Page 66 of Immortal Game

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Lily stood like a ghost in the doorframe.

When Shea found her voice again, she demanded, “What are you doing here?”

At first, Lily did not reply. She moved silently into the room, tilting back her head to study the portrait. She wore a strange expression, one that shifted continually like moonlight over troubled waters. There was hurt and longing, confusion and betrayal, all of them flickering in and out of focus too quickly to track.

“Lily.” Dread built steadily within her, although Shea could not exactly place why. “Howare you here?”

“You opened the door for me.” She traced a fingertip along a dusty writing desk. “Although, this room was once mine.”

Shea stared at her in silent horror—and a mounting self-hatred. How had she not seen it before? Lily’s familiarity with faerie culture. Her quest for vengeance. The scars on her hands. How she’d arrived, unknown and uninvited. The longer she looked, the more the girl standing beside her resembled the woman in the painting. Lily’s clever, bright eyes; her cunning smile…

They were unmistakably Fuamnach’s.

She felt nauseated. “It’s you.”

Belatedly, the full weight of that realization crashed down on her. Lily was Fuamnach: Midir’s ex-wife, the sorceress who had been targeting her, the woman who had sworn revenge on her sister. And she washere.

Shea stumbled backward to put some space between them—and caught her foot on the leg of a chair. She hit the ground with a terrible crash. Pain jolted up her elbows, but she hardly registered it. She only scrambled away until her back pressed against the opposite wall.

Fuamnach watched her impassively, clearly weighing what to do. When she blinked, the clear blue of her irises changed to striking, pure gold. Her hair shone more lustrously: black with the faintest blue sheen, like a crow’s feathers. It happened in the space of a heartbeat, along with more subtle transformations that changed the topography of her face. She understood how Fuamnach had gone undetected. It was as though Shea had been wearing sunglasses all this time—and now removed them to stare at the full, unyielding brilliance of a star. Fuamnach’s otherworldly beauty, dulled by her mortal façade, was now on full display.

“It’s been a long time since someone looked at me like that,” she said flatly. “It’s flattering. But there’s no need to cower. I can’t harm you here.”

“Then why thefuckdid you follow me?”

Fuamnach approached her. Her boots tapped out a steady rhythm on the floorboards, and with every step, the shadows stirred around her ankles like water. She offered her hand to Shea. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Shea only stared at her hand until she retracted it. “I have nothing to say to you. You’re here to kill Aideen, aren’t you?”

“No.” Fuamnach’s mouth twisted as though she’d tasted something sour. “I would not escape alive. Besides, there’s no pleasure in it this way. If I were to kill her, I’d want him to know it was me. I would want him to see it. I would want for him to know that, this time, there will never be any hope that he will find her again.”

“You’re a monster,” Shea hissed, not bothering to hide her revulsion.

“You’ve drawn your conclusions about me. But there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I could tell Midir.”

Fuamnach tilted her head, and the shadows slid back from her face. The mottled band of scar tissue across her cheek caught the light. “You won’t. You and I both need this tournament to continue.”

They did. But if never seeing Aideen again meant she would live…

Shea opened her mouth. To do what, she still did not know. Maybe she would have screamed. She never got the chance, because Fuamnach said, “Silence. Do not move.”

Her voice glittered with the familiar, horrible magic of faerie compulsion. The command snagged like a hook in Shea’s mind—and she hurried to obey. Her jaw snapped shut. She could not think of a single thing she’d rather do, or why it’d ever occurred to her to do anything but remain perfectly still and silent.

“I lay you under a bond of heavy enchantment. You will not speak of this encounter to anyone.” As she spoke, the spell traveledthrough Shea, wrapping itself in chains around her heart. “You will not betray my true identity, until the day you draw your last breath.”

Shea’s thoughts fizzled and plodded, as though she’d just woken from the thick haze of sleep. She hadn’t fallen asleep, had she? No, she remembered the command—remembered, distantly, her body acting of its own accord. Horror accompanied the terrible realization of what Fuamnach had demanded of her. She rested a hand over her collarbone. Humming beneath her skin was that cold knot of faerie magic.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” Shea gritted out.

“I’d hoped to convince you to surrender, since threats are lost on you.” Her voice held some degree of amusement. “There is no hope for you to defeat Midir. Even if you make it to the final round, nothing but ruin awaits you.”

“So you know about his eye.”

“Of course I do.” Fuamnach’s lip curled. “That eye is responsible for all of our misfortunes.”