Page 70 of Immortal Game

Admittedly, she was. “It’s been kind of a rough night.”

His voice had the air of an eye roll. “It’s not over yet. Come here.”

Reluctantly, Shea dragged herself to the board, where he was playing through some game by memory. His expression was less hostile than usual like this. If anything, he looked troubled, with the little frown notched between his brows. He’d lost his glasses, after all. He was probably straining his eyes.

Shea studied the position. It took her only a few seconds to realize it wasn’t so historical, after all. This was a game Ciara had played in Casablanca a few years ago, against Ibrohim Nabiyev, an Uzbek grandmaster. It was a devastatinggame—for Nabiyev, anyway. He’d been one move away from checkmate, but Ciara claimed it was a draw. She was right, in the end. Once fifty moves pass with no captures, the game’s over.

“How well do you know Ciara’s games?”

“Well.” Too well, really.

“Is that so?” he pressed. “I want to know her opening repertoire. I want to know what kinds of positions make her uncomfortable. I want to know what lines she’s lost against and what lines she hasn’t seen in three years.”

“Believe me, I know. Don’t you want to do your own prep?”

“It’s possible I’ll play Ciara eventually,” he said offhandedly. Shea tried not to feel insulted by his implicit vote of no confidence. “Lily is hardly worth worrying about.”

Shea longed to confide in him, yet she could feel Fuamnach’s magic cold around her heart and pinning down her tongue. “You think so?”

“It’s a fluke she’s here at all. She’s a fine player, but…”

“Not like us,” Shea supplied.

“No,” he said reluctantly. “Not like us.”

It shocked her—both his agreement and how much she appreciated it. Maybe she was getting soft, but Daniil had grown on her. She stood abruptly from her seat. “Hold on. I meant to give something to you.”

She went to her vanity. There wasn’t much on it, much less in it. But tucked away in the velvet-lined drawer was the necklace he’d dropped on the heath. The string of pearls lay cool against her palm, each of them alight with an iridescent sheen. She returned to the board and offered it to him.

He stared at it, his lips parted silently. Emotion shone in his eyes before he blinked it away. Very carefully, he took it from her. “Where did you get this?”

“You dropped it, sometime before I stopped you from walking into the bog. I was thinking about holding it for ransom, but, uh… I changed my mind.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line. Clearly, he was debating whether to say something acerbic or not. In the end, he did not, which was as good as a “thank you” in Shea’s book. He clasped the string of pearls around his neck, then tucked it safely inside his collar.

“It’s not really your style,” Shea said. “It was Irina’s, wasn’t it?”

“It was. The pearls were passed down to her from our great-grandmother. She fled Korea during the Japanese occupation. This is all that remains of the jewelry she managed to escape with.” He turned his faraway gaze back to Shea. “You’re right that they suited Irina more than me. She wore them almost every day, but she didn’t want to risk losing them to some faerie bargain in the Otherworld. It seemed like a waste to keep them locked away.”

She smiled faintly. “Wow. Who knew you had a sensitive side?”

He scowled, but there was a self-consciousness about him that was rather endearing. He rearranged the pieces into a new configuration, then gestured at the board between them. “Don’t distract me. What’s the best continuation of this line?”

“Seriously?”

“Black to play,” he said, uncompromising.

Shea studied the board. There was such a visceral, displeasingugliness to black’s position, she could hardly stand to look at it. With a curl of her lip, she said, “This is disgusting.”

“Exactly.” There was a touch of irritation in his voice. “There’s no hope of winning, unless you count on your opponent blundering. But you can salvage a draw here.”

“I don’t want to—”

“I don’t care what you want to do,” he snapped. “You fight to the end, no matter what. There is no other option.”

Her chest constricted. “It’s not that I’m unwilling. It’s that I can’t!”

It burst out of her, louder than she intended. Daniil, clearly baffled, leaned backward. “What do you mean you can’t?”