Chapter Thirty-One Kion #2
It’s Jacks’s favorite holiday, because of course it is. The dullahan has, in his words, “a scrumptiously merry time” riding his ghostly horse through the woods and terrifying all the “cute little woodland animals.”
“You can’t be saying that you want us to go to the Wild Hunt,” Taissa says slowly. She’s jittering her knee, her new trainers tapping on the floor.
“Yeah,” scoffs Knox, “because that would be…mad…” He falls silent as Vance looks calmly out at them. “Oh. Shit. No, come on…”
“Our researchers have discovered an old fable related to the púca and the Wild Hunt, from Ye Olden Days…and to curse reversal.” Vance ignores the Stymphs’ bewildered stares.
“During the Wild Hunt, púcas tend to take the form of a horse. If a Seelie rider manages to stay on the horse all throughout the Hunt and make it to the ‘finish line’ at the bottom of the mountain ahead of the rest of the Hunt, a boon of their choosing must be granted by the púca they rode—without a price. Call it a freebie, or whatever you’d like.
And reversals of existing curses are ostensibly fair game.
The evidence suggesting this is…limited…
but we’re pretty confident that there’s truth to it.
The púcas would hate to award a wish to the Seelie, which is why we think they have kept this legend as quiet as possible for so long. ”
“Hold on. How limited is your evidence?” Adriel demands.
Vance apparently chooses not to hear this.
“The DMC would send agents to the Hunt, of course, but none of us have the expertise in riding that you do. Since the curse only pertains to your performance throughout the game of carriwitchet, we believe that you might succeed in racing a púca throughout the Wild Hunt. Out of all the NCL teams, we’ve selected yours, since you have the misfortune of being affected by two curses.
You would, we think, fight the hardest to reverse them.
It’s likely that one of you would win the race.
Also, the NCL Dragons, Wyverns, Pherrexes, and Hippogriffs already wrote this off as a ‘load of bullshit,’ so… here we are. Anyway. What do you say?”
“One boon to reverse two curses?” Knox’s voice is quizzical. “Is that even possible?”
“With proper phrasing,” replies Elder. “Mind you, with very proper phrasing. Unseelie delight in twisting words—both our own, and others’. But yes, it is possible, should you be clever and clear enough in your request.”
“I can be clever,” says Knox.
óríon snorts.
Kion’s mind races. Even if the DMC’s evidence is “limited,” this is more hope than they’ve had this whole time. And last night, hadn’t Banes said: That all depends on whether you’re really as good as a rider as you seem.
She’d given them a hint. She had, in her own gang-leader way, been helping them.
On a train, Ballyford is a quick trip. In a week, this whole nightmare could be solved. Suddenly, he’s as jittery as Taissa. He feels the words bubbling up in his mouth: He wants to agree. Immediately.
But something is nagging at him, as he looks around the room, at the teammates he’s always felt a fierce urge to protect. That urge drives him—it shapes him in more ways than one. It’s what fuels him: as a captain, but as a friend.
It’s why he once discreetly hired an exorbitantly expensive bodyguard for óríon—a bloke who usually guarded Seelie princes and diplomats—during a strange summer where Icelandic warlocks were “coincidentally” popping up all over Pinion and sending the man murderous scowls.
They mysteriously disappeared a few days later, and Magnússon never knew that Kion had sent Lionel Hawke after him.
He doesn’t have to. Kion doesn’t do this to be thanked.
Only to keep his friends, his family, safe.
It’s why he bought a fucking forbidden mantle of invisibility from Alley Hollow for James after his mum learned about his clubbing habits and threatened to cut him off completely.
Merlin forbid that James have a bit of fun.
The mantle lets him slip in and out of Rules undetected by paps and good old Philomena Ridgeshaw, and it’s quickly become James’s most prized possession.
It’s why Kion hunted down the merrow that tricked Mahina out of her voice and punched it in the throat the moment she confided in him what had happened to her.
It’s why Kion lives, breathes, and fights for his team—his family.
And it’s why he now asks this question, needing to understand the full consequences, ready to grapple with what they might mean before he agrees to journeying to Ballyford.
“What happens if we fail?” Kion asks lowly.
“If we fall off the púca, and they realize who we are? What happens to us then?” Taissa stiffens next to him, as if considering this possibility for the very first time.
He understands. Failure: It just isn’t an option, not with everything that’s at stake.
But all they’ve been doing recently is failing.
Vance itches at a spot beneath her short, curly hair, suddenly looking awkward.
Right. Because it’s the Wild Hunt, and they’ll hunt any Seelie in their path.
Rowan Elder clears his throat, purple eyes somber. “Then,” he says, very quietly, “you will have to run.”
Great.
“Okay, just to get it out of the way: It’s not like we’re going to say no,” Bronte says, leaning back in her chair, and tapping a spoon against her knee through her baggy, ripped jeans.
Taissa chose this restaurant for lunch, insisting that it’s the closest to her mum’s cooking that she can get, and that her craving for bibimbap was so strong that if she was denied of it, she’d “murder somebody posthaste.” Combined with her grumpy glare, none of the Stymphs were brave enough to argue with this, so Hanguk House it was. “This is our chance to fix everything.”
“Or, alternatively, it’s our chance to die painful deaths,” James argues to his left.
Despite the cool air of the restaurant, with its fans spinning on the lattice-worked, wooden ceiling, a trickle of sweat is running down James’s face.
Even the glossy, paparazzi-esque posters of Korean gods hung on the walls seem to be sweating.
One of them bears a startling resemblance to Jacks, and is glaring at the restaurant’s diners from behind the laminated paper, thin lips curled into a bloody terrifying sneer, green eyes flashing with clear vitriol.
“Terrible, gruesome deaths,” James continues haggardly.
Kion bites the inside of his cheek, unable to suppress another burst of worry, but keeps his mouth shut this time. “We have absolutely no idea how to ride a púca, much less survive the Wild Hunt,” James adds, sniffing through an upturned nose. “Simply put, it’s a bad idea.”
“It will be easy,” says óríon, cold eyes even harder than usual. “We are carriwitchet players, nei? This, we are prepared for.”
“I’m not so sure,” murmurs Isla, setting aside her phone on the polished wooden table.
She’s been texting somebody nonstop and he suspects it’s the beautiful leannán sídhe from last night.
According to Knox, Isla danced with her until dawn, even after her glamour wore off.
The other girl had apparently only laughed in surprise when Isla turned from a vampire to a grimacing, red-haired witch.
And there’s the fact that Bronte has been eyeing the phone in what could either be jealousy or curiosity.
It’s hard to tell with Bronte, sometimes, and Kion wouldn’t exactly win any awards for reading people.
It’s hard enough for him to identify his own bloody emotions.
“We only get one chance. If we fail, we might…Well, we might die…”
“Sounds fun,” says Knox with a grin, prompting Adriel and Mahina to—simultaneously—face-palm.
He takes a sip of the iced green tea he ordered, and ignores how óríon is glaring at him from across the table.
“Aw, come on. We all perform better under pressure—or we used to. You know, when we weren’t cursed. ”