LITMIR.BIZ

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daughter from her fate—but still it’s not enough. The cave is surrounded. There’s no way out. No way down the mountain, not for him. The final battle is coming, and he will not survive it. He knows that.

      He’s lured them here, knowing that.

      They will pursue him wherever he goes. He finally understands: There is no safe place for him and his daughter, not in this world. He fought; he lost. Letting them follow him here is his last, final, desperate effort to make them see the truth.

      If they see it—if he can make them see it—everything he’s given up will be worth it. Even his life.

      The child cries and cries.

      Declan can’t stand the sound of it.

      He turns his back to the cave opening, even though he knows never to turn your back on the enemy.

      He retreats into the dark, following the sound of his daughter’s cries, and lifts the squirming child into his arms.

      At his touch, she quiets. He kisses her forehead, makes soothing noises, inhales the scent of her soft red hair, wonders if she will remember him.

      If she will ever know how she came to be here on this lonely mountain, or why.

      If she will ever forgive him for what he’s done, and the things he has wrought.

      Aisling is still in his arms when they come for him.

      Two of them, their headlamps sweeping across the dank cave walls. He could hide in the shadows, for just a little longer, but there’s no point. He’s come here to face them.

      To try, one last time, to show them the truth.

      “We know you’re in here, Declan.” It’s a young woman’s voice—Molly, his niece, who he’s known since she was born. The La Tène Player. He knows exactly how deadly she is; he trained her himself. “Show yourself.”

      Declan does as he’s told, steps into the beam of light. Aisling squints and, recognizing Molly and the gray-haired man by her side, giggles and waves.

      “We don’t want to hurt you,” Declan’s father says, lifting a rifle to his shoulder. “Just give us the child.”

       The beginning:

      Sometimes, Declan thinks, it began the day his inbox pinged with the strange anonymous message. You’ve been lied to, it said, no more than that, and he felt only a mild twinge of curiosity before sending it to the trash. Thinking spammers got more inventive every day. Thinking he was too clever to believe anyone’s lies.

      Maybe it began the day his curiosity got the better of him, and he finally responded to one of the strange messages.

      Or the day he stood in dark woods, met the eyes of a cloaked stranger who told him everything he’d ever believed in was a lie. Don’t you ever want to know why you fight, what you fight for? the woman asked, before melting back into the shadows, and for the first time, Declan did.

      Maybe, he sometimes thinks, it began long before, on the day he first took his father’s rifle into his scrawny young arms, aimed at a paper target, pulled the trigger. “You will make a fine Player,” his father said, ruffling the fire-red hair that marked him as a Kopp. “You’ll make me proud.”

      But maybe it didn’t really begin until he was a father himself. Until he understood what it meant to love unconditionally, with his whole self, to know he would give his life for his daughter. Until the High Council decreed that his infant daughter would be the Player once she came of age. Then he knew the time for waiting, for questioning, was over.

      It was the time to act.

      He managed to keep it together until the end of the High Council’s meeting, knowing there was no point in arguing. He’s aware of what they think of him: that he’s bitter and washed up, that he was warped by his tenure as a Player, by the fact that Endgame never happened. Some of them—his father among them—think he’s mad. So he smiled and nodded as if he were happy they wanted to turn his daughter into their puppet, an agent of needless death.

      Then he hailed a taxi he couldn’t afford and held his breath as it sped down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, until the towers of Downtown Brooklyn came into sight and with them the dingy brownstone where his wife was waiting.

      Now here he is, standing before the door of his apartment, taking a deep breath and preparing to change their lives forever. Thinking, How did I get here?

      But he knows exactly how he got here.

      And he knows what has to happen next.

      Declan bursts into the apartment and finally lets his panic off the leash. “Pack everything!” he booms, into the tiny bedroom, where his money and passports are stashed, and his wife and little Aisling are sound asleep.

      “Declan?” Lorelei blinks groggily on the bed, baby napping on her chest. She sleeps whenever the baby sleeps, which is never enough for either of them. “Quiet, hon. You’ll wake her.”

      “We’ve got to go,” Declan says, in a quieter voice. He’s ripping through their tiny closet, throwing shirts and dresses haphazardly into a suitcase. “Now.”

      “Go? Go where? It’s nearly midnight.” Gently, Lorelei settles Aisling into her crib. She goes to her husband, stands behind him, and wraps her arms around his waist, lets him feel her slow, steady breathing, the rhythm of her heartbeat. “Take a breath, Declan.”

      Declan breathes.

      “Now, tell me what happened.”

      Declan turns to face Lorelei, the love of his life, the outsider who, for love of him, adopted his traditions and his people as her own. She did it because he asked her to—and now, because of that, because of him, their daughter is in danger.

      This is all his fault, he thinks, panic blooming again.

      “Declan.” She can always tell when he’s spinning out of control.

      She’s always been the only one who can stop him.

      She fixes her gaze on him, and, for just a moment, he lets himself get lost in her sea-gray eyes.

      “It’s going to be okay,” she says, in soft, measured tones.

      He knows he’s no longer the man she fell in love with, the man she married.

      That man was full of righteous conviction, strong and proud; that man had been raised to believe he could save the world.

      “Whatever it is this time, we can handle it,” she says, pressing a smooth palm to his stubbled cheek.

      She married that Declan—and got saddled with this one instead, till death do they part. Erratic, paranoid, afraid of shadows, consumed by guilt. Shamed. Obsessed. Broken.

      “Now, tell me what happened,” she says, once his breathing finally draws even with hers and his panic temporarily abates.

      When he met her, he thought Lorelei was the miracle of his life.

      Now he knows that the true miracle is that she still loves him, even now. But that might change when he answers her question. When she understands what loving him means for Aisling.

      “The High Council has named the next generation’s Player,” Declan says. He takes his wife’s hand in his own, holds tight. “They’ve named our Aisling.”

      She doesn’t gasp.

      She doesn’t scream.

      She doesn’t yank her hand away and castigate him for drawing her into his nightmare.

      She only nods and says, “Okay. So what does that mean?”

      “What does it mean?” He’s raging again. He needs to make her understand. “It means we have to get out of here, now. Disappear—go somewhere they can never find us.”

      “Isn’t

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