Ilyas

Jem furrowed his brow. “Do you… do you want to… play with me?”

The words sounded like he spoke a foreign language, which he technically was, but he usually spoke with more assurance. The words twisted in his mouth, like he had never asked that question before.

I shrugged. “There’s nothing better to do.”

He tilted his head, still confused, but started to remove pieces from the board. “Have you ever played before?”

“You can play it, so it must be easy.”

He pursed his lips again. “The goal of the game is to capture as much territory as possible, and, by the end of the game, have the most pieces remaining.”

“See? Easy.”

“You try to surround the other pieces—”

“I said, easy.” The game didn’t matter, only the distraction it provided from my real objective. I set a white piece down.

“But you need to know—”

“Play.”

Jem watched me, his blue eyes considering. Then he shrugged and picked up a black piece and snapped it down with a satisfying click.

I picked up my next piece. Jem had held his between his forefinger and middle finger, before snapping it into place. It couldn’t be that hard.

I tried the motion. The stone slipped between my fingers and clattered onto the board. I felt Jem’s eyes on me, my cheeks heating, but the piece was close to an intersection. I straightened, pretending I’d meant to do that. “Your move.”

He started to protest, but I said, “So who is this Prince Hemi anyway?”

He glanced up at me, then snapped his piece into place, near his first piece. “He is the prince regent of Lumi.”

“So why haven’t I seen him? Doesn’t he wish to lord it over me?”

Quietly, he said, “Prince Hemi is not like that.”

“Oh, too timid? Is he scared to see what a real prince looks like?”

We continued to play, but my attention was more on Jem’s answers than the game. Jem said, “The prince knows you’re here, and that is enough for him. He has important affairs of state to attend to.”

“Hmm, if you like.” I shrugged, placing my piece down. “So how did he become prince regent? Why not king?”

“He is not the heir.” He only had eyes for the game. “His duty is to protect the prince heir.”

“So cloister the brat away until he tragically meets his end just before he gains his majority.”

The snap of his piece was far louder that time. “Prince Haori will make a wonderful king.”

“Hoary?” I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “As in a hoary winter’s night?”

“It means something different in Lumian.”

“What else could it possibly mean? All you have is snow and frost. I bet your language is only five hundred words, and half of them refer to snow.”

He paused after his next move. “It’s more than five hundred words.”

“Ha, but I’m right that — hey, what are you doing?” I slapped his hands, which had started to remove my pieces.

“I’ve surrounded you.” He indicated a wall of black around my patch of white. It looked damningly close to a snow field. “Thus I’ve captured your pieces.”

“How is that fair?”

“How else would there be a winner?” he countered. “War isn’t fair.”

I glowered at him. Fine, he wanted to play like that? I’d capture all his damn pieces, both the game ones and the real ones.

We played a furious game, as I pushed him faster and faster while asking him probing questions about whatever passed as a Lumian court to break his concentration. Half of strategic games was dominating the man.

Yet, more and more of the board turned black.

I didn’t even learn anything else useful. Nothing about what Prince Hemi was like, only Jem’s unnaturally fierce loyalty towards him and the prince heir as well as his naivety, if he thought the prince regent would actually allow his power to slip away. In Nuriya, whenever a regency had arisen, the heirs would have died long before the age this Haori had reached, which Jem had grudgingly informed me was thirteen.

Yet, the edges of my lips tugged upward. Every time I looked up, the light had moved to a new angle across the flagstone, yet I could have sworn only a few moments had passed. It was almost as if I enjoyed playing with Jem. Impossible. I just liked the strategic challenge of extracting information from him without him realising the advantage it gave me.

Jem had overrun the board with black. Empty circles remained from where my pieces had once been. Finding no other strategic moves, I placed a piece in the middle of the circle.

Jem shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

“Watch me.”

“I automatically capture it.”

“What — how—” I glanced around the board, looking for a patch of bare board where I could turn the tide. But Jem’s black pieces dominated the rest of the board. I shrugged, and started to get to my feet. “I’m bored, bored enough to even look at your ghastly landscape.”

A hand captured my wrist, hauling me down. “It’s your move,” Jem said.

“I don’t care. I’m bored.”

“You started a game,” he said. “You must finish it.”

“Later,” I lied, waving him off.

“Later doesn’t exist. You can’t leave things unfinished.”

I blinked at him. It was the most emotional I’d ever seen Jem, even when speaking about his precious prince. He practically growled at me, blue eyes glinting. “Of course, there’s a later. Well, not once you sell me off to the Sentei.”

I searched his face for a flash of confusion or remorse, whether Dajana had told me the truth or had lied or both.

Jem touched the back of his neck. “I mustn’t leave anything unfinished.”

“Then go ahead and weep, for I’m done — hey!”

Jem released me, and turned the board to play my side, snapping a stone near the edge of the grid. I’d already dismissed that spot as too vulnerable. Jem’s pieces cut off half the area, and in three moves, he’d capture it too. I snatched the piece back, but Jem just replaced it with another.

He muttered, “No wonder your people don’t care if you become king.”

I sucked in a breath, the only thing that kept me from tackling him. What did Jem know? Jem, who had just been a stupid, pretty slave handed over to me as the spoils of political battle.

A stupid, pretty slave that had abducted me from the palace.

I tossed the board aside, white and black pieces flying everywhere and clanging against the stone. Three white pieces flew into the hearth. The flames licked at their edges, bone white darkening to black. I smirked down at him, as his face paled further, as if that was possible. “How will you finish now?”