Page 10 of Immortal Game

Good sportsmanship dictated that she should resign. She wanted to, if only to spare herself further humiliation. If only to stop the pain that was blossoming behind her left eye. She met Midir’s gaze. She couldn’t even begrudge him his expectant, gloating smirk. He hadn’t just beaten her. He’ddestroyedher.

Before she could admit defeat, Aideen’s voice cut through the silence: “Enough.”

Both Shea and Midir’s heads snapped toward her. Midir looked furious at the interruption, a chess piece clutched in his hand like a stone ready to be unleashed—until he realized who had spoken. The piece dropped from his fingers onto the ground. Shame stole across his face.

With a coldness Shea had never heard from her before, Aideen said, “This is pointless, Shea.”

“What?” Shea asked hoarsely.

“I didn’t ask you to do this.” Frustration flickered across her expression. “I want to go with him. I’ve always wanted to go.”

“You’re lying,” Shea said. “Why are you lying?”

“I’m not. There’s nothing here for me. There never has been.” Her voice trembled, just barely. To Midir, she said, “I’m ready. Take me away from here.”

His expression softened with surprise. His disbelief melted into something likehappiness. It sickened Shea to see such an oddly mortal sentiment on his perfect, inhuman features. “We have a game to finish.”

Aideen laid her hand on his arm. “Please. I don’t want to wait another moment.”

He had waited a lifetime for her. He could wait another thirty seconds for Shea’s clock to run out, or another second for her to resign. And yet, Shea could see that Aideen had stolen the competitive malice from his heart.

In a perfunctory gesture, he held out his hand to Shea. He didn’t even meet her eyes, as if this were nothing more than a business transaction he couldn’t wait to be done with. “Draw?”

Shea could not find the words to reply. She couldn’t even feel relieved. Numbly, she shook his hand. Just like that, the world fell away. The fog that had enshrouded them dissipated. Piece by piece, the mortal world came into view: her empty lawn, silvered with dew; the yawning dark of the woods; the stars shining overhead. When she tipped her head back, she saw Midir and Aideen for the last time: two cranes cutting across the pale face of the moon.

Sometimes, Shea wondered what her life would look like if she’d won that game. It was a pointless thought exercise, she knew. She’d memorized every move they’d played. She’dplayed it out on the board a thousand times. She’d put it in an engine. Every analysis revealed the same core truth: Midir played perfectly, while small, human inaccuracies had undone her.

This time, it would be different. Shea was neither the terrified eleven-year-old nor the cocksure thirteen-year-old she’d been. This time, she had nothing left to lose.

Across the room, the golden apple and silver branch Ciara had given her emanated an otherworldly light.It’s time, they seemed to say.Come away.

As if in a trance, Shea approached them. She picked up the apple, and without hesitation, she bit into it.

CHAPTER FOUR

The flesh of the faerie apple was as crisp and cool as spring water, as sweet and floral as wild honey. As soon as she swallowed the bite, she felt as though she’d swilled an entire bottle of wine. She hated it: the unmooring of her senses, the looseness in her limbs, the lightheaded, giddy rush. Her vision blurred. The room tipped. The apple fell from her hand and struck the floor with a dull, sick sound. And then, the world as she knew it fell away.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw that she no longer stood in the half-light of her living room. She lay on her side as mist descended over her in gossamer-fine waves. The air smelled damp, like the woods after long-awaited rain. The only light came from the silver leaves of the apple branch in her hand.

Pretty, she thought. Some half-buried instinct told her she should keep it.

Slowly, Shea hauled herself to her feet. She had been in this liminal space between realms before, but she couldn’t orient herself. There was nothing but swirling, beguiling gray as far as she could see. Distantly, she heard the faintest sound of music, as beautiful as it was melancholy. It filled her with an urgencyunlike anything she’d ever known. She could not rest, could not experience happiness again, until she found the source of that music. She walked as if through a dream. Still, the music receded. Still, her goal hovered just out of reach. It was only when the ache in her feet sharpened into pain that the enchantment faltered.

Shea hissed and pried off one of her sneakers. Blood stained the heel of her sock; a blister must have formed and burst since she’d set out. Just how long had she been wandering through this endless twilight? It would be an eternity if she couldn’t get herself together.

Shea slipped her shoe back on. What was it Ciara had told her? That she had to cut through the Féth Fíada? She was still loosely clutching the apple branch. Its papery leaves twinkled and sighed, as though stirred by a distant breeze. Shea hefted it like a baseball bat and swung it in a wide arc. A gust of wind rushed forth, and the mist parted like curtains flung wide-open. As sunlight flooded her vision, Shea threw up her arm to shield her eyes.

What became instantly clear was that she was dressed for the wrong season. The air carried only a lingering chill rather than the promise of enduring, bitter cold. What struck her next, when she finally let her arm fall away, were the hazy bands of lavender and pink striating the sky. Dawn already. Either she’d been walking all night, or the Otherworld existed outside time as she understood it.

The Otherworld.After all this time, she was really here.

But where, exactly, was here?

Shea stood on the edge of a vast lake. It stretched out before her, glasslike in its stillness, and a low-lying fog crept acrossits surface with the slow, slinking steps of a cat. It was far too quiet. Normally, there was more fanfare around tournaments: press crowding the competitors as they emerged from their cars; cameras popping; fans eager to get their chessboards signed or touch the sleeve of their favorite player… But on this desolate shore, it was just her, with no way forward and no way home. This had to be a mistake—or some kind of elaborate joke.

“Ciara,” Shea muttered under her breath.

No, even Ciara wouldn’t do this. Then again, Ciara hated her.