Page 34 of Immortal Game

“Well,” Shea said bitterly, “I’m glad to hear you’re so well adjusted.”

Ciara did not rise to the bait. She picked up a pawn and studied it with feigned interest. “You’ve surfeited on victory,perhaps. You will only be satisfied when you become the first woman World Champion.”

Shea let out a startled laugh. “I’m not interested in being the World Champion.”

Genuine surprise flickered across her face. Accusingly, she said, “Every chess player is interested in being the World Champion. Do not lie to me. I saw the interviews you did as a child. You always were a little arrogant, weren’t you?”

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

Ciara smiled mirthlessly. “No, you are as old as any fae here. Life is long, and you have already gone and sucked all the joy out of it. What changed?”

“It just doesn’t sound appealing.”

“Forgive my skepticism, but you want me to believe that being the best sounds unappealing to you?”

“The World Champion isn’t necessarily the best player in the world.”

“I will concede that point.” Ciara huffed. “But don’t you want to prove to yourself that you can win the title, even once?”

Shea felt as though she was defending a crumbling position, fighting off attacks on all sides of the board. The unpleasantness of it soured her stomach and made her shoulders coil with tension. Why was she pressing this so hard? Unable to keep the defensiveness out of her voice, Shea said, “I don’t have anything to prove. I just don’t care about stuff like that anymore.”

Ciara’s bafflement only deepened, but she did not relent. “So, what do you plan to do after this tournament?”

The last of her patience snapped. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll quit.”

It was the first time she’d ever expressed that aloud. Thetruth sounded shockingly violent. It rang off the stone walls of the castle—and hit Ciara like an arrow to the heart. She slumped in her chair, going very pale. “Well, then, what amIsupposed to do?”

Shea’s heartbeat quickened. She felt hot and breathless. Why should she have her motives picked apart like this? Why should she be accused of… what, abandoning Ciara to elite chess, like it was some sort of betrayal? If anything, Ciara should beglad. Her ascent to the top would be far easier without Shea there to impede her. “I don’t see how it has anything to do with you.”

“It doesn’t, of course.” Ciara recovered herself. “But…why? If you don’t care about accolades, then there’s no reason to play in a way that makes you feel miserable and stagnant. I don’t understand it.”

It dawned on Shea:She doesn’t know.Ciara didn’t know why Shea was here at all. She didn’t know that Midir had stolen all her fire. She didn’t know that he’d ruined her, and that nothing Shea did or didn’t do would fix it.

When the victories didn’t outweigh the agony of defeat, when she found no pleasure in the game anymore… well, how could she justify playing? It sounded almost sweet, to never again experience the comingled stress and tedium of an over-the-board game. To never weather the shattering pain of loss again. Once she won this tournament, there was nothing left for her in chess.

And then what?

Deep down, she worried she’d end up like Fischer or Morphy: brilliant players who lost their love of the game and then lost their minds. Without chess, what was she good for? What else could she possibly do? She didn’t want to die alone, despisingeverything that once made her feel alive. Maybe there was no escaping that fate now.

“There’s nothing to understand,” she said. “Something in me is dead.”

“Nonsense! If that is true, you have not eventriedto revive it. You won’t do other formats. You won’t experiment. You won’t take a break.”

“I was too busy preparing for this tournament.” Shea shook her head, too frustrated to argue anymore. “Preach at me all you want. But like I said, winning is the only thing that matters to me right now.”

Ciara’s dark eyes turned pitying. “Whatever you’re playing for comes at a dear cost.”

“Maybe so.” Shea couldn’t take this for even a moment longer. She didn’t need Ciara’s approval. She didn’t need to love chess. She didn’t need to be the girl she used to be, who delighted in her own skill and steady improvement. All she needed was to make it through this round. Hastily, she rearranged the pieces on their home squares. “We should decide on our strategy.”

Ciara’s disappointment was palpable. “As you wish.”

A resignation, at last. Shea felt no better for it. The emptiness within her soul ached like a bruise. In that moment, she almost hated Ciara for making her yearn for all the things she could never recover.

CHAPTER TWELVE

By the time they finished their practice for the day, Shea’s thoughts swam in a haze of dense endgame theory and venomous lines of the Sicilian. They’d spent hours working on solutions to puzzles, dissecting games at the board, and bickering about theory neither of them remembered exactly right.

Shea rarely moved from the board. Ciara, however, could not be contained. She flitted through the room like a butterfly, finding different places to land. At one point, she sprawled across her chaise longue, with a lavender-scented eye mask on and a cup of tea balanced precariously on her collarbones. At another, she perched on a three-legged stool, where she strummed her very out-of-tune and very fancy guitar. At first, it had frustrated Shea. Then, out of nowhere—as if rousing suddenly from a dream, or as though she’d found the idea somewhere in the ambling chords she played—Ciara would describe the most beautiful combination of moves Shea had ever heard.