Chapter Thirty-One Kion #3
“Maybe you,” Mahina agrees reluctantly, pointing at Knox with her index finger, “but I hate pressure. Remember that time my grandparents were in the crowd and I crashed right into a camera crew because I was so nervous? And then it went viral on Cauldron? People called me the Mahina Meteor for fucking months…They photoshopped my face onto rocks…They painted it onto balls and then threw them at me during that next game…” She shudders as she taps her fists atop each other twice.
Adriel snorts, some of his drink spilling out his nose. Rolling her eyes, Mahina grabs a napkin and presses it to his face, covering his eyes in the process, too. Adriel claws at the cloth while Mahina silently snickers.
“—can’t—see—”
“We should do it.” Taissa’s voice is low and serious, her eyes narrowed as she sets down her spoon. “We have a whole week, Kion. We can train—”
“Hold on.” Bronte is grinning at the two of them from down the table. “Did you just call him ‘Kion’? Not ‘Locke’? ‘Kion’?”
He watches as Taissa’s face pinkens. “Come off it. It’s no big deal—”
“Interesting,” Bronte says, waggling her eyebrows. Her eyes are glittering even more than the golden cuffs in her braids. “That’s interesting—”
“Oo-la-la,” adds Mahina, releasing Adriel. She grins fiendishly and pokes her chopsticks in Kion’s direction. He raises his brows at her, daring her to continue. She does. “Interesting for sure, Bronte.”
“ ‘Oh, Kion,’ ” swoons Knox in a high-pitched voice, and is about to say more but óríon shoves a large piece of kimbap into his open mouth.
Mentally counting to ten, Kion takes a bite of his own kimbap, recommended by Taissa, and chews harder than necessary. The salty beef and the slight sweetness of the pickled turnip placates him for a brief moment.
“As I was saying,” snaps Taissa, although her eye-roll toward the two girls seems hesitantly fond, “we have a week. We can train for the Wild Hunt, just like we would for any other game.”
“No offense,” James says curtly, in a voice that means he does mean offense, and a lot of it, actually, “but our stables only have stymphs. Not púcas. There is, I would think, a marked difference.”
James has a point, but so does Taissa.
One week to train isn’t something Kion’s just going to ignore.
Maybe they don’t have a púca, but they sure as hells can work on speed and endurance.
In the Wild Hunt, being prepared to run from the Unseelie on foot is just as important as being able to ride.
Maybe, in a week, he can train his players to survive this no matter what.
Drills. Laps. Strength conditioning. Kion’s already planning it out. He was able to get Taissa pretty much back in shape in a matter of a week. He can get his team prepared for the Wild Hunt.
Right?
Probably.
Possibly.
Maybe he has a Coach Look on his face because his team suddenly looks at him and stiffens, alert and ready. Isla’s eyes are wide with trepidation, while Knox is beaming.
“We’re going to do it, aren’t we?” he asks, basically bouncing in his seat. “Team field trip, then, to Ballyford?”
Kion sets down his chopsticks and takes a small breath to steady himself. “Anybody who wants to stay behind can. None of us here will think less of you if you do. There’s no shame in it—”
“I’m in,” Bronte says immediately, slamming her chair back down to the ground.
“So am I.” Knox smiles roguishly and seems to kick óríon under the table.
The Icelander scowls, jerking back, but gives Kion a sharp nod. “I have faced worse things than this Wild Hunt. I will come to Ballyford.”
Adriel is whispering to Mahina under his breath while she argues back with small, subtle motions of her hands—the BSL equivalent to a lowered voice. “We’re coming,” Adriel finally says.
“As long as there are no camera crews to crash into,” Mahina hastily adds. “And as long as my grandparents aren’t there.”
Isla takes a deep breath, drawing her slender shoulders back and glances almost reluctantly at Bronte. “Me, too. To make sure…to make sure everybody’s safe.”
“I’m in,” Taissa agrees firmly, and then there’s only one left.
As the eyes of his teammates settle curiously on him, James hesitates, looking at Kion. His face has an unhealthy sheen to it, and his Adam’s apple is bobbing. “I…” whispers James, blinking hard behind his glasses…
And then he’s sliding sideways out of his chair, limp and unconscious, inches away from pooling onto the floor like loose yarn from one of Taissa’s skeins.
He’s not moving.
Some horrible emotion gnaws its way through Kion’s stomach as he shoves himself out of his chair, catching James in his arms.
Fuck. Fuck—
Panicked, Kion pats James’s face, feeling how sticky it is, how sweaty, yet how cold. Asleep like this, it’s easy to count the number of new lines etched deep into James’s face, how the curls sticking to his forehead are…gray.
Like he’s been aged.
There would be signs, if you were trying to find the culprits, depending on the price, Orla Banes’s voice says in his head. The absence of a soul, abrupt aging, loss of beauty, suddenly speaking in demonic tongues, things like that.
A dull headache begins to pound behind Kion’s temples. No.
It’s a fucking coincidence.
Has to be.
His team is panicking—Knox is grabbing his ice water and trying to splash it onto James’s face, held back by a stone-faced óríon—sending their harried-looking waiter over in concern. “James,” Kion says roughly, shaking his friend. “James, mate, come on, wake up—”
He doesn’t.
James doesn’t wake up.