Splitting Our Odds Into Evens

The Hardest Part

THE NEXT DAY...

Klaus moved his bishop across the board.

Kol stared at it, then at him.

"You've been staring at the board for ten minutes and that's what you've come up with?"

Klaus leaned back in his chair. "Perhaps if you spent less time criticizing my strategy, you'd notice you're losing."

"I'm not losing."

"You're down a rook."

"I sacrificed a rook."

"For what?"

Kol looked at the board again. He had, in fact, accomplished absolutely nothing with the sacrifice. "That's irrelevant."

Klaus smiled into his glass.

Across the room, Bonnie turned another page of her grimoire.

She'd been listening to them argue for the better part of twenty minutes while trying to make sense of the final pieces of the spell. Surprisingly, it helped. Klaus and Kol insulting each other over chess was considerably easier to work through than another room full of people discussing whether Kol might accidentally kill someone.

Yesterday had been enough of that.

Bonnie drew a line beneath the last sentence she'd written.

There.

"I think I'm ready."

Both brothers looked over.

Kol's amusement disappeared first. "You found it?"

"I found what I need to do."

Bonnie carried the grimoire over and set it on the table beside the chessboard. Klaus immediately looked down at the page as though any of it would mean something to him.

"This isn't another reversal," she explained. "I'm not changing what you are or trying to redo Esther's spell. I'm just correcting the imbalance we left behind."

Klaus's expression hardened. "And you're certain that's all?"

Bonnie looked at him. "As certain as I can be until I actually do it."

"Comforting."

Kol reached for his drink. "Nik, if you're going to hover, at least try doing it quietly."

Klaus ignored him. "The last spell nearly killed you both."

"And this isn't the last spell," Bonnie said. "We're not fighting Nature this time. We're not bringing him back from anything. There won't be spirits trying to stop us. The hard part already happened."

Klaus still didn't look convinced.

Bonnie understood why.

For days, he'd watched Kol deteriorate as a human, nearly die, survive the ritual, and then come back unable to control himself. Klaus had barely been able to do anything through most of it besides stand there and wait for someone else to tell him whether his brother would live.

She imagined he was getting tired of that.

Kol seemed to understand it too.

He set his glass down. "I'm doing it."

Klaus finally looked at him.

Kol shrugged. "Unless you'd prefer I continue hearing someone cut their finger three streets away."

"I'd prefer you stop nearly dying every other day."

"Then we're remarkably in agreement."

Bonnie fought a smile.