Chapter Five Kion
Chapter Five
Kion
“I’d say it’s nice to meet you,” a windswept Bronte Rihowl says, dark arms folded as she leans against her brown-feathered stymph and eyes Taissa with cheerful dislike, “but I feel like we’re already well acquainted. Oi, remember when I broke your arm?”
Her looming Winged, Icarus, makes that terrifying clicking noise in the back of his throat, that noise that means he’s laughing. A few of the other stymphs, like óríon’s clever-eyed Valsa, join in, no doubt filled in on the exchange through the Bonding glyphs of their riders.
As coach and captain, Kion should probably say something like, Enough, knock it off, but he just doesn’t feel like it.
Instead, he feels like watching Taissa as her cheeks flush pink.
That’s always a precursor to her temper, which is just as notorious as his.
For once, he doesn’t blame her. That particular break had been bad.
Kion remembers it now, even after all the years between that moment and this one.
They were playing on Banallan’s Virtue Field.
Taissa was speeding along on her wyvern back toward her siege tower.
Bronte—dozing a path for Kion on the Wyverns’ side of the pitch—saw an opportunity and rammed into Taissa, hard enough to overwhelm the other girl’s Balance glyph.
Taissa fell through the air, caught only last-minute by her panicked Winged, landing on its hard, scaly back at a wrong fucking angle.
When he saw her fall, Kion shot down after her, convinced he was about to watch Cho shatter into a million different pieces, trying to reach her before she did. His hand was still outstretched desperately toward her when her wyvern caught her.
He still thinks about that game, sometimes.
How she was swarmed by medics, her face so pale and screwed up with pain.
How her little wyvern had cried for her, shielding her from the hungry cameras with her wings.
How Kion leapt off Cato as soon as the stymph was low enough to the ground, racing over to the scene with a pounding heart.
He was shooed away, but he hadn’t been able to fucking breathe until word came that she was okay.
And no, he doesn’t bloody know why his morose mind likes to dwell on that particular scene so often. Stop asking.
“Fond memory for you, Bronte?” Taissa snaps back now.
“Oh, yeah,” the other witch replies with a grin. Kion can tell that Bronte is only ribbing, but to those who don’t know her—like Taissa—it seems like she’s raring for a fight.
His other teammates stare at Taissa with gazes ranging from hard (óríon) to confused (Adriel) to shy (Mahina) to curious (Isla) to amused (Knox) and wary (James). The nine monotonous reserve players stand slightly back, watching the proceedings with some ambivalence.
They know how irrelevant they are.
Knox Tanaka has his head cocked; angular amber eyes crinkled in the corners.
“So you’re the other Robber?” he asks in that thick, Mancunian accent of his.
He’s like Kion. Neither of them grew up in the Hidden Cities, neither of them had known that they were even warlocks until the Witchery had come calling.
Neither of them fully fit in with the other players in this gate-kept, rich-person sport.
Neither of them ever will. “Our new Samara, then, yeah?”
Not even a shadow of nostalgia flits over Knox’s mischevious face at his mention of their old teammate.
Unlike the rest of the Stymphs, Samara had never found—or really tried to find—friendship in her teammates.
Respect, sure, but Heaton had been more preoccupied with her posh lawyer boyfriend than the Stymphs’ after-match parties or dinners out.
To each their own, Kion supposes, but he’d bloody well take Heaton’s casual indifference over Taissa’s sullied reputation and infamous temper.
That infamous temper begins to show itself now as Knox adds, “Thought you’d been banned from the NCL.”
“Not officially.” Kion notes that the scowling Taissa is fidgeting more than usual, shifting from foot to foot, tapping a hand on her thigh. She’s angry—and nervous. He fights a smirk.
Knox rocks back on his heels. “Not officially,” he repeats. “I like it.”
White-haired óríon rolls his icy blue eyes heavenward and mutters something in Icelandic, and then something in English, which sounds a bit like tosser.
Knox shoots the other Dozer a derisive grin.
The two have been at each other’s throats more than usual lately.
One reason why their offense has been so “shite,” as Taissa would put it.
“Did you say something, old man?” asks Knox.
óríon, who is thirty-two to Knox’s twenty-five, looks at Kion like he’s seeking permission to murder the lad. As subtly as he can, Kion mouths, Later.
The Icelander seems placated.
For now.
Out of all his teammates, óríon is the most mysterious. Kion knows only two things about his past: that he’s from the Hidden City of Vesturbaer, and that he was also at one point on the run from the Icelandic government. Probably he still is.
Isla clears her throat. Even after three years with the Stymphs as a Knocker, the small redhead is still painfully shy.
“Welcome,” she mumbles, blushing as Taissa turns her attention onto her.
That’s right, Kion remembers—Isla had been a massive Cho fan, although she’d finally taken down that ridiculous poster after the scandal.
He’d seen it stuffed, tearstained, into the recycling.
If he’s being honest, it hadn’t felt good to see that.
“Yes, ah, hello and welcome,” James—Kion’s best mate—says slowly.
Posh twat, thinks Kion affectionately. His light green eyes are sharp and wary behind his tortoiseshell frames, and his shoulders are tense, but he’s obviously making a decent effort to be pleasant.
James sticks out a deep umber hand toward Taissa.
“James Ridgeshaw the Fourth. Bailer. Pleased to…officially make your acquaintance. I’m not sure if you remember me. ”
“I do.” Taissa seems to relax minutely as she takes his hand. “I’m Taissa. Taissa Cho.”
“We know who you are,” Adriel says, now looking less confused and more annoyed.
He stands with Mahina, who’s listening carefully to the exchange.
Each word is quiet, layered in steel as Adriel looks accusatorily at Kion.
Many people assume that Adriel, with his soft brown curls, pink-tinged cheeks, and heavily lashed eyes, is gentle.
Kion has never made that mistake. Adriel is like a deadly sword sheathed in silk.
“But Kion didn’t tell us you were joining the team. ”
“Well, there’s a lot he didn’t tell me, either,” Taissa replies through her teeth.
Kion sighs inwardly. Right, yeah. Fair fucking point. But only because he’d had a hard enough time dragging her onto that train without her knowing that Coach Royd had scarpered. Kneeling, for Merlin’s sake.
Kneeling.
He’ll find a way to get back at her if it’s the last thing he does. There will be plenty of opportunities, after all, especially with this cock-up of a scheme.
Dating.
Taissa Cho.
Somewhere, up there, Merlin is laughing at him.
“In fact, Kion left out many things. Like,” Taissa continues, “the fact that he’s your coach.”
Kion grimaces as the reserves start muttering amongst themselves.
“Oi,” he snaps to them. “You lot can go.”
The nine other players give him scathing looks and finally fuck off, stomping away with their Stymphs—whom they’re not glyph-bonded to.
Reserves don’t have the privilege of bonding since they’re often shuffled between teams, and a good thing, too.
The poor Wingeds. These reserves are actually the worst fucking players he’s ever seen, but what would anyone expect from the team at the very bottom of the Minor League?
All the other reserve players the Stymphs once had have long since quit, taking fallback spots in other teams at the beginning of the last season. Bloody headache, that.
Mahina catches Kion’s eye. “Have you taken her to the stables yet?” his best Knocker signs, her small, light brown hands darting through the air like little birds. Adriel doesn’t need to translate for him. He learned BSL for her. Of course he had. It’s how she speaks.
“Not yet, no. I thought I’d introduce her to the team first,” he replies.
Mahina nods, but there’s a troubled look in her warm brown eyes. “You used to ride a wyvern,” she signs to Taissa, with Adriel now verbally translating for her. “I read once that you also rode hippogriffs. But have you ever ridden a stymph before?”
“No,” replies Taissa, glancing circumspectly at the beasts, “but I do imagine it’s different.”
Kion bites the inside of his cheek. “Different” is a massive understatement.
True, every Winged has its pros and cons—pros and cons that even out the playing field.
Riding a dragon, for example, doesn’t immediately ensure victory: While large and powerful, dragons are also prone to muscle cramps mid-game—sometimes leading to them being grounded—and require vigorous halftime rubdowns.
And riding a cockatrice doesn’t always ensure defeat—although they look bloody ridiculous, and have a hard time balancing their heads on their bodies, what cockatrices lack in dexterity, they make up for in sheer determination to please their riders.
But going from a wyvern to a stymphalian…
well, that’s a big bloody difference. His eyes meet Knox’s, who looks like he’s holding back a laugh.
Although to be fair, that’s nothing new.
Knox is always stifling ill-timed snorts.
Taissa will be used to the smooth, flat back of a wyvern, where saddles can easily be harnessed, and riders don’t have to fear getting cut by the knifelike underside of stymph feathers.
Wyverns are also, admittedly, more aerodynamic than stymphs, too, with less time required to reach full speed—even less time than dragons, whose four legs add extra weight in comparison to the wyverns’ two.