Chapter Four Taissa #2
There’s a flash of pink in the corner of her eye, outside of the compartment’s glass doors. Frowning, Taissa glances toward it, but it must have been a trick of the light. Turning back to Kion, she stiffens. “Locke, come on. I’m joining your—”
“—‘shite team,’ ” he snaps. “Yeah, Cho. I’m aware.”
“Then let me look at it,” she retorts sharply, crossing over to his side of the compartment, and sitting down next to him, returning his offended stare with a scathing one of her own.
Kion runs his tongue over his teeth, and—evidently deciding that the hour-and-a-half trip will pass faster without Taissa plotting his imminent demise—angles the notebook so she can see it, too.
His handwriting is atrociously neat, but his drawings are terrible.
Taissa squints at the three misshapen circles.
“Are those supposed to be your players?” She tries to ignore how hard her heart is suddenly pounding.
This, hunched over a play, analyzing it…
This is where she’s been trying to get back to for two years.
This is where she’s meant to be. Even if it means dealing with Kion Locke.
“It’s a Solomonari Formation,” he mutters, “so, obviously.”
She rolls her eyes before looking back down at the blue ink.
The Solomonari Formation is an offensive setup for the Dozers, a sly tactic used to clear the opposing defensive Knockers out of the Robbers’, or the Bailer’s, pathway and allow them to reach the siege tower.
All three Dozers ride in a triangular formation, with the apex rider dropping back at the last moment while the two other riders shoot past them.
Each aims for a different target, the back left rider suddenly shooting right, and the back right rider shooting left.
The setup is the Vic Formation, but the execution is starkly different, in an attempt to confuse the opposing defense.
“Your arrows are crooked.”
Kion makes that irritated noise from deep within his throat again.
Behind the crude drawing of the Solomonari Formation is a sketch for the Stymphs’ own defense, a Trigon Formation—one Knocker positioned in front of the siege tower, the two others farther out, one on the left and one on the right.
Three other deformed blobs shooting across the field toward the opposing side seem to be the Robbers and the Bailer, flying in a diagonal line, an Echelon Position.
The Dozers’ Solomonari Formation, paired with the Echelon, offers maximum coverage for the offensive players.
All in all, it’s a very good play. From what she remembers, the Stymphs have done it before, and have done it well.
Her brows knot. Yet somehow, they’re at the bottom of the Minor League.
She’s heard speculative whispers that it’s a bad case of the Blunduns.
While not a curse in the magical sense—even lacker athletes are afflicted with them from time to time, although they call them the Yips, or the Twisties, or something—the Blunduns might as well be dark magic.
Professional athletes suddenly brought down to the level of fumbling amateurs.
Nobody knows what exactly causes it, since cases vary. Taissa frowns, looking at the plays.
She doesn’t notice how close she is to Kion, or how the skin around his eyes has gone tight with irritation.
All that matters is this piece of paper, this puzzle.
Carriwitchet. “You tried this last season.” Taissa leans farther in, scanning every inch of the paper, jittering her knee.
“It’s a good plan, but you were really very shite.
” She’s watched his games. She’s watched all the carriwitchet games while angrily crocheting.
It’s her favorite way to torture herself.
“Yeah.” His response is short.
“What happened?”
“Considering our rank, I think it’s pretty fucking obvious what happened,” Kion bites out just as the compartment door slides open. There’s a flash of light as a giggling, pink-haired teenager takes a photo of them on her phone then darts away before Taissa even has the chance to blink.
“Fuck,” hisses Kion, getting up to peer out of the compartment, but Taissa is certain the teenager is long gone, judging by the speed she was running. She watches as he yanks the glass door shut again. “Recognized.”
So that was the flash of pink she’d seen earlier. Taissa considers being annoyed, then decides that she’d rather reserve her annoyance for Kion.
“Aren’t you used to it by now? The photos, the paps…
It’s all part of the game.” Taissa flips to the next page of the notebook.
Whatever play Kion had drawn is now angrily scribbled out, with raised, bumpy ink marring the page and small holes in the paper.
Kion has—even still—thousands of fans. His face is splashed all throughout the Hidden Cities: on the covers of magazines, on posters, even on stationery.
Hers had been, too, once. Maybe even more than his.
And after The Scandal, her fame had reached new heights: infamy.
For a few months, she’d tried valiantly to weather it, tried to stay in her grand apartment, tried to blackmail and bribe her way into the papers’ good graces. They took her ample hush money (of course they did) but then that stupid journal, Complete Carriwitchet, went and ran the stories, anyway.
They interviewed “anonymous” ex-teammates about her volatile temper and supposedly massive ego.
(It was Elise, of course it was Elise. Taissa suspects that even Aster said a few choice words, a blow that nearly pummeled her into the ground.
So much for friendship.) They sent paps to take unflattering photos of her crying in her favorite bar over a giant tankard of beer that they definitely photoshopped to become larger.
They even went so far as to phone up her exes, who were only too happy to run their mouths about all of her flaws.
(According to Jamie Hewett, she did a variety of hard drugs and spent her nights clubbing with clurichauns and taking part in their massive orgies.
Funny, as she’d broken up with Jamie after finding him entangled with not one, not two, not three, but four of the party-prone faeries.
In her bed.) She turned down all interviews offered to her—she’d had to, unless she wanted to see Sansa hurt.
Those threats meant to keep her in line were not empty.
“I am,” Kion shoots back. “Used to it, I mean. But—” He cuts himself off, but the way his black eyes burn into her is nothing less than deeply accusatory.
Oh. She sees. Taissa slams the notebook shut, trying to ignore how her stomach drops.
“But I’m here,” she finishes sharply. “Is that it? You can’t take being seen with me?”
He never could, even before her fall from grace. In all her time playing in the NCL, Taissa had never gotten used to it: just how much Kion Locke despised her, how much he was seemingly disgusted by her. Their hatredship went past his snub when she’d approached him for the first time.
It escalated into squabbles on the pitch and bad-mouthing each other to reporters.
And then it escalated some more.
But that wasn’t Taissa’s fault. No, no. She vividly remembers that first game; how thrilled she was to be playing against him, how she smiled timidly at him from across the pitch (even after he refused to waste a “precious fucking minute” on her).
How he had snarled in return. That was fine. Expected, really.
But it wasn’t just that. It was off-field, too.
It was the time he rolled his eyes all throughout her speech as she accepted Player of the Year.
And once, she went on a few casual dates with the NCL Dragons’ Everest Huang.
But then Kion, who was close with Everest (apparently, he had no problem befriending other players on other teams) valiantly “informed” him that she had dormant Pixie Pox.
Everest dumped her soon after that, evidently terrified of being afflicted by glittery bokes.
With all of that shite, he’d left no choice for her but to launch a campaign against him, too.
And if his romance with the Summertides princess, Chasca, fizzled out, well, that had absolutely nothing to do with Taissa acquiring an exclusive interview with Unseelie Weekly and spinning a beautiful story about how she’d just recently spotted Kion Locke romancing an elderly troll and how brave he was for challenging biases against the Unseelie (specifically of the geriatric and jaundiced variety).
And if someone hired a caricature artist to draw incredibly ugly renditions of Kion’s face and then sent them in to Complete Carriwitchet, well, she knew nothing about that, either.
“Listen, Cho,” Kion bites out now. “That kid is going to post that on whatever the fuck social media they use, and then the tabloids will be running their mouths like motors. There’s nobody, nobody, in the UKHC that won’t know I’ve recruited you.
” He sits back down heavily, wracking his hands through his hair.
“You were supposed to be our secret weapon, our surprise. Now every single team in the Minor League will be watching your old tapes, preparing themselves for your return.”
Taissa falters, unsure whether to be placated or remain offended. So it’s not out of personal revulsion that he doesn’t want that photograph coming out—it’s strategic.
Our secret weapon.
So he admits it: that she’s good. More than good. The best. Vindictive pleasure is a warm buzz in her veins as she imagines single-handedly digging the Stymphs out of the Minor League, no thanks to Kion Locke…
But then that pleasure is quickly replaced with rising indignation as Kion adds acerbically, “Assuming that you hadn’t been using Luck glyphs the whole time.”
A tidal wave of rage closes over Taissa’s head; she doesn’t even have the chance to gasp for air. Trembling, she slams his damned notebook shut and hurls it back toward him with unmitigated violence. To her immense disappointment, he catches it deftly with flashing eyes.