Chapter Six Taissa #3
A muscle in Kion’s jaw is twitching in a very interesting way. She watches it curiously. “I can tell you mean that.”
“Good.”
Cronus snaps his beak toward Kion impatiently. He glares at him. “And I can tell that the two of you will get along well.”
“Yeah. We will.” She tastes triumph on her tongue; she knows she has won.
“Ruddy kindred souls, the two of you.” Kion sighs through his nose for a long, long moment before slowly drawing out his qyl. Cronus balks, flapping frantically.
“He won’t hurt you,” says Taissa to the stymph, who’s back to looking wary. “Look, he’ll do me first. It won’t hurt.” She turns again to Kion, who suddenly seems very interested in a point above her head. “Right. Let’s get on with it, then.”
“Cho,” he says, Adam’s apple bobbing strangely, voice scratchy with irritation, “you know where the glyph goes, don’t you?”
Oh. Right. She glances down at the shirt she’s wearing: a worn-out baggy 50 Centaurs shirt, the crowd of fifty half-horse rappers posing dramatically on the black fabric amongst striking lightning bolts.
As Kion glowers at Cronus, Taissa jerks the loose V-neck collar of her shirt down, exposing her sternum, and—her face flushes—the valley between her breasts.
She wonders if he can see the faint burn marks where Sansa’s glyph used to be. She wonders if he cares.
Kion’s jaw muscle is doing that weird twitching thing again. Disgust, Taissa realizes. That’s what that is. Complete and utter disgust.
Her throat suddenly aches. Taissa’s eyes flick up to meet Kion’s. They’re darker than she’s ever seen before.
“Go on,” Taissa mutters, but her heart isn’t in it.
“Stand still.”
“I am, numpty.”
“No,” he growls, “you’re bloody moving.” Kion’s hand darts through the air and, quick as a whip, closes gently around Taissa’s hand. His skin is calloused, warm. Taissa’s fingers freeze. She hadn’t even known she was fidgeting, tapping her thigh.
There’s a reason why Estee calls her “hummingbird.” Ever since she was young, she’s…moved. Frequently. Frantically. Frenetically.
But now, she stands still.
Time stands still as she stares up at Kion.
His black eyes have small flecks of green-brown in them that her tiny trading card has never been able to capture.
There’s so much about him that it can never capture.
The warmth of his olive skin. The slight stubble along his jaw.
The bump on his nose, like it was once broken and never quite set right: a rarity in the magical community, but Locke has always been singular.
His hand runs up her arm, coming to rest on her shoulder. Taissa closes her eyes as the cold tip of his qyl presses into her breastbone. His breath stirs a wayward curl on her face; he brushes it aside.
Fixes her glasses.
Bewildered, Taissa cracks open an eye, just as Kion begins to draw.
Magic is a lot like fragrance. She doesn’t notice her own, so accustomed to it as she is. When she etches glyphs onto her skin, all she feels is a slight tingle, there and then gone.
But Kion, his magic, it’s like that cologne he favors, Atlantis.
Tropical and sweet, slightly salty, like a summer breeze on a sun-drenched island.
It seeps into her skin like the brush of cool seawater, flowing through her veins like soft, lapping waves as he draws the Bonding symbol.
It’s so potent, so rich, that she doesn’t notice how his other hand is still on her shoulder, how his thumb is slowly moving back and forth.
Taissa trembles as he finally steps back, the glyph completed.
She remembers this feeling from last time, with Sansa: It’s like she’s a boat, setting down an anchor.
When Cronus receives his matching glyph, it will be as if that anchor connects with the seabed, tying them together.
For now, she is floating, haplessly, on a current of magic.
“How do you feel?” asks Kion, voice rough. His thumb rubs the glyph, as if to make sure it won’t budge. She worries he can feel the faint roughness of the underlying burn’s scar tissue and flushes.
“Fine,” she mutters back, looking anywhere but his face. His magic is heady. If she’s a little unsteady on her feet, it’s the bastard’s fault completely. Nothing to do with her. Taissa fixes her shirt as Kion turns to Cronus.
“I’m going to put the glyph on you now,” he says slowly. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t bite my hand off.”
Cronus makes that odd, hoarse laughing sound as Kion approaches his mighty beak.
“Go on,” says Taissa, “give it a chomp, there’s a good lad.”
The look Kion gives her is worth its weight in gold.
The stymph’s red eyes lock on Taissa as Kion settles the tip of the qyl against his beak, drawing the loop and lines of the Bonding glyph. Taissa holds her breath as that anchor within her finally hooks into something—Cronus’s soul.
She feels it—anger and bitterness first, in a tidal wave that’s followed by smaller ripples of…
sadness. Loneliness. A pent-up frustration, a longing to take to the skies, to leave the stables.
To prove to his children that he’s more than just a joke.
Cronus is shifting impatiently on his feet. His offspring have stopped laughing.
Kion’s qyl stops moving.
(And for one moment, just a singular moment, Taissa can almost swear she feels another presence, small and faint, brush up next to her.
Smelling of leather and summer rain. Sansa always loved flying through squalls.
But it can’t be her old wyvern, jealous and saddened, that Taissa senses near her. It can’t.)
The moment the Bonding glyph is completed, Taissa falls to her knees, suddenly overwhelmed with the burst of sensation that is Cronus.
A fierce ache to fly. Crotchety and stubborn in equal measure.
The booming, resounding sound of a thunderclap.
The minute change in the air before lightning strikes.
The old stymph wobbles on his feet, staring at her in what she can suddenly tell is surprise and gratitude, the smaller nuances of his emotions now as clear to her as glass. She can see past his rage, past his bitterness.
A voice, gravelly and riddled with hoarse marks of age, floats into Taissa’s mind like dark mist.
“Hello, Taissa,” rasps Cronus. “Does this mean I can ‘skewer my children’ now?”