Chapter Three Kion
Chapter Three
Kion
Look.
It’s not that he’d thought it would be easy.
Taissa Cho has never once made anything easy for him. Not a single time.
But was it too much for a lad to hope that he wouldn’t be the victim of an assassination attempt at two o’clock in the afternoon after sitting in a cramped train car for hours on end?
Kion grits his teeth as he pounds his fist into the weathered green door of Taissa’s cottage.
“Cho!” he bellows. “Open the bloody door!”
Merlin’s balls. It’s been two fucking years since he’s seen her, two years since that match against the Banallan Wyverns.
Some seven-hundred-and-twenty days providing ample time for self-reflection, but she hasn’t changed a jot.
Stubborn, infuriating, deliberately rude and violent.
Not to mention her lingering predilection for illegal glyphs.
Where the hell did she learn a Pixie Pox glyph?
Those aren’t the sorts of glyphs that were taught in the Witcheries of the Hidden Cities.
Unless Scotland has a very different curriculum than England.
Kion knocks again, even harder. This cottage isn’t at all what he was expecting.
When he’d filched the address from a buggy website, he’d anticipated some swanky apartment complex.
Not a tiny, cobblestone cottage in the middle of Nowhere, Banallan, with a disgustingly picturesque little front drive and a vegetable patch. A vegetable patch.
When he’d seen her in it, tearing up weeds like they’d personally offended her, his heart had stopped in his chest. Her long, curly, dark brown hair, her freckled skin, the way her lip juts out when she’s mad.
He hadn’t thought he’d forgotten all those little details about her, but the sight of Taissa in the flesh had done something deeply disturbing to that organ nestled deep in his rib cage.
It was resentment, of course, making it beat harder.
“Cho!” he calls again, stepping back and running a hand through his hair.
His eyes catch on a glyph carved just to the side of the green door—a spiky glyph, one against trespassers.
Even were he to knock the door down, he won’t be able to get into the cottage.
He groans, leaning his forehead against the door.
Hells. Why is he even here? Who knows how long Taissa had been using Luck glyphs?
Who knows if she’s even a halfway decent player without them?
Nobody thought so, no team would have her after it all went down.
But this is his one last shot. He’s become a desperate man these past two years.
His team is somehow at the bottom—the bottom—of the NCL Minor League.
And a part of him still grudgingly believes that Taissa Cho was one of the best Robbers in NCL history. That’s why he’s come. For another chance. One last shot.
Kion takes a deep breath, reminding himself of that.
“Cho,” he says through the door, absolutely certain that she’s listening intently from the other side.
“Look. I’m…sorry about that whole Wyverns business.
” He forces the apology out through his teeth.
It is, even to him, probably the least sincere apology he’s ever heard in his life.
There’s something like a snort from inside the cottage.
He grinds his molars together. “I’m here because I have something to offer you.” Let him put it like that. The thought of telling Taissa Cho that he needs her makes him shudder.
Silence from behind the door. But he can imagine her tilting her head, narrowing those eyes.
His forehead, still against the door, aches from her collision. Just say it, thinks Kion. Just say it, right now, and see what happens. You’ve got nothing to lose. Not anymore.
Right. Fine.
“Look,” he says, “I want you to come and play for the Stymphs.”
A dead, dead silence meets his ears. Kion presses himself harder against the door. “Cho,” he snaps, growing impatient. “Did you hear me—”
A moment later, the door is swinging open, and Kion is tumbling inside, staggering into a small foyer that smells like thyme and honey.
He barely manages to catch himself as Taissa slams the door shut again and stares at him, her arms crossed, her lips thin.
He can tell that she’s shocked, shocked to her core, even though she’s pretending not to care.
She’s Taissa Cho, for fuck’s sake. He knows her like he knows that autumn is followed by winter.
Breathing hard, Kion stares down at her.
Other players used to underestimate Cho because of her, and that runt wyvern’s, small size.
Kion never had. It’d be stupid to. She’s like a lightning storm contained: all flashing eyes, all crackling electricity as she glowers right back up at him.
When time ticks by and she says nothing, Kion gives up.
“Will you just bloody say something?”
There, in her glare, is a spark of victory. He curses himself. He’s all but admitted that he needs her and has given her the upper hand. Kion suppresses a frustrated groan as her lips curl into an unpleasant smile.
“Would you,” she says in that warm Scottish brogue, “like a cup of tea?”
It’s a fucking stalemate, that’s what it is.
Kion sits at the kitchen’s wooden table, staring Taissa down over his mug of chamomile. She’s staring right back, slowly stirring a sugar cube into her own cup, an impenetrable wall of willful nonchalance. A small clock hanging above the fridge ticks the time past.
It has been seven minutes and twenty-four seconds.
Taissa seems inclined to keep the deeply uncomfortable silence going until one of them drops dead from old age. Clearly, she’s hoping it’s him. The way she’s frowning just confirms it.
His teammates always said that the only person grumpier than Kion was Taissa Cho. He’s starting to see how right they were.
“You remind me of a hedgehog,” he mutters, because she’s worn him down and he’s bloody exhausted and also deeply uncomfortable, and the silence shatters into millions of jagged pieces.
Taissa sets down her spoon. “Why,” she says, very slowly, “do I remind you of a hedgehog?”
“Prickly and small,” is all Kion snaps back, incredibly fucking furious that he broke the silence first. What happened to his resilience? Shredded to nothing by Cho and her fucking sugar-cube-stirring, that’s what.
Her brows pull together and she leans forward across the table, drumming her fingers on its wood. Something in her face tells him that it’s time.
“Locke…I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you’re really here.”
“I told you—”
“No. You’re up to something, Locke. You don’t want me to join the Stymphs. You can’t. Is this some sort of joke? Are there hidden cameras on you?” She begins to rise, like she intends to pat him down in search of any. Kion scoots back before he can stop himself.
“I’m not lying to you.”
“I just—”
Is her voice wavering? Kion grimaces. Okay, yeah.
So he can see that the fallout has been bad for her.
When he first came in, there had been a pile of bills on the table.
She’d hastily swept them away, but not quickly enough.
And there are dark circles underneath her eyes, plus the faint smell of… pork scratchings?
Only depressed people eat those things.
“I just,” Taissa says again, this time steadier, “don’t believe you.”
Kion eyes her for a long moment before pulling out his qyl from its holster.
“What are you doing?”
“Truth glyph,” he mutters, tracing the swirling symbol onto his forearm.
“Level One.” When it darkens to black, he looks back up at her.
Taissa’s eyes are wide. Nobody can lie underneath Truth.
Not even in its simplest form. He can feel his tongue loosening, magic binding him to absolute honesty.
If it were its Level Three version, he’d be spilling his secrets here and now, unable to control his oversharing.
Level One allows him more control. And he doesn’t exactly know many upper-level glyphs. Didn’t pay enough attention in class.
There’s only one Level Four he knows. And the memories of what it did still haunt him.
Technically, he’s not supposed to use any level of Truth in the absence of a magistrate official. Technically, what he’s doing is very illegal. But technically, he can pay a fine and be done with it all. He’ll call Lionel, have him pull some strings. “Ask again. Ask why I’m here.”
Her voice is scratchy. She’s staring at the glyph, a funny expression on her face. “Why…why are you here, Locke?”
“Because I need you to come and play for the Stymphs.”
Fuck. Kion grimaces, having said need instead of want. He’s revealed his desperation. He’s given Taissa the upper hand.
“That’s enough of that,” he grumbles, scribbling the Nullifying glyph over Truth. Its effects diminish, then disappear.
Her eyes are wide and shining. For a moment, she says nothing. Just stares at him, her breathing quickening. Uncomfortable, he shifts in his seat.
“Cho. For fuck’s sake, say something.”
Her lips part. Nothing comes out.
Merlin. Has she gone catatonic? He snaps his fingers in front of her face. Nothing.
“Cho.”
It’s like watching a computer reboot. Her expression rearranges itself from shock to cool amusement. Even her glittering eyes dim. Taissa leans forward, and Kion knows he’s in trouble.
“Okay. Why do you assume I’d want to come and play for your shite team, Locke?”
So she’s going to make this difficult. More difficult.
Kion pushes aside his chamomile and suppresses the urge to bash his head against the table.
“No NCL team will take you; you’re all but unofficially blacklisted from the league.
But you’re dying to play. Don’t think that I can’t tell.
” He smiles unpleasantly. “Gardening, Cho? Really? You’re itching to be in the skies, not on your knees in a patch of dirt. ”
Her eyes flash. “For your information, you absolute numpty, I happen to like gardening.”