Chapter Three Kion #3
“I want you to kneel.”
Kion must have misheard her. “Kneel?” he chokes out.
“You know. On your knees. In front of me. Begging.”
“Absolutely the fuck not!”
Taissa says nothing. Just looks at him, waiting. Taps a foot on the ground. That’s one thing about her that he remembers: She’s always moving. Always doing something with her hands or with her feet.
“Are you mad? I won’t bloody do it.” His skin is itching. “I won’t. Pick something else.”
“Down, boy,” says Taissa, now smiling a bit, very unpleasantly. “How badly do you need me? How far will you go to save your team?”
Kion takes a thin breath through his nose and tries to mentally count to ten. “If this is because of what happened—”
Rage suddenly contorts her delicate features.
“Of course this is about what happened,” she spits, jerking away from him, striding toward the small, circular kitchen window above the sink.
Her back to him, he can only see the soft reflection of her face through the paned glass.
It’s crumpled. She doesn’t know, Kion realizes, that he can see her.
There’s an odd, sinking feeling in his gut.
Right, yeah. So he hadn’t bloody known that the Wyverns would kick her to the curb, that she’d be shunted away from the world of carriwitchet, left to weed vegetables in a tiny cottage. At most, he’d thought he’d win the game. That she’d be given a purple card or suspended for the season.
Regardless, it doesn’t matter.
“I’m getting really fucking sick of you acting like this is anybody’s fault but yours.”
Not as she whips around to pin him with a look of scathing repulsion. “You know nothing, Locke. You know absolutely fuck all.” She jabs a shaking finger toward him. “Kneel or get out. That’s my bargain. I mean it.”
“You’re trying to humiliate me,” Kion growls back, but shit, he can tell she’s serious. Her eyes are narrowed in the same way they always were on the pitch as she stared him down, and her mouth is a thin line.
Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
That’s her victory expression—that harsh, determined face she used to make when she was only inches away from bringing that final draconian jewel over the boundary line. His team needs that fire, needs one more sliver of hope, or they’ll be irreparably broken.
Then his career will be over, ending on the lowest note possible, a flaming pile of rubbish.
Kion Locke will be remembered as a great fuckup, a tale of caution for athletes who get just a bit too cocky and make the whole thing go balls-up.
He’ll be like Taissa: living in a ramshackle house with bills he can’t pay and nothing to do but weed a vegetable patch.
But worst of all, his teammates will hate him. His family, the one he found in the NCL Stymphs, will despise him. It’s his job, as captain, to hold this club together, but it’s impossible to stop it from ripping apart at the seams. If the team is dissolved, he’ll lose them all.
And he’ll be alone.
Again.
Fear twists in his stomach like a knife.
In his mind’s eye, he can see the South London orphanage, the dirty corridors and spiteful matrons.
For fuck’s sake. He’s a thirty-year-old man, long past the age limit for the Waywardly Home.
Yet he can still feel the rough hands of the other boys, pushing him down the stairs, kicking him in the stomach, pulling on his hair, slapping his face. Hurting him. Bad.
Before he joined the Stymphs, he’d never known what it was like to be touched without cruel intent. Not until James had shaken his hand that first day and clapped him on the back. The scars all over his body are proof of that.
He closes his eyes, refusing to think about the Waywardly Home any longer. He gets enough flashbacks as it is.
No. Kion won’t lose them. He’ll climb back up to the Major League even if he has to do it by the skin of his teeth.
Even if he has to kneel in front of Taissa Cho to do it.
Every single muscle in his body rebels, spasming in protestation, as he lowers himself to the uneven wooden floorboards.
His knees hit them with a morose thud. Taissa’s brows raise, just slightly, as she stares down at him.
Waiting. Apparently for matters like this, she can have the patience of a saint.
He’s never seen her so calm. It’s disorienting. It’s wrong.
“And what’s the magic word?” she asks, voice flat, and Kion fervently wishes he were dead.
“I’m on my knees.” Grant a man some mercy.
“Magic. Word.”
For the love of the Hidden Cities. “Please,” Kion rasps slowly, dragging out the terrible word, his voice hoarse with unsuppressed rage.
Taissa’s eyes glitter. Hunger ravages her face for a fleeting moment: an avaricious appetite that disappears as quickly as it appeared, tidily swept away back underneath a rug of supposed uncaring.
She steps toward him, and before he can jerk away, she’s patting the top of his head in the most condescending way known to man.
And much harder than necessary. Fuck, Cho. He fights back a flinch.
“Well, since you asked so nicely.”