Chapter Four Taissa #5
“They’re not going to be half as good as me,” interrupts Taissa, angrily tapping her qyl against her knee.
“And you know it, old man.” Reserve players for the lowest ranking Minor League team?
They’ll be worse than the worst. She, on the other hand…
Well, she’s a joy and a talent, if she does say so herself. And she does.
“Cho,” Kion hisses out of the corner of his mouth.
Bill is sneering, but he holds up a pale hand. “Let me finish.”
Taissa’s eyes narrow.
“Any one of them could have taken your place, but for some reason, Kion sought you out—a disgraced retiree who hasn’t played in years. Why?” He gestures to Niamh, who’s typing away furiously, nodding along to his words. “Because he’s madly in love with you.”
“…madly…in…love,” repeats the elf, fingers flying across the screen. “Oo-la-la.”
“Oi,” Kion snaps darkly, refusing to look in her direction, “that isn’t the least bit true—”
She tries to ignore the small sting of hurt at the revulsion layering his tone. “It’s for the PR stunt, you numpty.”
“It will be put in her contract,” Bill rejoins calmly. “This ‘union’ needs to benefit this team for as long as possible. Financially and on the field. If it doesn’t, she’s out. You need to sell it well. You can’t even tell the others on the team that it’s fake.”
Taissa watches as Kion visibly blanches, then scowls. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I won’t hide shit from my own team, Bill.”
“Do I look like I am ‘fucking kidding’ you? No. You pull this on me without any warning? Fine, Locke. But that means you play by my rules.” He smiles in a way that reminds Taissa of a desperately hungry wolf who has been starving in a barren forest for far too long—and is finally locking eyes with trembling prey.
“And my rules are these: From now on, you two are in a romantic relationship. You are filled with joy at the sight of each other. You hold hands and swoon and do whatever it takes to convince the world—including this miserable excuse for a team—that you are head over heels in love. Think of this rule book as a holy text. Shirk it and you will be punished.” A pale finger points at Kion.
“You’ll lose your ‘secret weapon.’ ” The hand moves to Taissa. “And you’ll never, ever play again.”
“Bill,” seethes Kion—
“No,” the club owner snaps. “Enough. I won’t listen to any more of your angry yodeling.
” Bill stands, flicks an imaginary speck of dust off a shoulder, and strides for the door.
He glares at Taissa as he stalks past her.
“And for your information, I am not old. I’m a perfectly respectable sixty-two. ”
Niamh glances between Kion (who’s breathing heavily over the abandoned desk) and Taissa (who’s clenching her qyl so hard that the sharp metal feathers are very close to drawing blood).
“Bill has a meeting. I-I’ll give you two a moment.
” The Summertides elf hastens from the office, softly closing the door behind her.
For a long moment, neither speaks.
And then they both do. At the same time.
Angrily.
“You cannot ruin this for us,” Taissa hisses, just as Kion bites out, “I will not be kissing you.”
Silence falls again as, equally baffled, the two stare at each other.
Then—
“You don’t need to say it like that,” Taissa snaps, at the same time that Kion growls, “I’m not going to ‘ruin’ anything.”
Again, a silent stalemate. Taissa opens her mouth, but then clamps it shut as she sees Kion’s lips part, too. She glares. He glowers.
Impatiently, she gestures for him to go first. Rolling his eyes, Kion wracks a hand through his hair.
“The last thing I want to do is date you.”
“Good,” she grumps back. “We’re in complete agreement. You’re horrible.”
“And you’re a menace. But we’ve been backed into a fucking corner.”
“I told you, Locke. I told you to use the Unseen glyph.”
“Not until it was too late,” he bites back acerbically. He looks like he wants to punch the wall, but that might just be his resting face. “Fat lot of help that was.”
Well, she’s glad he didn’t think of doing an Unseen himself. Taissa needs money. Badly. She never wants to give another hour of her labor to Scran Mart ever again. This could work, in a painful and ironic sort of way.
“For the record,” Kion adds, “I’m not lying to my team about this. About us.” As Taissa opens her mouth to protest, he gives her a look sharp enough to cut steel. “At least not today. We figure out these shit specifics later, yeah?”
“If it means getting to delay pretending to be ‘filled with joy’ at the sight of you, I’m all for it,” Taissa retorts with faux sweetness.
Kion glares.
Taissa glares right back. Oh, she’s certain that Dodds and Niamh will forcibly squeeze PDA out of them sooner than later, but until they’re held at qylpoint—so to speak—she most certainly will not be holding Locke’s hand.
A moment later, a flicker of motion in the corner of her eye has her turning back toward the window. Outside on the pitch, silver-and-purple-clad riders have taken to the skies upon the massive, bronze-beaked, sharp-feathered stymphs.
Oh.
Taissa inhales sharply, drawing closer to the glass, pressing a hand against it. Only a thin panel separates her from that sport, her sport.
Tears rise to her eyes, and she hastily blinks them away as Kion comes to stand at her side.
“Right then,” he says and sighs. “Let’s go meet the team.”