Chapter Twenty-Eight
Midir swept out of the room, leaving his servants to deal with the mess—and the arbiter to an impending nervous breakdown.
Shea didn’t envy him. The last several days, she was certain, had been nothing short of a logistical nightmare.
Shea could not think about the tournament right now.
She had to talk to Ciara. As the last of the crowd dispersed, Shea searched for the princess.
But it was not a familiar flash of balefire red she found approaching her.
It was her sister.
Aideen had stopped a few paces away in a column of golden sunlight.
Her expression was soft and unguarded, her lips parted on something left unsaid.
Looking at her felt like staring into a mirror; Shea’s own startled expression was reflected in the perfect blue of her sister’s eyes. Neither of them spoke.
Shea needed this to be real. She couldn’t handle another illusion, another thwarted effort to reconnect.
Rushing headlong toward her had only ever landed Shea in danger.
This time, she managed to hold her ground.
Her hands curled into fists. Her ears rang.
Humiliatingly, her lip quivered. “Is it really you?”
“Yes,” Aideen replied. “It’s me.”
Shea drank her in, still unable to process it.
Aideen was older now. She was nothing like the girl in Shea’s memories, frightened and alone but smiling determinedly through it.
Nothing like the girl in the portraits, coy and innocent and sure of her own beauty.
This was another Aideen entirely—one with the eyes of an immortal.
Shea wondered what Aideen saw when she looked back at her.
Shea staggered forward and threw her arms around Aideen. And Aideen, to her shock, enfolded her in an embrace. They were closer in height now. Aideen was less frail in her arms—and also less solid. Like she would slip away if Shea didn’t cling tight enough.
“You’re all right,” Shea whispered. “You’re safe.”
“I can’t believe she’s gone.” Aideen’s voice wobbled. “I can’t believe she was here.”
“She can’t hurt you ever again. I was so scared I wouldn’t make it in time. I thought I’d never see you again. I…” Tears threatened to spill, but Shea held them back. “I missed you so much.”
Six years. Somehow, she’d spent almost a third of her life without Aideen.
A third of her life with the awful weight of this guilt.
A third of her life devoted to this one moment.
She had no idea what to do or what to say.
Nothing felt sufficient. No words could possibly encapsulate what she wanted to express.
Right now, it hardly mattered. They were together again, and Shea felt as though she’d finally come home.
“I know,” Aideen said gently. “It’s good to see you again, Shea. But you have to go home now.”
Her perfect relief and joy fractured. Shea jerked away from her. “What?”
“You’ve done enough already.” Aideen arranged her face into a mask of perfect, unassailable calm. “Don’t play tomorrow.”
“Don’t play…?” Shea couldn’t comprehend what Aideen was saying. “You don’t want me to play?”
“No,” Aideen replied emphatically. “I never wanted you to come here. I tried to stop you.”
“I know. Ciara told me that.” Shea raked a hand through her hair. “Look. I appreciate you looking out for me, but I’m not going to just sit back and let you martyr yourself again. I made it this far. I can’t just give up. If I win one more game, you’re free to leave.”
Guilt flickered across Aideen’s face. “Shea…”
Shea couldn’t shake the horrible, sinking dread closing around her like bog water. “No. I’m not going. This is all I’ve been working for, all I’ve thought about for six years—”
“I never asked you to do that.” Aideen’s voice wavered with barely leashed emotion. “I knew you would feel that way. That’s why I didn’t watch any of the tournament games. I didn’t want to give you any kind of encouragement.”
Encouragement? Shame and anger swirled within her. For years, Shea had believed Aideen was some sort of captive. But if Aideen had been avoiding her all this time …
No, she couldn’t accept that. She refused to believe that Aideen would’ve preferred they never spoke again. She refused to believe that her sister could be so cruel—or think so little of her. She didn’t have to ask. Shea would have done anything for her.
“What else was I supposed to do, Aideen?” Shea flung her arms open.
She was only dimly aware of the servants in the room.
Right now, she couldn’t bring herself to care about the stares they were attracting.
“You were just gone. You left me alone with Mom and all this shit I was too young to figure out myself.”
Immediately, she wished she could take it back. Even if it was true, that wasn’t what she wanted to say. She reached desperately for what she’d meant.
After all the times you protected me …
I saw how afraid you were of him.
You really expected me to just forget you?
It was too late. Her words had hit their mark. Aideen looked stung. “I’m sorry you took it so hard, but what was there to figure out? I didn’t lie to you. I wanted to go. It was my decision, not yours—”
“Liar.” Shea gestured around the room. “You’re really happy with this dusty old castle? Your sadist of a husband?”
Aideen flushed. “What does it matter if I am or not? I tried to tell you how I felt so many times, Shea. You didn’t listen, and you still won’t. I don’t know why I expected any different. No one has ever listened to me.”
“Am I wrong?” It came out more uncertain than Shea intended. They were strangers to each other now, maybe, but … “Drop the act. You can’t want to stay here, spending every day surrounded by these monsters.”
“I’m one of those monsters.” Aideen’s quiet indignation rang in the air between them.
Ciara’s unwelcome words came flooding back: Have you considered that your sister wishes to remain in Tír nAill?
Shea felt as though she’d been punched in the gut.
She couldn’t draw in a full breath. When she cast her mind’s eye back to those memories, would she find that this truth had always been there?
“I don’t expect you to understand.” Aideen tucked a strand of hair behind her own ear. “It’s been more than half a decade since we saw each other. Life goes on.”
“Well, maybe it didn’t for me.”
She had meant for it to sound mature: like something a battle-hardened adult might say.
But her throat was tight and her voice thin.
It seemed she wasn’t an adult at all. Before she knew it, before she could stop it, tears burned in her eyes.
It was mortifying. She swiped them away before they could spill.
All she could think about was their mother saying, There’s more to life than playing chess all day.
All she could think about was her own empty house and all the time spent alone, locked away like a prisoner in the highest point of a rook.
Aideen’s abduction had stopped the clock for her.
It changed the rules of the world as she knew them.
It broadened the scope of what she even thought was possible—the depths of suffering she could experience.
How could life go on? It was the simple facts of life that Shea resented most in the months that followed Aideen’s abduction.
She hated how people moved through the world.
Walking to work, to cafés, to shops. The flow of cars on the highway, the press of a crowd on a train platform.
All of these people, heading somewhere, when she was trapped forever in a moment.
“It has to.” For a moment, Shea thought Aideen would grab her by the shoulders. She only withdrew a step. “I’m already gone.”
“I’m trying to save you, Aideen. Just this once, let me!”
“How can I make it more clear? I don’t want to be saved!”
“Well, me neither. So I guess we’re stalemated.”
Aideen gave her a look—one she’d been on the receiving end of many times before. It was pitying, like she doubted Shea was a functioning person at all. “This isn’t like chess.”
She left her, then. Shea could do nothing but stand in the middle of the tournament hall, utterly adrift.