Chapter Eleven #2
Shea felt increasingly boxed into a corner. Most days, she tried not to dwell on her relationship to chess. It was too painful. And now, Ciara was all but forcing her to. “What does it matter to you?”
“My faerie nature. Idle curiosity. Nosiness. Call it what you like.” Ciara shrugged.
“In Tír nAill, we revere skill above all else. It is our way to master a single one over the course of our lifetime, simply for the pleasure of sustained effort. You possess an exceptional talent. It is unfathomable to me that you do not rejoice in it.”
“And you do?” Shea fired back.
“Of course I do. I could wax poetic for hours about the beauty of the game, I am sure. But really, the reasons I love it are quite simple. Chess opens a door between two souls, and I cannot deny what I am.” Her eyes glittered with dangerous intensity.
“I like to lead my opponents into Tal’s deep, dark forest. I like to see the moment they realize they are powerless against me.
I like knowing what someone wants and denying them. ”
The hypnotic cadence of her words filled Shea with longing—no, with desire.
She used to feel that, too. When you had a winning advantage, there was a sadistic pleasure in shutting down your opponent’s every avenue of counterplay.
In forcing them into complete and utter passivity.
In stealing their very soul away. She used to love the way the energy in the room changed when the game swung in Shea’s favor. That kind of power was addictive.
It wasn’t only winning she used to enjoy. Her love for chess had been so pure. In the beginning, its sheer difficulty had frustrated her. But the desire to play, to crack its secrets, to understand, carried her through the setbacks. And when it finally clicked …
Shea didn’t think she’d ever experienced satisfaction quite like that.
There was real joy in the struggle. It became her obsession: the maneuvering and counter-maneuvering, the plans both enacted and thwarted, the clash of her will against another’s.
Even the sting of loss had been tempered by fascination.
There was always something new to learn, some curiosity to follow, a limit to be tested, a goal to be reached.
The pursuit of perfection was its own reward.
All of that felt so far away now.
“Well,” Shea said bitterly, “I’m glad to hear you’re so well adjusted.”
Ciara did not rise to the bait. She picked up a pawn and studied it with feigned interest. “You’ve surfeited on victory, perhaps. You will only be satisfied when you become the first woman World Champion.”
Shea let out a startled laugh. “I’m not interested in being the World Champion.”
Genuine surprise flickered across her face. Accusingly, she said, “Every chess player is interested in being the World Champion. Do not lie to me. I saw the interviews you did as a child. You always were a little arrogant, weren’t you?”
“I’m not a kid anymore.”
Ciara smiled mirthlessly. “No, you are as old as any fae here. Life is long, and you have already gone and sucked all the joy out of it. What changed?”
“It just doesn’t sound appealing.”
“Forgive my skepticism, but you want me to believe that being the best sounds unappealing to you?”
“The World Champion isn’t necessarily the best player in the world.”
“I will concede that point.” Ciara huffed. “But don’t you want to prove to yourself that you can win the title, even once?”
Shea felt as though she was defending a crumbling position, fighting off attacks on all sides of the board.
The unpleasantness of it soured her stomach and made her shoulders coil with tension.
Why was she pressing this so hard? Unable to keep the defensiveness out of her voice, Shea said, “I don’t have anything to prove.
I just don’t care about stuff like that anymore. ”
Ciara’s bafflement only deepened, but she did not relent. “So, what do you plan to do after this tournament?”
The last of her patience snapped. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll quit.”
It was the first time she’d ever expressed that aloud. The truth sounded shockingly violent. It rang off the stone walls of the castle—and hit Ciara like an arrow to the heart. She slumped in her chair, going very pale. “Well, then, what am I supposed to do?”
Shea’s heartbeat quickened. She felt hot and breathless.
Why should she have her motives picked apart like this?
Why should she be accused of … what, abandoning Ciara to elite chess, like it was some sort of betrayal?
If anything, Ciara should be glad. Her ascent to the top would be far easier without Shea there to impede her.
“I don’t see how it has anything to do with you. ”
“It doesn’t, of course.” Ciara recovered herself. “But … why? If you don’t care about accolades, then there’s no reason to play in a way that makes you feel miserable and stagnant. I don’t understand it.”
It dawned on Shea: She doesn’t know. Ciara didn’t know why Shea was here at all. She didn’t know that Midir had stolen all her fire. She didn’t know that he’d ruined her, and that nothing Shea did or didn’t do would fix it.
When the victories didn’t outweigh the agony of defeat, when she found no pleasure in the game anymore …
well, how could she justify playing? It sounded almost sweet, to never again experience the comingled stress and tedium of an over-the-board game.
To never weather the shattering pain of loss again.
Once she won this tournament, there was nothing left for her in chess.
And then what?
Deep down, she worried she’d end up like Fischer or Morphy: brilliant players who lost their love of the game and then lost their minds.
Without chess, what was she good for? What else could she possibly do?
She didn’t want to die alone, despising everything that once made her feel alive.
Maybe there was no escaping that fate now.
“There’s nothing to understand,” she said. “Something in me is dead.”
“Nonsense! If that is true, you have not even tried to revive it. You won’t do other formats. You won’t experiment. You won’t take a break.”
“I was too busy preparing for this tournament.” Shea shook her head, too frustrated to argue anymore. “Preach at me all you want. But like I said, winning is the only thing that matters to me right now.”
Ciara’s dark eyes turned pitying. “Whatever you’re playing for comes at a dear cost.”
“Maybe so.” Shea couldn’t take this for even a moment longer.
She didn’t need Ciara’s approval. She didn’t need to love chess.
She didn’t need to be the girl she used to be, who delighted in her own skill and steady improvement.
All she needed was to make it through this round.
Hastily, she rearranged the pieces on their home squares. “We should decide on our strategy.”
Ciara’s disappointment was palpable. “As you wish.”
A resignation, at last. Shea felt no better for it. The emptiness within her soul ached like a bruise. In that moment, she almost hated Ciara for making her yearn for all the things she could never recover.