Chapter Twenty-Four Taissa
Chapter Twenty-Four
Taissa
She doesn’t notice him at first, not really. She’s too busy listening to Glinda, who’s busy thanking Taissa profusely for all of the “juicy little tidbits” that will be sure to delight Wily Witch’s “horny little readership.”
(Soaring Unicorn? What came over her?)
“And the photographs!” gushes Glinda, sliding her Pell-Mell Plume behind one of her delicate ears. “They came out beautifully! Oh, you two are so lucky—you’ll be able to look back on those years from now, and see how in love you were!”
Taissa grimaces (she is currently living in dread of those photographs—specifically, Estee seeing those photographs), and is about to reply when she catches sight of the pudgy man slinking into the pub with his hands in his pockets and a dour look on his face.
Immediately, a surge of anger uncoils in her chest. It’s the handler that used the Voltaic glyph on Cronus. Hackit Markus. Kion told her, on the train, that the arsehole had tried to kick her wee baby while she was gone.
To kick.
Her stymph.
To kick her grumpy, child-eating, stubborn, whiplash-inducing stymph who he’d abused for years, who he’d made barmy and hurt.
Magis Elder had apparently witnessed this attempted kicking, and it hadn’t gone over well—for Markus, at least. Yet Taissa is not satisfied.
As Glinda bustles out with the cheery promise that the story will run tomorrow, Taissa is already stalking out of her seat.
“Oi!” she roars as Markus takes a seat at the bar. “You!” She’s somewhat aware of Kion’s massive figure at her back, and the surly glare he must be cutting toward the man, as well. Markus turns, his beady little eyes wide.
Taissa slaps him across the face.
Hard.
Oh, she’s been aching to do this since he first targeted Cronus—and now, away from Dodds’s eyes, she has the chance.
And it feels very, very good.
Markus’s head snaps to the side with the impact, a bright-red hand mark on his pale skin.
Roger, behind the bar, stops polishing a glass.
But Taissa’s not done. As he reels, blinking blearily, Taissa grabs one of his hands and twists his fingers back until there’s the satisfying snapping of bone. “I told you if you ever went near him again, I’d break both your hands,” she hisses as he shrieks. “One down, one to go—”
As the ex-handler’s eyes fill with anger and pain, he lunges suddenly toward her—but then Kion shoves him back, stepping in front of Taissa. Cowed, Markus pales.
“That’s for my stymph,” Taissa bites out, breathing hard, anger swirling through her blood like fire. “That’s for everything you’ve done to him and gotten away with. Consider it an act of mercy I’m leaving you with your other hand intact. You’ll need it to draw a Panacea.”
“Fuck you lot!” Markus howls, cradling his broken fingers and looking at Roger for help.
The old bartender scowls but says nothing.
Glinda is scribbling away furiously on the other side of the pub’s smudged window, grinning wildly.
“Never liked you, anyway! Scum working conditions, those stupid birds.” A mean glint enters his eyes. “And who’s to say they’re not next?”
Kion’s back grows rigid; Taissa can see it. (Nice back muscles, she thinks, and then reddens.) “Yeah? And how would you know?” he demands.
“Call it a hunch,” says Markus nastily, sniffing through his nose just as Kion’s phone rings, shrilly, from his pocket.
“Come on,” he grumbles to her, casting Markus a spiteful look. “We have better things to do.”
They do. But still, on the way out of Tally Ho, Taissa sends Markus a crude gesture behind her back.
Leaning against Cronus out on the pitch, Taissa watches as Kion shakes his head in frustration, tapping away at his phone.
Overhead, a rare bit of warm sun shines in an eggshell-blue sky, a welcome change from the overcast days that have plagued the summer.
On their way back from Tally Ho, it seemed as though the entire population of Pinion-upon-Keat was creeping out into the sunlight—children buying ice lollies from the ice cream parlor, parents setting up collapsible chairs near the River Keat, and couples swimming in and out of the water (while dodging the greenteeths).
Even here, at the Nexitory, others have had the same idea.
Mahina soars lazily overhead on Kahoali, with Adriel not far behind on Ahava.
James and Mabb have just landed—the former looks a bit green, possibly due to the loop-de-loops his stymph was doing.
“Jacks isn’t answering,” Kion huffs, shoving his phone back into his pocket. “It’s impossible to get in bloody contact with him—”
“No doubt he’s doing something highly illegal,” sniffs James, dismounting Mabb and breathing hard. “Perhaps kidnapping the poor Wintertides princess again.”
“Maybe we can take the dust to some sort of laboratory,” Taissa suggests. “The nearest Witchery will have one.”
“The dust?” James questions, frowning. “What dust?”
As Kion wearily explains the bizarre substance found leaking out of Sansa’s nose, Taissa reaches up to scratch Cronus’s rather flabby neck. The stymphalian grumbles, but the burst of contentment that floods her chest contradicts his mutterings.
“You’re worried, hatchling,” says her Winged, and there’s the gentle tap of his giant beak on her head. “About the one that came before me.” His jealousy is a green, miserable thing. “The one who is sleeping. You left to go see her. I heard her call for you.”
Taissa’s eyes widen as she twists up to look at him. “You heard her?” How is that possible? Does the new Bonding glyph, drawn over the remnant of her old one, connect the three of them? Puzzled, she rubs at her sternum, where the tattooed glyphs warm.
Cronus’s nod is sharp. “I didn’t know if you were coming back. If you would decide to stay with…her. The wyvern.”
Her own guilt twists her stomach. With Cronus, she must be within a certain distance to talk to him—the same distance she would need to be in to talk to, say, Kion or James.
She couldn’t send word to him across that vast distance separating them when she left for Banallan.
The fact that Sansa, little Sansa, could call out to her is an anomaly.
A rare bond. But not one that means any more, or any less, than her new bond with Cronus.
She loves both equally; she knew she would from the moment she saw her angry, geriatric, cannibalistic bird.
And Taissa has enough room in her heart for the pair of them.
She loves, and she loves fiercely, without limits.
With time, she hopes, Cronus will know this.
“I’m sorry,” she says, smoothing down a few of his ruffling feathers, fingers grazing the bumpy pink skin underneath. “I didn’t know I’d be leaving until I did. I’ll always come back for you, Cronus. And for what it’s worth, you old grump, I worry about you, too.”
“Bah.” Cronus clucks his beak, but he sounds—and feels—reluctantly pleased. “I can take care of myself.”
“But you don’t need to. I’m here now. I broke Markus’s fingers,” she adds, watching as his red eyes gleam. “Also, I slapped him across the face. Hard.”
An emotion so strong, and so new for the stymph, flits down their bond.
Taissa’s throat grows tight as she feels his gratitude.
“Perhaps you’re not such a useless hatchling, after all,” Cronus mutters, and for a brief moment, he wraps one of his wings around her shoulders where she sits, careful not to cut her with its sharp underside.
She smiles, leaning into the bird’s embrace.
“You’re just a big softie.”
“Be quiet.” Cronus withdraws his wing and gives her a nasty look as James makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, drawing Taissa’s attention back to the two warlocks. Kion is still scowling, no doubt at the impossibility of contacting their lead—the MIA dullahan.
Pushing up his spectacles with a slender finger, James murmurs, “Dark dust…Something about this sounds rather familiar. The horse…”
“Do share,” says Taissa, rising to her feet as Cronus also stands, moving on taloned feet toward Cato, who gives his father a wary look.
The other player narrows his eyes. “It will come to me.”
“Tick, tock,” says Taissa, solely to annoy the posh beezer. Kion pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales.
Face souring, James shakes his head, his eyes clouding over.
“My father was a businessman,” he says slowly, and there’s a bitterness on the word father that gives her pause.
“A ruthless one, too. Takeovers, mass firings, that sort of thing. He was hated, truly hated, in the UKHC. At one point, his cruelty caught up to him, and he nearly went under. But he fought his way back up…impossibly, against all odds. My mother called it a—miracle. I’m not so sure.
” He rubs his forehead, as if trying to remember.
Mabb is watching him in concern. “He didn’t do it alone.
I remember…a golden-eyed man coming into the manor.
Low voices in my father’s office. And when he left, the foyer was covered in black, glittering dust. I think, Taissa, if you were to show me your sample, I would find it to be much the same as the substance I encountered all those years ago—although I never exposed it to flame. I never had a reason to.”
Overhead, the cheerful sun slips behind a blooming cloud. Taissa watches James, her breath held. She can taste it on the air: an answer. Brewing in James’s head, churning like the waves of a sea.
“My father regained his power, but he lost something in the process.” James’s mouth twists.
“I thought it mere coincidence—or irony—that only days after his empire was restored, he visited our summer home in the country…and was struck by an elf-shot. He developed the same illness I live with, the Fading Fever. Yet he was a proud warlock and would not, like me, use lacker medication to keep it at bay. He died.” James’s eyes are very green, glistening.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says quietly, a pang in her heart as she remembers her own father.