Chapter Eleven Taissa #3
Right. The back of her uniform is still bare, absent of her old white-painted 18.
Taissa glances up, still trying to mask her hurt as Kion reaches into the pocket of his riding leathers and pulls out a white Pixie Paint-It Pen.
It’ll do in a pinch. Kion must have brought it specifically for her uniform.
“Eighteen isn’t taken by anyone on the team,” he offers after a moment.
“No,” she says, her voice lashing out like a whip before she can stop it. Kion’s blink is the only sign of his surprise. “I’m never wearing that number again.”
He regards her for a long, heavy moment. She swallows hard. That number is a reminder of everything she lost. It was the number she was wearing when she fell from grace hard enough to go splat.
“Your old Robber,” she finally says, her voice scraping against her throat. How it aches. “What was Samara’s playing number?”
Kion’s face is inscrutable, but there’s something in his eyes she can’t name as he looks at her. Too late, she realizes she’s hunching over herself, holding her waist. She straightens as he says, “02.”
02. It could work. Two’s a fine number. Mittens come in twos. So do riders and Wingeds. So do bunny baffies. And she’s back, playing after two years. It could be poetic.
“You know our numbers,” Kion says. “Mine is 11. Mahina’s 98; Adriel’s 99. 33 is Bronte. 07 is Knox, 67 is óríon, 29 is James, and 17 is Isla. What will yours be?”
“Two is fine,” she mutters as Kion uncaps the pen. Gritting her teeth, she turns back around, allowing Kion to brush the number onto her leathers in bold strokes. It dries immediately. Taissa jerks away from him as soon as he’s done.
“Cho—”
“Let’s just play, pookie,” Taissa mutters, stalking past him and clipping him with her shoulder as she steps back around the corner, where the team seems to be steadily pretending like they didn’t hear anything.
Taissa takes a seat on the worn bench in between Isla and Knox, who grins sheepishly at her.
She doesn’t smile back, hearing nothing but a roaring in her ears as Kion runs through their plays on the locker room’s whiteboard.
Her stomach is a nest of angry hornets and her palms are already beginning to sweat.
Even the Focus glyph can do little in the face of her swarming nerves.
By the time she’s finally managed to take a few deep breaths, Kion is in the middle of a tirade.
“—play, and we play our fucking hardest,” he’s snarling as óríon nods and James pins her with a threatening glower. “This is not going to be our last game. We go out there, and we rip them apart into—”
“—chicken meat!” hollers Knox, stamping his feet on the grimy linoleum floor.
“Chicken meat! Chicken meat!” Bronte echoes, joining into the bedlam.
óríon rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath that Taissa can’t quite make out, but does not sound pleasant.
Kion nods, and there’s a fire burning in his eyes that Taissa knows is only the first flames of a raging inferno. “Isla. I want to see you and Jemmy being aggressive on the defense. Fucking bloodthirsty, yeah?”
“Yes, Captain,” Isla replies, no hint of her usual bashful blush on her cheeks.
“óríon. Knox.”
Knox grimaces, obviously knowing what’s coming. óríon looks as cold and unruffled as ever.
Kion’s voice takes on a low, dangerous tone. “If the two of you put your ridiculous bloody spat over the game one more time, we lose everything. So keep your fat gobs shut and work as a team.”
“Já, fine,” óríon says with a sigh.
When Knox says nothing, Taissa digs her elbow into his ribs.
She won’t lose her first game back just because Knox and óríon argue like an old married couple who are too stubborn to admit they might in fact need a divorce.
Not for the first time, she wonders what the origin story of their raging feud is. It almost rivals hers and Kion’s.
“Yeah,” he wheezes. “Yeah, yeah. Friendship and flowers and all that nonsense.”
“Drullusokker,” mutters óríon quietly, looking heavenward.
“OI!” protests Knox, having apparently heard this particular phrase from óríon before. When Kion shoots him a glare, Knox smiles winningly. “Er, I mean, what a beautiful language Icelandic is.”
“James, mate.” The captain holds his friend’s eye, ignoring óríon’s unenthused grumbling. “Show your mother she’s wrong about carriwitchet. Show your father you’re not the weakling he thought you were.”
His father? Curiously, Taissa watches as a rough hunger overtakes Ridgeshaw’s face.
The team’s Bailer rolls his shoulders and pushes up his glasses, nodding sharply in agreement.
When Kion turns to her, Taissa’s stomach drops.
Well, then. So the humiliation clearly isn’t over.
She holds Kion’s stare, filling her own with open hostility.
“Cho.”
(Honestly. The way he always bites out her surname has her preferring the way he said sweetheart on the train. Ridiculous, truly.)
It’s like the rest of the team is holding their breath as Kion considers her. Taissa curls her hands into fists. “What, Locke?” she snarls.
Kion’s eyes glitter. “Show them just how fucking angry you are.”