Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Well!” Midir said by way of greeting. He drove the points of his spear into the ground, an act of pure frustration.
Shea jumped back in surprise. Daniil did not flinch.
“What have you two against me? Each of you resigned your games of your own volition. You left my realm unharmed. And yet you return to terrorize my subjects and show me such blatant disrespect. You have not played me fair. This is the only chance I will give you. Go and injure me no more.”
Daniil crossed his arms. “That’s not going to happen without some demands being met.”
Midir stared at him in disbelief. He gestured around him: the shovels planted into the earth beside his spear, the dirt scattered in haphazard mounds, the exposed roots of the apple tree. “Do you consider your conscience clean? Is your mind at ease?”
“Yes,” Daniil replied matter-of-factly.
“What you have done here ripples across Bri Leith. The common fae have flocked to my stronghold.” His tone indicated this was very unwelcome indeed.
Ciara had said he’d become reclusive over the years—or perhaps he didn’t care to have his tournament interrupted by the problems of fae he considered beneath his notice.
“My duty to defend this site has not been invoked in centuries. This is a brazen violation of the agreements between our worlds. I am well within my rights to demand satisfaction for this trespass.”
Shea had no doubt he would kill them where they stood. She had to salvage this quickly. “We had no other way to get a warning to you.”
The anger bled out of his face. Changeful as quicksilver, his expression morphed into one of idle curiosity. “A warning?”
His interest was a relief beyond measure. He would listen to them. But she would have to hold his attention if they were to survive his annoyance.
“Does the name Fuamnach mean anything to you?” Shea asked.
Midir’s entire bearing changed at the sound of the name.
Every muscle was drawn as tense as a bowstring.
But his eyes … Shea had expected rage, maybe even amusement, depending on how credible he found Shea.
He looked almost afraid. Beneath his fear, another emotion stirred—something more human than she believed him capable of.
It was no more than a shadow passing over the serene waters of his preternaturally beautiful face, but Shea had seen it: regret.
Guardedly, he asked, “Where did you learn that name?”
“You gave it to me,” Shea said. “To Aideen, really. I was young, but I still remember every detail of the day you first showed up to ruin my life.”
He did not react, so Shea could only assume those kinds of declarations were commonplace to him. The only indication he’d even heard her was the beginnings of a frown. “It is not a name to be invoked lightly.”
“I don’t invoke it lightly. She’s returned.”
Now came a flash of the irritation Shea expected. “Do not jest.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Shea protested. “She’s been—”
The chains of Fuamnach’s enchantment pulled taut around her heart. Her breath lurched out of her. Her tongue felt as though it would tear in two. Midir regarded her with some surprise.
“She’s been interfering with your tournament,” Daniil interjected. He was, fortunately, always quick on the uptake. “We can tell you where she is.”
“The sorceress you speak of is dead.”
“Did you see her death yourself?”
The question clearly opened an old wound—a doubt he’d wrestled with many times before. “Our foster son hunted her down and burned her alive. So he told me.”
It chilled her: both the image and the casual disinterest with which he admitted it. Ciara had not mentioned that detail. Shaking her head, Shea pulled out her phone and held it up to Midir. “Does she look familiar?”
Midir squinted into the blue light of the screen.
His eyes roved over an old black-and-white photo of Fuamnach in a feathered bonnet.
She looked serious—and painfully beautiful without her glamour, even through the grain of the image.
Immortal. At first, no recognition lit them.
Then, with some astonishment, he said, “It is as you say. What sort of conjury is this?”
“It’s a phone. Just … Don’t worry about it.”
Midir’s troubled expression smoothed over. With his righteous fury forgotten, he now regarded the two of them as though they were unruly children he did not know what to do with. “Tell me where she is.”
Shea glanced at Daniil imploringly. He said, “The player calling herself Lily Keenan is Fuamnach. I assume she intends to harm your wife if she wins.”
Midir’s gaze flickered between them. “She’s bound you to silence on this matter.”
“Correct,” Shea gritted out.
“I can sense a spell on you,” he admitted begrudgingly. “You’ve done me a service. I should call us even for the defacement of my fort, but clearly, you have come here with some other purpose beyond generosity. What will you have of me, beyond your lives?”
Shea decided not to begrudge him the sarcasm.
Letting them live probably was more than a fair trade.
To offer something more … Aideen’s safety was valuable enough to him that he considered this warning a great boon.
On some level, she’d always known he loved her.
Why else spend a thousand years searching for her?
Why else go to such lengths to keep her?
It changed nothing. It didn’t make her hate him any less.
“You know what I want,” she said quietly.
His expression shuttered. “That is too high a price. Name something else.”
“I want a fair game between us.”
His visible eye bored into hers with a predatory gleam. “If that is what you want, I will give you a game here and now. But you may ask nothing more of me, even if you win.”
“Fury,” Daniil said warningly.
Emotion welled painfully close to the surface. It wouldn’t be enough to beat him. She had to fix the things she’d broken. “No. Let us stay in the Otherworld until the tournament ends. That’s what I want.”
“Then come with me.”
He turned on his heel. His cloak billowed behind him. And in its wake, the mist eddied and rose, like smoke rising from a fire, until her vision was consumed with gray. Shea and Daniil followed him, heading into the Otherworld once more.
Escorted by the lord of the realm, the journey through the Féth Fíada was kinder.
They walked for only a minute before the fog lifted, unveiling the familiar vista of Bri Leith.
The mirror-smooth lake dotted with swans.
The milk-white cattle in their pastures.
The hill they’d been standing on only moments before was now a distant smudge of lavender beyond the mist and the castle walls.
Midir brought them to the tournament hall.
Inside, there were somehow even more spectators than had been at the semifinal round.
They gathered in the risers and opera boxes.
They stood behind cordons, craning their necks to get a glimpse of the board.
Ciara and Fuamnach sat perfectly still in the midst of it all, like two pawns clashing at the center of the board.
Ciara.
For the past thirty-six hours, Shea had been animated by a simple plan, a single purpose: Get back to the Otherworld.
Somehow, she’d managed to not think about Ciara at all.
She hadn’t even considered that seeing her again would be an issue.
Why would it be? She’d already endured the worst of Ciara’s betrayal.
She’d mourned what they could’ve been already.
Shea understood now that she should’ve shored up her defenses.
Ciara’s fingers were steepled at her lips as she leaned over the board.
Her curls had gone limp, as if they’d been deflated by exertion.
Even so, she was devastatingly beautiful.
A physical pain exploded at the center of Shea’s chest. She felt like a king in check: stripped bare, devastated, cornered.
Shea didn’t know what was worse. That she was still furious with Ciara, or that she still loved her.
Midir approached the board, his chin lifted imperiously. Little by little, the audience stood in recognition. A soft murmuring disturbed the tense silence of the hall. The players did not even glance in his direction, if they noticed his presence at all.
“This game,” he said, “is adjourned.”
At this, Fuamnach and Ciara did glance up. Both of them appeared dazed and irritated, as though he’d roused them from a dead sleep.
The arbiter—a fae in a crisp black tunic—made himself known with the clearing of his throat. “Your Majesty, shall I seal the next move?”
“There is no need,” Midir replied. “It would be more accurate to say that this game is over. Lily is disqualified.”
Shea could hear a horrified and bemused “disqualified?” rippling through the crowd. Fuamnach’s eyes burned with thwarted rage. She stood abruptly, her hands balled into bloodless fists at her sides. “On what grounds?”
Daniil laughed humorlessly. No doubt he was biting back a smart reply, but now was hardly the time. Shea drove an elbow into his side, which earned her a sharp glare.
“I do not know how you slipped beneath my notice this long,” Midir said. “You should have been turned away at the gates. You should have been dead twice over, Fuamnach, foster daughter of the sorcerer Bressel Etarlam.”
Fuamnach’s lips parted with surprise. Then, her face settled into cool impassivity. “But I was not, and I am not. It’s my right to challenge you.”
“You have not earned the right.”
Ciara’s gaze bounced back and forth between them. Her shoulders bunched with tension, but her voice was droll when she asked, “Are we going to finish the game after all?”
Neither of them paid her any mind. She huffed a little sigh and rested her chin heavily in her palms.
Fuamnach clearly sensed the noose tightening around her throat. Slowly, her attention drifted somewhere above them all—to the opera box where Midir watched the tournament. Shea followed her gaze up to Aideen.