Chapter Fifteen
The next day, they did do better—and the day after, and the next.
They won and won and won. Some of their games were less a victory than they were a massacre.
Still, the pressure mounted. Thanks to their earlier loss, they wanted to win every game to ensure they made it into the top four.
It all came down to the last day. Shea and Ciara would face off against their undefeated opponents: Lily and her faerie teammate, a grandmaster named Lochlainn of Knowth.
At the board, Lily wore an expression of complete and total calm. It made Shea painfully aware of how she’d insulted her. Lily would no doubt be eager to crush them, if only to make Shea regret underestimating her.
But as long as Shea held her nerve, they could win.
They shook hands, and Lily started Shea and Ciara’s clock.
Both sides played their first few moves in rapid succession.
It both stunned and delighted Shea to see their opponents steering the game into a tricky, venomous line of the King’s Indian Defense.
Ciara favored King’s Indian positions. And Shea, knowing that, had prepared far too many niche lines to combat it.
This was well within her wheelhouse. Already, she felt herself cooling like tempered steel into something sharp and deadly.
Within a few moves, they’d entered into a variation Shea recognized well. “I was looking at this line recently. Playing the pawn forward here is kind of a rare move. I don’t think either of them will know it.”
“I certainly have never seen it before.” Ciara’s amusement sparkled through their bond. “Did you prepare that for me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Shea hesitated for only a moment. “But yeah.”
“Well, then. I’ll follow your lead. I’m eager to see how you would’ve taken me down.”
That was all the encouragement Shea needed.
Both sides maneuvered their pieces: their bishops freed, their knights unleashed, their pawns marching onward.
The middlegame transformed the board into a battleground, riddled with complications.
Shea could not see it clearly yet, but she could feel it.
They were teetering on the edge of breaking through their opponents’ defenses.
As she stared across the board at Lochlainn’s drawn, wan face, Shea could smell the blood in the water.
“What are our candidate moves?” Shea asked Ciara. “They’re close to cracking.”
Ciara surveyed the board, her lips forming the shape of words without speaking. “We could castle here. Or we could play g3, unless you think f5 is too dangerous.”
“Castling is definitely the best move. But they might go c5, which looks a little scary, I guess.”
Ciara shot her a look out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not scared. I like our position a lot.”
Her confidence bolstered Shea. “I do, too. And we’re going to go b4 at some point. Like, if they go rook f4, we go bishop g5, rook-f b1, h5, king f1, g4, takes, takes.”
“Then king e2?” Shea could hear the smile in her voice, impressed or delighted by the idea. “Bold.”
“Exactly. What are they going to do?”
Shea had meant it rhetorically, but Ciara, thorough as ever, closed her eyes, envisioning the resulting position. When her dark eyes slid open, she looked game and eager—and best of all, certain. “Very well. Let’s do it.”
It sent a thrill through Shea.
They forged ahead with their plan, securing a five-minute lead on the clock.
Their opponents, however, did not go down easy.
They parried and pressed, forcing them to think, until each side was down to fifteen seconds on the clock.
It was a time scramble. But Ciara knew it as surely as Shea did: They’d already won.
It was only a matter of delivering the final blow.
“Where’s the win?” Shea muttered. “Knight f4, g6…”
Ciara craned her neck forward, her tongue pressed against her full lower lip, her brow furrowed. “Why not rook g2?”
“Fine,” Shea conceded. “Rook g2. That’s fine. I guess we just can’t go f7.”
“But then we’re threatening—”
“—we are not. No, we are not. Do not even think about it.”
They played their moves with such speed the pieces nearly flew off the board. The excitement mounted, until they were practically shouting moves at each other.
“—and now g6—”
“Yes! Go. Now.”
Their attack finally pierced black’s defenses. With no immediate response and no time to think, black’s clock ran out. Just like that, it was over. Across the board, Lochlainn nearly collapsed from the sudden evaporation of tension. Lily scowled down at the pieces with a quiet disbelief.
They’d won.
They’d won, and she felt … With her mind overheated from strain, Shea hardly even knew how to describe it. There was relief, yes. But this was something more. Something incandescent and unrestrained and fizzy, building and building in her chest until she overflowed with it.
Joy, she realized.
Shea couldn’t help it. She laughed aloud with giddy, confused delight. She couldn’t remember the last time chess had brought her joy. She hadn’t thought it possible. It made her want to weep.
The audience began to applaud, a sound that swelled and swelled until the stone reverberated with it. It lasted for nearly a full minute, until Midir held up a hand. The crowd went obediently silent.
“Now that the results are in, I’m pleased to announce that both teams will advance to round three,” he said. “Congratulations to the final eight.”
After the game, they’d been roped into a press conference.
Representatives from the mortal world shoved cameras in their faces and asked them the sorts of questions Shea had come to expect.
A group of bards listened in so that they might compose a song of their exploits, which Shea found ridiculous. Ciara, however, was aglow with pride.
When it was over, she led Shea to what she said was her favorite spot in the castle: the butterfly garden.
It bloomed in an explosion of color. There were pink milkweed and lilac asters; lavender and goldenrod; daisies and snapdragons.
All of it grew wild, uncontained by beds or trellises—waist high and higher still, reaching toward the pale light of the sun.
Iridescent butterflies flitted among the petals like dandelion seeds.
At the center of it all was a gazebo. Ciara slid onto a bench beneath its roof and stretched out. Her hair spilled off the side and onto the floor. She rummaged through a hidden pocket of her cloak and produced a flask.
Shea let out a startled laugh. “You had that the whole time?”
Ciara uncapped it. “I was prepared for either celebration or consolation.”
“Clever,” Shea said dryly.
Ciara’s eyes sparkled as she took a swig, then passed it to Shea. Shea poured its contents into her mouth. Wine, she thought. It was pleasantly tart and rich, like bilberries.
“We couldn’t have lost, honestly,” Shea said. “We’re just better at chess than the others.”
Ciara laughed at that, shocked and warm and genuine. Shea’s heart did something stupid at the sound of it, and it made her mouth form an even stupider smile in return.
Beautiful, she thought. Ciara was so beautiful.
And Shea was such a fool.
On some level, she’d always known she was a lesbian.
It had felt almost abstract, when she never had room in her life for anything but chess.
But she’d never experienced anything like this before.
It made her want to do something reckless.
It made her want to find out if Ciara’s lips would taste like wine.
“Don’t let Tsoi hear you say that,” Ciara said. She didn’t deny it, either.
“I’ve been thinking,” Shea murmured. “What do you plan to do once you’re in the mortal world?”
Ciara looked surprised but pleased. Shea recognized the feeling: Finally, someone had brought up a favorite topic she rarely got to discuss. “I have a list. Do you want to see it?”
“Yeah. Let’s hear it.”
Ciara reached into her improbable cloak again.
It took only a few moments of muttering and shifting for her to find what she was looking for.
With a flourish, as though pulling a sword from its scabbard, she held up a scroll.
Ciara unfastened the ribbon binding it shut, and the parchment unfurled like a war banner and went sprawling across the flagstones.
“You really have put some thought into this,” Shea said wryly.
Ciara ignored her. “The first item is to attend a Renaissance Faire. Use a stapler. Watch the washing machines in a self-serve laundromat. Consume the bright blue drinks from the Seven Minus Eleven store. Go to an aquarium. Put on those shoes with the wheels on them. Buy—”
Shea laughed. “Wait. Are you serious? This is your list?”
“What? Is there something wrong with it?” Ciara demanded. A little color rose in her cheeks. Shea got the sense that she’d genuinely embarrassed her. It was oddly endearing.
“There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that most people’s bucket lists are like … Traveling to new places. Climbing Mount Everest. Skydiving. Things like that.”
“Why would I want to climb a mountain?” Ciara asked, horrified. “What is skydiving?”
“Never mind,” Shea muttered. “I just mean you could do half of those things in an hour.”
“That is why the list is so long.” Ciara began rolling the scroll up with an air of profound self-consciousness. “Think me ridiculous if you must. I rarely get to see anything beyond my hotel room when I travel for tournaments.”
“No,” said Shea. “I mean, I do kind of think that you’re ridiculous, but…”
Ciara huffed.
“I guess I’m just wondering where you’d go, if you left the Otherworld.” Shea frowned. “You don’t have anywhere to live. I’m sure you could get something for yourself with your tournament winnings.”
Ciara lowered her gaze. “I do not get to keep my tournament winnings.”
She really did have nothing, then.
Shea hadn’t meant to confront Ciara with logistics, but she did need to think this through.
The Chess Federation might help her some, but they couldn’t exactly bankroll a faerie princess’s lavish lifestyle.
A private donor might support her—maybe one of the billionaires who funded those fancy, offbeat tournaments; the type who barely knew how the pieces moved but respected the game for its general aura of prestige.
But what kind of life would that be, beholden to a patron like it was the Middle Ages? No, it wouldn’t do.
“I guess you could stay with me,” Shea said. “At least until you figure things out.”
She didn’t know what possessed her to say it.
She should have regretted it—or better yet, withdrawn it—because it was an objectively terrible idea.
They didn’t hate each other anymore, but they still bickered.
If they lived together, one of them would be dead within a month.
And yet, all she could really concentrate on was the way it had felt during the last game they’d played—and the way Ciara was looking at her now.
“Really?” Ciara’s voice was both hopeful and suspicious.
“Yeah. Really.”
“That’s good of you.”
“It’s no bother,” Shea replied, too quickly to be casual. Worse, she found she couldn’t stop herself from babbling. “You wouldn’t like living with me, though. I’ve been alone for too long.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Ciara canted her chin. “Would you like living with me?”
Would she? Over the past week, her animosity had melted into something like respect. When Ciara played to her full ability, how could Shea not admire her? Ciara’s creativity, her restlessness, her eye for tactics, her raw skill … They set Shea ablaze.
When they were grinding out the theory of some obscure line, she felt as though they were birds: flashing through the air, soaring and diving and coasting, surveying the expansive domain of all chess knowledge from a great height.
Maybe it should have terrified her to brush up against a skill that might exceed her own.
But it didn’t. Who else but Ciara could keep up with her?
Who else could challenge her like this? Ciara made Shea remember, distantly, what it was like to love this stupid game that she’d once loved and that had betrayed her.
Ciara made her want to play.
She wanted to play chess. Shea could hardly believe it—could hardly contain her excitement.
She wanted to face Ciara again. She wanted to tear apart her defenses.
She wanted to launch an unstoppable attack.
She wanted to experience the full force of her ability, with nothing held back between them. She wanted … She wanted Ciara.
Chess opens a door between two souls.
The gazebo was suddenly airless. Sunlight played in the fiery red of Ciara’s hair and lit her black eyes.
They stared at each other across the painfully little space between them.
Slowly, Shea cradled Ciara’s face in her hand.
She slid her thumb along Ciara’s full lower lip.
She felt the hitch of Ciara’s breath, the flutter of her pulse. “Yeah. I think I would.”
Melancholy stole across Ciara’s expression. Her smile was so soft and uncertain. “Of course, all of this assumes that I win.”
Those words sank into Shea’s heart like a dagger. Her hand dropped back into her lap. “Right. Assuming you win.”
They fell silent. What else could they say? This world they’d envisioned could never exist. Somehow, she’d forgotten the painful truth. They couldn’t both win.