Page 83 of Immortal Game

His expression shuttered. “That is too high a price. Name something else.”

“I want a fair game between us.”

His visible eye bored into hers with a predatory gleam. “If that is what you want, I will give you a game here and now. But you may ask nothing more of me, even if you win.”

“Fury,” Daniil said warningly.

Emotion welled painfully close to the surface. It wouldn’t be enough to beat him. She had to fix the things she’d broken. “No. Let us stay in the Otherworld until the tournament ends. That’s what I want.”

“Then come with me.”

He turned on his heel. His cloak billowed behind him. And in its wake, the mist eddied and rose, like smoke rising from a fire, until her vision was consumed with gray. Shea and Daniil followed him, heading into the Otherworld once more.

Escorted by the lord of the realm, the journey through the Féth Fíada was kinder. They walked for only a minute before the fog lifted, unveiling the familiar vista of Bri Leith. The mirror-smooth lake dotted with swans. The milk-white cattle in their pastures. The hill they’d been standing on only moments before was now a distant smudge of lavender beyond the mist and the castle walls.

Midir brought them to the tournament hall. Inside, there were somehow even more spectators than had been at the semifinal round. They gathered in the risers and opera boxes. They stood behind cordons, craning their necks to get a glimpse of the board. Ciara and Fuamnach sat perfectly still in the midst of it all, like two pawns clashing at the center of the board.

Ciara.

For the past thirty-six hours, Shea had been animated by a simple plan, a single purpose:Get back to the Otherworld.Somehow, she’d managed to not think about Ciara at all. She hadn’t even considered that seeing her again would be an issue.Why would it be? She’d already endured the worst of Ciara’s betrayal. She’d mourned what they could’ve been already. Shea understood now that she should’ve shored up her defenses.

Ciara’s fingers were steepled at her lips as she leaned over the board. Her curls had gone limp, as if they’d been deflated by exertion. Even so, she was devastatingly beautiful. A physical pain exploded at the center of Shea’s chest. She felt like a king in check: stripped bare, devastated, cornered. Shea didn’t know what was worse. That she was still furious with Ciara, or that she still loved her.

Midir approached the board, his chin lifted imperiously. Little by little, the audience stood in recognition. A soft murmuring disturbed the tense silence of the hall. The players did not even glance in his direction, if they noticed his presence at all.

“This game,” he said, “is adjourned.”

At this, Fuamnach and Ciara did glance up. Both of them appeared dazed and irritated, as though he’d roused them from a dead sleep.

The arbiter—a fae in a crisp black tunic—made himself known with the clearing of his throat. “Your Majesty, shall I seal the next move?”

“There is no need,” Midir replied. “It would be more accurate to say that this game is over. Lily is disqualified.”

Shea could hear a horrified and bemused “disqualified?” rippling through the crowd. Fuamnach’s eyes burned with thwarted rage. She stood abruptly, her hands balled into bloodless fists at her sides. “On what grounds?”

Daniil laughed humorlessly. No doubt he was biting back asmart reply, but now was hardly the time. Shea drove an elbow into his side, which earned her a sharp glare.

“I do not know how you slipped beneath my notice this long,” Midir said. “You should have been turned away at the gates. You should have been dead twice over, Fuamnach, foster daughter of the sorcerer Bressel Etarlam.”

Fuamnach’s lips parted with surprise. Then, her face settled into cool impassivity. “But I was not, and I am not. It’s my right to challenge you.”

“You have not earned the right.”

Ciara’s gaze bounced back and forth between them. Her shoulders bunched with tension, but her voice was droll when she asked, “Are we going to finish the game after all?”

Neither of them paid her any mind. She huffed a little sigh and rested her chin heavily in her palms.

Fuamnach clearly sensed the noose tightening around her throat. Slowly, her attention drifted somewhere above them all—to the opera box where Midir watched the tournament. Shea followed her gaze up to Aideen.

Aideen.If the sight of Ciara was a blow, this was a knife to the heart. After all this time, they were finally in the same room. The rush of mingled terror and elation nearly bowled Shea over.

Aideen stood with one hand clamped to her mouth, the other curled around the balcony’s railing. Her face was drawn with horror, but she wasn’t looking at Fuamnach. She was looking right at Shea.

“One way or another,” Fuamnach said lowly, “I will keep the oath I gave you, Midir. Wheresoever she might be, in whatsoever shape she takes, I will do nothing but harm to Aideen Echraide so long as she lives.”

As she spoke, shadows danced around her and the smell of sorcery suffused the air. Little by little, her face changed. Her eyes turned a bright, wolfish yellow. The scars crept across her face like the bloom of frost over a windowpane. The sudden reappearance of Fuamnach’s otherworldly beauty nearly blinded Shea. She pulled the rowan switch from the pocket of her cardigan.

With cold, brutal authority, Midir said, “Seize the sorceress.”