a chessboard the moment a game gets difficult.”
I’m not afraid, she wanted to say, but it would only egg him on. “Everyone has off days.”
Daniil scoffed. “Yeah. Not me.”
Lily looked as though she were weighing the benefits of bashing their skulls in with her needlessly large tome. “If you can’t behave, go away.”
An idea struck Shea then. If Daniil wouldn’t cooperate, maybe Lily wasn’t a terrible choice. Shea didn’t know the first thing about her play style, but she could leverage that. Nobody had prepared against her, and the element of surprise was an undeniable advantage. “Yeah, Danya. Go away.”
He looked affronted. “What?”
“I want to talk to her. Alone.”
“Right,” he said. “Good luck with that.”
As soon as he left, Shea sidled closer to Lily. “It’s Lily, right?”
Lily’s only response was a very persecuted expression.
An unpromising start. Where to go from here? She tilted her head, trying to make out the title of Lily’s book, but there didn’t seem to be one. The book was old and leather-bound, like a volume of poetry you’d find in a dusty antique shop. “What are you reading?”
“What do you want?”
Shea smiled wryly. She’d never been good at dancing around social niceties, and Lily’s directness was a relief. “What’s your Elo?”
At last, Lily closed her book. She stared Shea down, a challenge in her eyes. “2480.”
“That explains it.” The Elo system measured a player’s relative skill level, spitting out a number that increased or decreased when you won or lost games.
To qualify for the grandmaster title, a player needed an official Elo of at least twenty-five hundred.
“I knew it was weird that I have no idea who you are. You are just a depressed international master, aren’t you? ”
“Guilty as charged,” Lily said dryly.
“So how did you get here?”
She shrugged. “Jeremy Liu was in town. I found out he’d been invited, so I challenged him to a game. He staked his invitation on beating me.”
Now that Shea thought about it, she hadn’t seen him at the opening ceremony. Jeremy was a decent player. This girl had to be pretty good to defeat him, or maybe he’d been careless. No doubt he’d expected an easy win against some random IM.
“Impressive,” Shea said begrudgingly.
“Satisfied?”
“Not really. I don’t know your opening repertoire, your style, anything.”
“You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” Lily said blandly.
Oh, Shea intended to. As soon as she got a moment to breathe, she’d hunt down an arbiter and request the move list from the game Lily played last night. Enemy or ally, Shea needed to know what she was dealing with. “For what it’s worth, my style is winning.”
“And humility.”
Shea bit down on her frustration. This conversation was quickly slipping away from her. “Look, I’m not trying to antagonize you. I need your help.”
Lily’s dispassionate blue eyes bored into her. “I’m listening.”
“I take it that you haven’t played most of these guys before. I do it all the time. You don’t know what you’re up against, and I don’t want to deal with prigs like Daniil Tsoi. They’re not here for the right reasons.”
“And you think I am.”
“Why else would you go to all this effort?”
Lily twisted her hands together in her lap. A few scars stretched across her hands, shiny and puckered like burn marks. When she caught Shea looking, she tucked them back into her sleeves. “It depends on what you consider the right reasons.”
“Try me.”
“A long time ago, someone hurt me. I want him to pay for it.”
Her answer—and the quiet, simmering anger beneath it—gave Shea pause.
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, forums had been flooded with discussions of the age-old question: If you won Midir’s tournament, what would you wish for?
The answers were always the same. For the average person, it was money, status, or eternal happiness.
For the self-deluded, it was world peace.
For the particularly tiresome, who fancied themselves as clever as the fae, it was more wishes.
Shea assumed most people would fall under one of those umbrellas. Lily had surprised her.
“Me, too,” Shea said quietly. “Be my partner.”
Lily searched Shea’s face. After a moment, she shook her head. “No.”
Shea reeled back. She hadn’t expected such a blunt, outright rejection, but she could salvage this.
“So you got lucky and beat Jeremy Liu. Maybe last night, too, against one of your faerie opponents who maybe hasn’t played a real game since 1795.
But the competition is only going to get harder when there’s nobody left but top grandmasters.
I can at least get you to the next round. ”
“Wow,” Lily deadpanned. “You sure know how to court a girl.”
“I’m not … It’s not…” She cut herself off before she embarrassed herself further. “I’m not trying to trash-talk. It’s just the truth.”
Lily flipped open her book again. “I see what you’re doing. You want to use me and discard me as soon as it’s convenient. I know a thing or two about that.”
Shea’s face warmed with shame. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” When Shea could provide no response, Lily laughed softly.
“That’s what I thought. All of you are the same.
You can’t see past your own ego and ambition.
I did earn my way here, even if I wasn’t invited.
Maybe you should be afraid of me. You know nothing about my games.
I know everything about yours. Now if you don’t mind… ”
Lily made a little shooing motion. What else was there to do? Shea snatched up her basket and skulked off. How had she managed to completely alienate two people in as many hours?
Her unwelcome guilt came flooding back. No, she would not beat herself up over what she had said to Ciara—and she sure as hell wouldn’t apologize. Not until Ciara did, anyway.
Shea continued on her grim trudge, determined to find someone else.
By the time she reached the hilltop, she’d passed six duos rummaging through the thickets.
A realization dawned on her, like the cold shower of an opponent’s unexpected brilliancy.
With everyone else paired off, she had only one option left: Ciara of Bri Leith.