Chapter Fourteen #2
Shea leaned back in her chair, staring up at a sliver of evening sky.
All that training—all that effort—for what?
Her brittleness had just cost them the game.
She’d doomed Aideen, all because she was too much of a fuck-up to win when it mattered.
All because Midir had somehow gotten into her mind again.
Her hands trembled. Her throat constricted.
She refused to cry. She would not fucking cry in front of Daniil Tsoi, who would never exhaust the smug satisfaction of ending her winning streak.
A clattering drew her attention. Ciara had toppled their king and extended her hand to the fae across from her: a resignation. Shea did not look at Daniil as she offered him a handshake. By the time he accepted it, she was already rising out of her seat and desperate to slip away.
“Shea,” Ciara said aloud. “Come with me for a moment.”
Shea could do nothing but let Ciara march her out of the tournament hall.
Ciara dragged her into the first alcove she could find. Flowering vines dripped from the archway like curtains, and thick, time-worn tapestries covered each wall. It was insulated enough for whatever chastisement was coming her way. Shea could feel Ciara’s frustration humming like a live wire.
“Would you care to explain what happened?” she demanded.
“Nothing happened.” Both their emotions rushed through her in torrents. She slammed her palm flat against the stained-glass window beside them. It rattled ominously in its leaded frame. “I just should’ve seen what Daniil was plotting! What an obvious fork.”
Gently, Ciara said, “I did not see it, either.”
Shea saw her own disheveled, wild reflection in the liquid dark of Ciara’s eyes.
She also saw Ciara’s disappointment. Ciara hated losing, too.
Shea could feel it, as tender as a bruise.
But it was a matter of aesthetic and intellectual pride to Ciara.
It was like an artist smudging a line on a perfect painting, or a sculptor chiseling off too much stone.
For her, the game had been spoiled by the ugliness of that fatal rook move.
Almost pityingly, she said, “I understand now why you were so upset the other day. I understand why you play the way you do. It’s not that you hate losing. You’re afraid of it.”
Shea’s anger flared hot within her. “I’m not afraid.”
“I had never even considered that might be the case. I thought you were too good to worry about losing. In fact, I’m shocked you play as well as you do, if that is how you feel in difficult positions.” Ciara paused uncertainly. “Tell me, what is it that you’re playing for?”
Shea sighed, and some of the rage flowed out of her. She didn’t see any good reason to conceal it from Ciara. “My sister.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The story poured out of Shea. She told Ciara everything, from Aideen’s inexplicable birth to Midir’s sudden arrival in their lives.
She told her of her plan to stop him from taking Aideen.
And even though it nearly ripped her open, she told her how she’d failed.
Ciara listened with surprising attentiveness, and by the end, she looked quite stricken.
Through their bond, a spark of anger reached Shea.
“So this is why you have denied yourself—” Ciara pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is your first over-the-board loss in a year. I cannot believe I am the one telling you this, but you must be reasonable. You and I lose less often than most of the others, but you cannot go undefeated forever.”
Shea smiled mirthlessly. “You can if you’re Midir.”
They both fell silent, and hopelessness permeated the close air of the alcove.
“Let us set him aside for a moment,” Ciara said. “You cannot punish yourself for losing that game forever. It was not a moral failure.”
“Yes, I can.” Frustration mounted within her. “If I’d played better, if I’d prepared more, if I’d—”
“Shea,” Ciara interjected. “You surely know that your sister is not fully mortal. You seem to believe her birth is some sort of faerie curse. But it was purely a coincidence that your family was caught in the crossfire of my brother’s mistakes. None of us can stop fate.”
Dread made a knot of her stomach. “Don’t talk to me in riddles.”
“Then allow me to tell you a story.”
And so, she did.
Long ago, Midir of Bri Leith went to pay a visit to his foster son, Aengus.
A group of warriors was training in Aengus’s field, when suddenly a quarrel broke out among them.
Midir attempted to intervene, but a stray spear of holly knocked out his left eye.
Enraged, he went to Aengus with his eye clutched in his hand.
“Would that I had never come to call!” he cried. “Now, I am blemished and put to shame.”
Full of regret, Aengus summoned the great physician Dian Cecht to fit Midir with a new eye.
But Midir deemed it insufficient recompense.
He was called Midir the Proud for a reason, after all.
He demanded his due: a chariot worth seven cumals, a mantle befitting his stature, and the fairest maiden in Tír nAill.
There could be no other but Aideen Echraide, the princess of one of Ulster’s Elfmounds.