Chapter Twenty-One Kion
Chapter Twenty-One
Kion
Never, in his thirty years, has Kion Locke been so fucking embarrassed.
Not when Complete Carriwitchet had run a hideous caricature of his face for an entire week. Not even when he’d been caught with his trousers down, literally, outside Chasca’s grand palace in the Summertides.
Sitting in the woods behind Taissa’s cottage, his back against the rough bark of a tree, Kion tries to ignore the Unseelie staring at him from the shadows.
The Wilderness Unseelie and Seelie are different from the fae inhabiting cities and towns; they’re wild, like their Ye Olden Days ancestors.
He could very well be killed by a nuckelavee or eaten by a hobyah with nobody any the wiser.
But he doesn’t care. At least it would put him out of his humiliation.
It was the fire. He’d thought it was flames exploding, not the strange dust and smoke. In his head, he’d been back at the Waywardly Home, watching Quaid burn in the blazes he’d been stupid enough to start and angry enough not to put out.
It’s not a nice thing, watching a body bubble with burns and blisters. Not even a body that had tormented Kion’s as much as Quaid’s had.
The fire happened his third summer back from the Witchery.
He’d just turned fourteen, and he was all skinny limbs and clumsy feet.
He’d only just started putting on weight from his long hours of school carriwitchet and scarfing hearty meals down in the dining hall.
After years of Quaid, Ralf, and Gerald stealing his portions of food, it was near to impossible for Kion to be anything but a twig.
He thought his summers would be different.
The boys wouldn’t be able to hurt him, because he had magic.
Merlin’s teeth, he was so fucking wrong.
The DMR forbade warlocks who lived in lacker city limits to use any glyph, even the most minor ones.
It was different for the kids in the UKHC, where magic was no rare thing, but he was in South London.
So when Quaid cornered him in the washroom with a Bible and a belt—both given to him by Father Jameson—Kion realized with a rush of terror that in fact nothing had changed.
Nothing at all.
The washroom was a dirty, cramped thing. There was nowhere for him to run, and only one place for him to hide: the yellowed tub, with the plasticky shower curtain pulled tight around him. But of course Quaid found him. He always did.
It wasn’t until the stained, damp bottom of the tub began to run pinkish-red that Kion snapped, rage bubbling up from a well deep inside him.
His vision ebbed as he screamed, catching the length of the belt in midair with one hand, and yanking his hidden qyl from his pocket with another.
Quaid’s eyes had gone wide, not with the usual sadistic pleasure, but with fear.
And seeing Quaid scared of him was empowering enough that Kion had let go of the belt with a snap and drew a glyph on the palm of his right hand.
A harsh circle. A swirling line, like a wavering fox tail.
The Fire glyph.
A Level Four. The only one he knows. Snuck and painstakingly memorized from the pages of an upper-level library book when he was bored. When his mind kept worrying about what might happen if he was cornered again.
If they called him a monster, he might as well become one.
Kion had smiled with bloody teeth as flame shot from his hand toward Quaid.
He hadn’t been thinking, not with his head.
He’d been thinking with his heart, which was shriveled and scared and bitter from years of this damned abuse.
His heart hadn’t thought about the consequences of the high-level Fire glyph.
It had only thought about the possibility of changing the Waywardly Home’s pecking order.
The washroom began to burn down. And so did Quaid.
And in his panic, Kion couldn’t remember any Extinguishing glyphs.
The fire brigade had come soon after that, and he’d had a hell of a time explaining how he stood unmarked in a room heavy with ash and smoke, a burned body lying at his feet.
Lionel Hawke, who had followed on the tails of the London firefighters and the DMR alerts of a Level Four glyph, might have had something to do with the lack of charges against him.
In the forest now, Kion blinks the memory away, shaking his head to clear it. If he had any choice in the matter, he’d forget all of this shit; everything that happened at the Waywardly Home. And then, maybe, he wouldn’t be so broken. They’d all seen him. Knox and Bronte and óríon and…and Taissa.
His hands tremble as he pulls out his phone from his pocket and punches the Call button next to James’s name. It rings once, then twice, but then James is picking up and Kion is closing his eyes in relief.
“Kion?” His friend sounds tired, drained. But at least he’s here. With how strained things have been between them lately, Kion wasn’t sure that James would pick up at all.
“James,” he rasps, and he can tell that his friend automatically knows. “They saw.”
A long silence. He can tell that James is measuring his words carefully. Kion wishes he’d just spit them out. He’s not that fragile.
“Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.” James’s tone is gentle. “You’ve always hated keeping that secret.”
It’s the one other lie Kion has ever told.
Although it’s not a lie, exactly, hiding this.
Nobody but James has ever asked. So Kion has never told the truth.
“Maybe,” he mutters, but he doesn’t mean it.
There’s an awkward pause that wouldn’t have been there before.
To break it, he says, “How’s it going with the magis? ”
“He’s wondering why five out of the nine members of the team have suddenly up and fled.” James sounds faintly amused, but there’s also a tinge of something else. Jealousy? “I would have come, too, had you asked.”
Kion grimaces, glad that James can’t see his face.
To be fair, he’d only asked óríon. Knox and Bronte had smuggled themselves over all on their own volition.
But saying all of this will just make him look like a prat.
“I know, mate.” He hesitates when that awkward silence comes again. “Has Elder found anything?”
“Ah, he was speaking to Markus Terven today.”
“The handler?” Kion stiffens. Has Markus hurt Taissa’s stymph again? He blinks past the rage. Cronus is a menace, yeah, but he’s Taissa’s menace. Fuck being short-staffed—the fact that Bill hasn’t sacked him, even with his and Taissa’s combined efforts, verges on cruel. “And?”
“And Elder had someone on speaker. A DMC agent, I believe. She was shouting at him.” He can hear James’s small, weary smile through the phone.
Kion wonders if it was Felicity Vance on the other end of the line.
“Elder caught him trying to kick the geriatric bird during feeding time. He nearly got his head taken off. Needless to say, he’s been let go; caught red-handed and all by a magis.
I’m not quite sure that he’s a suspect; just a nasty bastard, I suppose.
Although who knows?” James hesitates. “But there’s something else I feel you should know. ”
“What?”
“Ah…Someone was in Taissa’s room earlier.”
“Who?” Kion demands, immediately straightening.
“I’m rather afraid I don’t know. I saw the door shut when I was coming home from lunch.
I waited for some time, but they didn’t come back out.
I thought perhaps it was Magis Elder, but when I brought it up to him, he denied it.
And although he looked into the matter, as you know, that there are no security cameras in the residential area. ”
Kion recognizes this for what it is: James’s attempts to make amends where Taissa’s involved. He appreciates it, but unease still slithers down his spine like a snake. Who would have gone into Cho’s bedroom? And why? “You’re sure?”
“I’m quite certain.”
He drags a hand down his face, feeling the familiar prickles of stress stabbing his temples. “Fuck.” Is it the team’s curser? Is it possible that they’ve been in the Nexitory all along? Is that too far-fetched?
“He’s looking into it.” James sighs, and there’s a subtle shifting, like he’s getting dressed. “I have to go, I’m afraid. Are you…all right?”
“Yeah.” Kion’s hand falls back to the ground; he takes a deep breath of night air. “Yeah, mate. Thank you.”
“You’ll be back soon, won’t you?”
“Tomorrow,” promises Kion.
“Good.” James sounds relieved, adding: “Niamh is beside herself. Is it true that the two of you ran out onto the street in your underwear?”
“Good night, James,” Kion says pointedly, and his friend gives a little haggard laugh before ending the call. As a few curious pixies flutter around his head, Kion stares hard into the woodlands shadow. Somebody was in Cho’s room. Who? Why? Whatever the reason, it can’t be anything good.
With budget cuts, the Stymphs don’t have cleaners, so it wasn’t some friendly man or woman armed with nothing but a few feather dusters and some advanced Cleaning glyph.
It was also clearly someone able to get past Taissa’s lock; to his knowledge, she hadn’t put a Protection glyph on the side of her door.
So either someone with a key, the ability to pick locks, or a qyl with an Unlocking glyph.
Merlin.
One fucking thing after another, isn’t it?
The thought of somebody trying to hurt Taissa makes his blood roar in his ears. He looks toward her cottage as dusk falls, and as thunder booms somewhere in the distance. The storm is still coming. And with it, probably another fucking flashback.
Quaid and the other boys used to come after him during storms. When the thunder would mask his screams from the Sisters.
When it was dark enough that he couldn’t see them coming until they were right there.
When he could never tell when another crack of thunder was booming until it was shaking the walls of the orphanage; when he could never tell when another strike would land until it did.