Chapter Twenty-One Kion #4
His throat works. Kion feels the words, the explanations, building up in his mouth, but he can’t get them out before Taissa is glaring at him with glittering eyes. “How about the time you told me you would ‘never waste a precious fucking minute’ on mentoring ‘a simpering muppet’ like me?”
It might be the rain lashing against her bedroom window, or the thunder booming above, but Kion’s mind shudders to a halt and draws an absolute blank. Taissa, scanning his face, laughs softly.
“You don’t even remember, do you?” she asks, and flops down onto the mattress like a limp fish, staring up at the ceiling. “You tore my heart right out of my chest, and you don’t even remember. Oh, Locke. You’re as predictable as ever.”
Kion wants to think she’s making it up. But those words sound exactly like him.
As in, an arsehole.
“It doesn’t matter,” says Taissa, still staring up at the ceiling. But something in her voice tells him that it does matter, very much. He’s struggling to find words, any words, when Taissa abruptly changes the subject. “That Glamour glyph. On your chest. It’s covering scars, isn’t it?”
Fucking hells. He’d rather talk about what a dick he is.
Her throat works. “It’s…it’s not because of that time Sansa and I plowed through you, and you fell through the siege tower, right? It’s not from the—the splinters?”
Kion stares at her. She looks so concerned and remorseful; her eyes are wide—fearful—and she’s fidgeting with a loose strand of the ratty blanket on the mattress.
Does she really think that the scars he’s hiding are her fault?
An uncomfortable feeling unravels in his stomach. Guilt. Hot and churning. Because her scar—her burn—is because of him.
“Locke?” Taissa prompts, looking uncertain.
That match had been brutal. He and Taissa’d had a huge brawl—breaking any and all carriwitchet rules—that accumulated into him being knocked off Cato and falling through the siege tower from a massive height.
Wood had erupted around him, and he’d set the world record for the number of splinters somebody could have.
Luckily Cato had been able to snatch him up by his beak as he’d tumbled out of the tower. Cho had been given two purple cards.
Panaceas wouldn’t work on the splinters. They’d had to be plucked out, individually, one by one before a Panacea could do anything without sealing the wooden shards inside the flesh. James had done it, ignoring Kion’s many threats to murder him as the tweezers had assaulted his skin.
But for some reason, Kion’s mouth is twitching again at the memory. Fuck. Is he depraved? Maybe.
“No, Cho,” he says, and lowers himself to lie down next to her. He doesn’t know why he’s amused instead of angry. Maybe because of how worried she looks. The Glamour covers things far worse than the few faint scars he has from that day. “Not everything’s about you.”
She exhales through her nose. Grumpily. “Well, who hurt you, then?”
Kion’s blood freezes in his veins.
Cho rolls onto her side, propping up her chin with a fist. Her gaze is level and serious. “Tell me. I need to know.”
“Why?” he rasps.
“Nobody gets to hurt you but me. Antagonizing you is a very special privilege reserved for yours truly.”
It’s eerily similar to what he’s thought to himself about her. Kion blinks. “It doesn’t matter.” His neck flushes.
The look she gives him is dead serious. Before she can ask again, he says, “Today. With Frasier. Do you want to tell me what that was all about?” And now he’s not speaking as Kion, but as Coach Locke.
It helps, being able to make that distinction.
Makes it easier to distance himself from the curly-haired girl next to him.
Taissa swallows hard. He can practically see the gears turning in her head. “Maybe I can now,” she mutters, almost to herself. “Because Sansa’s gone, anyway.” Her voice catches like the sleeve of a sweater snared on a hook.
His brows draw together in confusion. “What do you—”
Her brown eyes glisten like raw-cut cassiterite. “If I tell you, Locke, you can’t tell anyone else. And if I tell you, you owe me a secret, too. I want to know who hurt you.”
There’s something very ominous about her tone.
Kion’s lips thin. “You can’t just go and kill them, Cho.” Quaid is dead, but Ralf and Gerald are still very alive. Last he heard, Ralf was in prison for petty theft. Gerald fried haddock for a fish-and-chips spot.
“Why not?” She’s almost pouting. It’s adorable. Kion’s eyes go back to the hickey he left on her skin. “You’re mine to hate.”
His neck flushes as he pretends like something in his chest doesn’t tighten at those words.
Kion stares fixedly at the wooden rafters of her ceiling, weighing his options.
He wants—needs—to know what happened between Taissa and Colum Frasier.
There’s this gaping pit of dread inside him, telling him that he’s missed something crucial, that whatever truth she’s holding close to her chest changes everything.
But apart from James, he’s never told anybody shit about his crock of a childhood.
Fuck it. He remembers the soft sounds of Taissa’s sobs outside the stables and he needs to know what that prick did to her. Now.
And it’s not like he needs to tell her everything.
“Right,” he says, voice gruff. “It’s a deal.”