Chapter Thirty-Four Taissa
Chapter Thirty-Four
Taissa
“Merlin’s bloody beard,” Knox howls, wiping tears from his eyes as, before him, Taissa and Kion gaze into each other’s eyes. “Oh, this is good.”
It’s raining hard, fat droplets splattering against the windows in Kion’s sitting room. Not quite a thunderstorm, only one of the summer squalls that Pinion is so famous for. The team sits squashed on the sofa, their teasing grins admittedly a nice change from the moroseness of this morning.
(She curses the insane turnaround time from the commercial team at Cruttenbolt’s. Really, they apparently know the best way to torture her.)
“It’s the most magical place for a date,” Taissa’s on-screen version continues with a swoony and slightly delirious smile, much to the delight of the team as they sit in Kion’s flat around the telly.
Bronte is wheezing silently, unable to look back up at the television, while Mahina and Adriel stare with bewildered, open-mouthed expressions as their captain begrudgingly adds, “Cruttenbolt’s Calamity Candies has a special place in our hearts.
” The face he’s making on the telly is rather interesting.
She supposes it was his attempt at a romantic expression.
(Mostly he just looks severely constipated.)
“Be still my beating heart,” gasps Knox, wiping tears from his eyes, “what a delivery, Cap!”
“Shut up, Tanaka,” snarls Kion, whose ears are bright red at the tips.
Whoever edited this apocalyptic video had the genius (terrible) idea to make pink hearts bloom all over the footage, along with random showers of glitter and a backdrop of cheerful, license-free music that reminds her of those ads for medication with long lists of side effects.
Suddenly, it’s rather clear how hastily the commercial was put together.
Taissa, perched on the arm of Kion’s squashy chair, buries her face in her hands as the local infomercial’s sparkly pink font bursts into existence at the bottom of the screen, reading:
TRY OUR NEW PLEASURE POPS! 18+! CALL TO ORDER NOW!
Next to her, Kion grumbles something underneath his breath, his tense body warm where it’s pressed next to her.
Nobody had been more pleased than Creevus Cruttenbolt to see that they’d worked out their “little lover’s spat” (as Niamh cheerfully put it), and he had set them back to work straightaway with a jolly, twinkling grin.
“Perfect,” said the candymaker after they’d finally managed to get through their lines. “Now, Taissa, put your lolly in Kion’s mouth…and vice versa…”
It was, honestly, even worse than the boudoir shoot.
(Who knew, really, that a candy commercial could be so…
sexual?) Taissa had tilted her Pleasure Pop toward Kion with a grimace, cursing herself for getting them into such a bizarre situation.
The old hobgoblin had known exactly what he was doing when he brought up Everest Huang.
At first, the candy tasted normal enough: sweet berries and decadent chocolate.
Taissa studiously avoided Kion’s eye, lest she burst into hysterical laughter, and keep them there even longer.
(Cruttenbolt fancied himself a film director, she thought, with all his authoritative callings of Cut!
and Action!) But oh, it had to be a picture: the pair of them eating the lollipops from each other’s hands, she grimacing with restrained snorts, and he probably sending spiteful glares to the camera.
A few moments later, the Besottium began to take effect.
Morgana save me, thought Taissa.
Morgana had not saved her.
Instead, desire swam through her veins, thick and heavy as her cheeks heated in want and her eyes darted up to Kion’s.
Her heart was beating as quickly as a drum as she stared into his dark gaze, traced the curve of his bee-stung bottom lip with her eyes, her thoughts of pillows and silken sheets and the feeling of his body molded to hers…
“Perfect, perfect, perfect!” cried Cruttenbolt, clapping his hands, the sound startling against the trance Taissa had fallen into. “Bravo, bravo, you two! And that’s scene! You can just see your pupils dilating. Oh, that is wonderful, just wonderful!”
Clearing her throat hard, Taissa inked a Nullifying glyph onto her wrist. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Kion did the same—and as he shook his head once, then twice, like he was trying to clear it. His eyes met hers, wide and wary.
“It’s not stopping,” Kion said hoarsely, glancing from her to Cruttenbolt, gripping his qyl tight. “I feel it—in here. Consuming me.” He thumped a hand against his chest.
Cruttenbolt eyed the glyph, frowned, and then smiled slightly.
“Oh, my dear boy! The effects of the Pleasure Pops are purely physical! Whatever you might ‘feel in here’ ”—he tapped Kion’s chest with a hairy finger—“that is pure. Authentic!”
She’d smiled smugly at that. Kion had flushed and muttered something under his breath.
Now, his visage is markedly different as he glares at his players and shuts off the screen with a firm press of the telly-mote, just as Isla—who up until this point had kept it together very well, thought Taissa—dissolves into helpless giggles at the sight of Kion and Taissa feeding each other the Pleasure Pops.
(Taissa is not particularly proud of her digital footprint at the moment.)
(Her bank balance, however, is another matter entirely.)
“That’s enough,” growls Kion, as Knox protests, “Oh, come on! It was just getting to the good part.”
“You are a pervert,” mutters óríon, shaking his head, white-blond hair falling into his exasperated eyes.
Mahina, sniggering silently from her perch on one of the sofa’s armchairs, signs one of the sentences that she previously informed Taissa was of the utmost importance for her to learn: “Pathetic, you’re pathetic.”
Taissa is inclined to agree.
Open pizza boxes litter Kion’s newly repaired coffee table, and Taissa munches on a slice of pepperoni. This gathering was Kion’s idea. She thinks he feels a wee bit bad about being an absolute nightmare during training the last few days.
He’s cheered up considerably since then, although the lines of worry around his mouth have only grown deeper and deeper as James has failed to awaken.
Taissa, too, feels lighter: The past couple of days have been awful.
She hadn’t realized how much she enjoyed their lack of a hatredship until they were suddenly plunged into one again, frostily avoiding each other’s eyes and not uttering a single word.
(Taissa stayed these past nights with Mahina, who had taken it as an opportunity to teach her some more colorful words she didn’t even know existed. Mahina’s vocabulary knows no bounds.)
Now, sitting on the armrest of Kion’s squashy chair, one of his massive arms draped just behind her, feeling the intoxicating closeness of him like a moth circling a flame…
Well, she would very much like the rest of the team to leave now so she can one, call Estee (her mum will either yell at her or cheer in exuberance), and two, discover what being an Official Real Couple means with Kion…
To her chagrin, however, the Stymphs show no signs of leaving.
Instead, Knox suddenly heaves a dramatic sigh and morosely bites into his slice in a way that’s so different from his mischevious teasing only a few moments ago that it disorients her.
She’s not the only one who’s noticed: óríon’s gaze sharpens on Knox, and with a wary frown, the Icelandic player cocks his head.
“Tanaka?” he asks lowly, and Taissa knows she’s not imagining the spark of concern in the older player’s eyes—and she wonders if maybe they don’t hate each other as much as they pretend to. If perhaps, underneath all their antagonizing, they’re friends. (It sounds rather familiar.)
Knox shrugs, but there’s a tenseness in his shoulders that betrays him. “Haven’t gone this long without playing carriwitchet before, is all,” he says, trying (and failing) to sound glib.
Taissa’s own throat tightens. He’s right. Training for the Wild Hunt is all well and good, certainly, but nothing—even rigorous drills with Kion or playing Head-to-Head—is a replacement for the breakneck sport in all its breathless exhilaration.
Taissa Cho knows that better than anybody.
“I’m right with you, Knox,” Bronte says, picking at the end of one of her braids, mischievous face uncharacteristically glum. “You know what I spent today doing? Trying to think of something to do.” A rueful smile twists her lips. “Then I ran out of time and ideas.”
“All we did today was sit on the couch and eat ice cream,” Adriel volunteers, glancing to Mahina, who grimaces and drags a hand down her face. “And not, like, the happy way. The sad way.”
“The really sad way,” agrees Mahina, her darting hands emphatic.
“It’s a part of us,” murmurs Isla. “Carriwitchet. Just as much as our blood, our bones, or…” Her warm brown eyes glance to Bronte before darting away. “Or our hearts.”
Bronte’s throat bobs; she looks away, something like guilt flickering over her face.
“Já,” says óríon after a moment, so low that Taissa must strain to hear. “This sport. We are lost without it.”
As his words hang heavily in the air, Taissa feels more than sees Kion draw himself up, looking at each of his players one by one.
There is a sudden, stark determination in his eyes as he leans forward on the armchair, bracing his forearms against his knees.
For a moment, she thinks he might say something heartening, something that warms the miserable little organs beating in their chests. He takes a deep breath, and…
“What a sorry fucking bunch of losers you lot are,” says Kion Locke.
Before any of the Stymphs have a chance to be offended (although Taissa is honestly already halfway there; her resting state is always halfway to offended), the team’s captain arches a thick black brow, something light and almost puckish twinkling in his dark eyes.
“There’s no rule against a bit of midnight scrimmage.”
Only there is.