Chapter Twenty Taissa #3
óríon scowls at Knox, who sneers right back. Taissa is beginning to wonder if they are, possibly, secretly, best mates.
Locke, who’s been broodingly silent until now, speaks in a low tone.
“The team curse can’t hurt us if there’s no sport to play.
Magis Elder is handling that. For us, one thing at a time, Tanaka.
The illness first. There’s no harm in looking into it.
” His eyes flick to her, and she wonders if he sees it.
Taissa has never been able to stand still.
Her hands need to be busy, and her mind, too.
Estee’s right: She’s a hummingbird. Busying herself every moment of the day.
(It helps keep the grief away, you see. No time to curl up in a ball and cry if one is violently gardening or, say, investigating a mysterious illness! Genius, is it not?)
She has an aversion to free time. And with recent events, she has far too much of it. Best to start focusing on something.
Kion’s leg nudges hers. Almost like he’s trying to comfort her, but that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it? She can’t stop a flood of images rushing into her head, the way they’d kissed only this morning, crashing against each other like planets in orbit, devouring each other body and soul.
The memory sends a jolt through her, and startled, the jar lurches out of Taissa’s hands (oh, she really shouldn’t have been fiddling with it) and into the air.
It almost happens in slow motion, it does, the way the jar flies toward the fireplace like a meteor hurling for Earth.
Unstoppable. Bronte lunges for it, but her fingers only graze the jar’s side, sending it spiraling even faster toward its flaming doom.
Glass shatters in the fireplace as the jar meets its fate.
What happens next is something that Taissa will never fully comprehend.
Kion bellows out in warning as the powder, heated by the flames, explodes in a shower of black.
She barely knows what’s happening as Kion, his arms closing around her, tackles her off the sofa.
Taissa hits the carpet with a thud, his body weight heavy atop her.
She’s vaguely aware of Knox having done the same to Bronte, who was closest to the fire.
The world has turned dark, as if the night sky has collapsed around them. Taissa, eyes squinting and watering from the smoke (oh, her contact lenses feel right about to dissolve), chances a peek upward through the darkness.
A looming stallion of shadow stands before the fireplace, its mane wisps of smoke. A hoof stomps once, then twice, on the sooty rug before it flickers and vanishes altogether, leaving nothing behind but an ashy trail like a candle snuffed.
Well. That was dramatic.
She coughs out soot as the room begins to clear—óríon has leapt to his feet and is opening the sitting room’s windows—and attempts to wriggle out from beneath Kion’s body.
“Locke,” she rasps, “Locke, will you please move?”
It was suspiciously noble of him to shield her with his body, but as she is slowly crushed underneath his weight, Taissa suspects ulterior motives.
He doesn’t answer.
Oh, Morgana, is he dead?
Frantic now, she scrabbles out from underneath him and leans over his prone body, shaking his shoulders.
Why are his eyes so glassy? But he’s breathing.
He’s breathing…quickly. Too quickly. “Locke?” Her voice rises in pitch.
Knox and Bronte, wheezing, crawl over to her.
“Locke, are you hurt?” Even as she asks, she’s whipping out her qyl, and trying desperately to figure out where he’s injured so she can draw a Panacea.
It’s like he can’t hear her. Like he’s spaced out, but worse. Taissa, on the verge of utter panic, is about to drag off his shirt to scan for wounds when óríon’s cold hand closes around hers.
“Nei,” he says quietly. “You cannot help him. It is not his body that is injured.”
Bronte and Knox exchange bewildered looks.
óríon shoots them a glare, his white hair covered in the dust. (Not for the first time, Taissa thanks Morgana that none of them nullified their Decontagion glyphs.) “Out,” he snaps, hands gesturing sharply.
Knox looks mortally offended for a brief moment, but then Bronte is tugging him away, her face drawn. “You stay,” óríon says to Taissa.
She can feel how wide her eyes are.
She thought she knew everything about Kion Locke.
But this? This goes well beyond knowing that Rules is his favorite club and that his taste in women ranges from leggy and blonde to blonde and leggy.
Something sinks in her stomach as Kion jerks up, shaking her off him, breathing hard with those glassy eyes as he stands, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Little by little, his gaze becomes clearer.
His tremors stop. And he glares at Taissa with all the hatred in the world as she unsteadily rises to her feet.
“Locke…?” she asks timidly.
Speaking was a mistake. His burning glower cuts from her to óríon, then back again.
(Is that humiliation staining his neck red?
Or is it anger?) She can’t think of what to say.
“Are you okay?” Taissa whispers. Hesitantly, she reaches out to take his hand like he took hers outside the stables. “Let me help you.”
And all of a sudden, it’s like she’s back at her debut gala, walking up to him with all the hope in her heart only for him to yank it out of her chest and crush it underfoot.
He snatches his hand away from her touch and looks at her like she’s the most repulsive creature he’s ever seen.
Maybe she is. Kion’s lips pull back from his teeth, like he’s some sort of feral animal.
She swallows hard. He’s clearly unwell. She refuses to take this personally (although her stupid little heart is sorely tempted). “Locke…”
Breathing harshly, he backs away from her, his mouth working as if it’s loaded with volatile words and it’s only with great effort that he’s restraining himself.
Neither she nor óríon move as their captain suddenly spins on his heel and stalks away.
A moment later, the door of the cottage slams so hard that her entire house quakes.
The sparkling dust settles around her and óríon’s shoulders as they stare at each other for a good long while. His are like chips of ice.
“You cannot hold this against him,” he says after a long moment. “It is not his fault.”
“I don’t,” she replies, and isn’t that the truth? A wounded animal lashes out. Kion is…wounded.
Not all injuries are perceptible. Some are as invisible as a speckled fish hiding between the river’s rocks.
And some can be made invisible.
Slowly, she remembers the Glamour glyph she’d tried to touch on his chest this morning and blinks back a sudden prickling in her eyes. óríon is staring out the window, although Kion is nowhere in sight.
“This, he tries to keep hidden,” he says, almost to himself. “But it is not easy. He will think he has failed.” óríon shakes his head. The sparkling powder falls from his hair like dark snow. “He will come back. And when he does, his head will be as high as ever.”