Chapter Nine Taissa #3
For a moment, she nearly sees Sansa again. Her little wyvern. She almost feels the warmth of her, curled up with her in the stables, breathing in the smell of leather and sky and home.
“…Taissa?”
A faint whisper, there and then gone. An echo of what they’d once shared, a figment of her devastated mind. Instead, in her head, there’s a gruff, harsh voice. On her shoulder, the firm (but surprisingly somewhat gentle) bump of a beak.
“Pull yourself together, you dramatic hatchling,” Cronus snaps. “They’re watching us.”
Right. No good to have a meltdown on the pitch: best to save it for later.
Taking a deep breath and smearing away the tears that have somehow wet her face, Taissa turns back to the others and their stymphs, arranging her face into a more suitable scowl as she stalks toward them.
Kion’s eyes meet hers, and she dares him to say something about her breakdown, or how she’s limping from the drills and also attacking a solid tower of wood, but his lips only tighten as he looks away.
Something similar seems to be happening with Cronus, who’s meeting his children’s stares with his glittering red eyes, a threat swirling in their depths. Laugh, I dare you, he seems to snap. See what’ll happen next.
“Well,” Isla says with a sigh to Taissa, leaning against Jemmy, “now you know how we feel…”
Next to her, Bronte’s dark hand twitches, like she wants to put her arm around the other girl but thinks better of it at the last moment.
Taissa closes her aching eyes.
There’s no way they’ll ever win next Monday’s match. Not like this. She’ll go right back to Scran Mart and pork scratchings.
“When we lose to the Cockatrices,” she says, very hoarsely, “what happens?”
“Lovely question, thank you. It’s really quite simple. Bill will scrap the entire team and start over again somewhere else,” James icily informs her, like he hadn’t been just as bumbling (or more, really) out on the field. “We lose our contracts, our jobs. To put it succinctly: We lose everything.”
“Oh, dear. I can’t imagine what that feels like,” Taissa fires back before she can stop herself, pinning a murderous look on Kion, who returns it in full.
“We should play another game,” óríon suggests, even though he still looks slightly dazed despite the Panacea inked on his cheekbone. “We must try again. Harder, this time.”
“Come off it,” snorts Knox. “You look like you’re right about to keel over. We’ll play—maybe you should sit out.”
óríon skewers him with a glare so piercing that Taissa is surprised that Knox doesn’t tip over dead.
“Maybe we should all take a deep breath?” Isla says hesitantly.
“NO,” óríon, Knox, Taissa, and Kion all retort at the same time. Pink rushes up Isla’s face.
“Oi,” snaps Bronte, arms folded. The golden cuffs in her long locks sparkle under the sun as she lifts her chin. “Don’t you dare shout at her.”
Isla grows even pinker. Bronte, however, seems to be avoiding her eyes.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Knox snaps. It seems like he’ll bicker with anybody who’s even half willing, turning his attention from óríon to Bronte. “I have free will—”
Mahina’s hands dart through the air, cutting Knox off.
“Isla is right,” Adriel translates. His curls stick to his sweaty forehead.
“We shouldn’t play again. It won’t do any good when we’re like this.
” Mahina’s face, expressive and lively, takes on a wry look as she gestures to Taissa and then to óríon (who seems to be trying very hard not to sway on his feet).
“What do you think, Captain? In my humble opinion, there’s only one right answer here. ”
Kion’s eyes are very, very dark as he looks at his team. Taissa can practically hear the gears turning in his dense head.
“I disagree. I think we should run it,” Adriel suggests with a shrug. This time, his words are his own. “It’s, like, kinda obvious that we need the practice…”
Although she’s bone-tired, Taissa agrees. Any chance to redeem herself is welcome.
And even if she’s suddenly shite, she’ll take any chance to play.
“Just one more,” she tells Kion. “Come on.”
“No. Mahina is right. We need to rest.” That’s James, pushing up his glasses, sniffing haughtily. “Especially you. You were unbelievably sloppy.”
Taissa curls her fist. “And you were so perfect, then?”
“Listen to your girlfriend, Captain,” Knox chimes in, and James stiffens. There is no mistaking the jealousy in his face as he glares at her. Taissa sneers right back and pretends there’s not a dark, shadowy feeling of ominous foreboding swirling between the two of them.
“Oh, no,” James snaps. “That would be a clear marker of favoritism.”
Glowering, Taissa fights the urge to stick out her tongue at him. She is a mature adult. (Or, at least, for now.)
“We’re running it again,” Kion says after a long moment, sounding as exhausted as everyone looks. As Mahina rolls her eyes and the reserve players groan, he scowls. “With a compromise. First team to steal one jewel.”
“I don’t want to do it again,” Cronus mutters bitterly, poking her in the back with his beak (and not very gently this time). “This game is stupid. I thought there would be much more filicide involved.”
Taissa hesitates. Part of her wants to tell him that they’re going out on that pitch together, like it or not.
But the other, larger part of her is remembering Cronus’s rage swirling inside of her, a perfect storm brewed by Markus’s cruelty: the fury covering a much more vulnerable fear and devastation.
As the other players take to the skies for the second time, Taissa feels Kion’s eyes on her.
“Cho!”