Chapter Eight Taissa #2
As Cronus swoops back down toward the pitch, Taissa is breathless, her hair streaming behind her and the future bright before her.
Yet there’s a small pang in her chest—a growing sadness, a jealousy, a confusion that doesn’t belong to her—and does not seem to belong to the jubilant Cronus, either.
Taissa’s hand goes to her breastbone, where the remnant of her Bonding glyph with Sansa is, only for the emotion to fade as quickly as it had come.
Taissa shakes her head, focusing on their descent.
As she dismounts, she sees a black-clad figure watching her next to Knox and Bronte, his lips pressed downward as if to suppress a reluctant smile.
“You,” says Taissa as Cronus lands, staring down at Kion Locke with a triumphant grin, “owe me sixteen quid.”
Is it just her or are Kion’s eyes crinkling in the corners?
Surely not.
Definitely not.
Because Kion Locke does not smile. Least of all at her…
As she jumps down from the saddle (Cronus refuses to lower himself to the ground, even if to help her get off him), Taissa tosses the draconian jewel to Kion, who catches it in one deft motion. Holding it, one side of his mouth does quirk, and she stares in shock.
What’s gotten into him?
She’s not the only one who’s noticed. Knox is openly gaping at his captain.
“Oi, Cap, did you just…smile?”
“Absolutely the fuck not,” snarls Kion, smile-thing dropping like a stone. The allegation is apparently infuriating.
“No, Knox, you’re right. I saw a little twitch,” Bronte chimes in.
“Sod off, both of you.” As Knox and Bronte laugh, exchanging looks and leading their stymphs back toward the stable doors, Kion turns back to Taissa. Once they’re out of earshot, he speaks, and his voice is a rough grumble.
“I’ll put that sixteen quid toward buying you a drink at Tally Ho.” And just like that, his almost-smile is gone. Kion’s eyes narrow. “Come on, Cho. We have a ‘date.’ ”
Pinion-upon-Keat is very, very different from Banallan.
For one, there are fewer cows (and more shops).
Spellshops and bakeries and record stores and restaurants—everything Taissa can think of—line the cobblestoned pavement, close and cramped, faerie lights strung between the eaves.
An arched bridge takes Kion and Taissa above the River Keat, where Unseelie water hags called greenteeths lurk in the dark waters, propped up on the slick rocks, watching them with greedy eyes.
Taissa glares back at them.
Ever since the Seventh Seelie-Unseelie War, the Unseelie have been given the right to roam the UKHC as they please, on the condition that they’re heavily monitored by the DCUP (Department of Criminal Unseelie Prevention) and refrain from giving in to their more carnal urges.
In the greenteeths’ case, that would be drowning innocent children.
Some Unseelie prefer to live traditionally, in the isolated woodlands rather than bustling cities, like the fomorians, gruagachs, and others near Taissa’s backyard, but most Unseelie find glory in modernity and nightlife.
However, some bigoted Seelie-owned establishments staunchly refuse to serve them, citing centuries of heinous crimes committed by the Unseelie.
(Not that the Seelie have never committed any heinous crimes of their own…
They have. Frequently.) The two courts are always warring about something.
Pinion’s Lantern Street, the downtown shopping center where Taissa and Kion walk now, bustles with faeries and witches.
Outside of a strobe-lit club, a group of clurichauns laugh raucously and flirt with the considerably more well-behaved leprechauns in line, who look aghast at their cousins’ incestuous behavior.
Will-o’-the-wisps flit here and there, darting between a smitten elven couple and a small hairy family of hobgoblins whose batlike ears twitch as a live band plays a jaunty tune.
As they pass the band, Taissa’s eyes widen in surprise as Kion strides to their overturned hat, dropping in a few banknotes.
The lead singer, a honey-haired witch with an Amplification glyph on her throat, smiles at him and nods a grateful thank-you as he returns to Taissa’s side. The drummer, a half-goat urisk, grins.
“What?” Kion grumbles, and she realizes she’s staring. “She’s good.”
Witnessing the person who ruined your life be kind is always a disorienting experience.
“Do you like music?” Her mouth is dry. Asking Locke a personal question…the horror.
(It’s a farce, though. She knows he likes music. She knows nearly everything about him. Like that he was spotted at an Elvis impersonator’s concert in 2018—Elvish Presley.)
(She’d laughed for days.)
“What?”
Oh, honestly. “Do. You. Like. Music.”
“Who doesn’t fucking like music?” He sounds more confused than angry now. “It’s music.”
Taissa shrugs, shoulders tight. “I just wanted to…” Fill the awkward silence between them with anything else. Hear him speak passionately about something. (See him smile at her like he did at the honey-haired witch? No. Definitely not.) “…ask.”
Kion is staring at her in bewilderment.
The urge to stomp off is overwhelming her.
“If we’re going to fake-date,” snaps Taissa, who is steadily losing her patience (honestly, this man is dreadful), “we need to be convincing. Couples small talk about all sorts of ridiculous things. The weather. Food. Music. Where to buy tiny sweaters for cats, and whether there should be four sleeves or two. Look around, Locke. People are already watching us. If we don’t sell this, Bill ships me back to Scran Mart. ”
A muscle in his jaw jumps.
“Besides, think past just the whole ‘secret weapon’ plan. Think what getting a sponsor could do for the team.”
Morgana’s broomstick, do the NCL Stymphs need a sponsor.
Although the Nexitory is grand and opulent at first glance, the water pressure is abominable, the air-conditioning is nonexistent, the saddles for the stymphs old and worn, and the integrity of the handlers not much better.
Nasty stymphalian handlers like Hackit Markus seem to be all that Bill can retain at the moment; angry men who use Voltaic glyphs on Wingeds.
Taissa specifically stormed up to Bill’s office to demand his immediate firing, but the hemming and hawing Dodds emitted did little to convince her that he’d fire him.
So Taissa had instead found the gray-haired handler cleaning up jobbies near Yggdrasil, and hissed that if she ever sees him near her bird, she’ll break both of his hands.
He’d looked adequately scared, but not scared enough.
And then there’s the absence of a coach. Until the Stymphs get some good press, Bill won’t be able to hire anybody, and Taissa will be stuck with Coach Locke.
“The paps will treat this whole affair like a crime scene, you know,” Taissa continues heatedly.
“They’ll interrogate tonight’s witnesses.
They’ll snag CCTV footage. I’m not asking you to kiss me, because we both know we would rather die, but I am asking you to pretend that you don’t despise me for, like, a few hours.
” She’s slightly winded, her fists clenched at her sides.
Kion blinks a few times. Something passes briefly across his face, so quickly that even Taissa can’t identify it. His brows lower a moment later. “Fine,” he grumbles back. “I like music. Are you happy now?”
“Not in the least,” she retorts hotly, glowering at a happy couple strutting by. For some reason, they infuriate her.
He audibly grimaces, something that Taissa didn’t even know was possible. “Fine. Look, Cho, you’re right. This whole thing is bloody…”
“Preposterous. Painful. Pretend.” She forces that last word out from between her teeth.
“Right.” She feels him side-eyeing her. “But we need strategy. A game plan.”
“Echelon Positions and Solomonari Formations won’t work for this situation.
” Taissa huffs under her breath as Kion veers to the side, heading for a bench half-hidden behind a newspaper stall with a sign reading, Away for Lunch.
Hesitantly, Taissa sits down next to him, just as he pulls something from his black leather jacket.
It’s his playbook, and a pen. She watches, brows raised, as he flips through the notebook to a blank page, uncapping the pen.
“You’re a shite artist,” she says as he scribbles out what looks like it’s supposed to be the Tally Ho Tavern and two stick figures. His stick figure is much more flattering than hers, which is about the size of an ant. “No! I am absolutely not that short, Locke.”
He ignores her. “First play: entering the pub.” He draws an arrow from them to the lopsided square. “The paps will be watching. We need a formation.”
“A formation,” she repeats in an unimpressed drawl. “You mean—”
“I will,” mutters Kion, drawing another set of stick figures, his gallantly reaching down to hold the minuscule one’s hand, “do this.”
Both of them stare in heavy silence at the page.
“Give me the pen,” demands Taissa, who does not want to hold hands with Kion.
It’s too personal. What if she gets confused?
She’s a matryoshka doll. She’s twenty-four now, but somewhere inside of her there’s a teenage Taissa who collects trading cards of Kion Locke and fantasizes about their spring wedding—
Stop it. Stop it.
When Kion refuses to hand over the damned thing, Taissa violently snatches it from him, along with the pen.
“Bloody hells,” says Kion, sounding slightly amazed. “And you said my drawings were bad.”
“Bugger off.” Taissa finishes her drawing with a flourish.
“What in the name of Merlin’s balls is this supposed to be?”
“The Bahoochie Formation.”
“What. The. Fuck?”
Fine. The drawing is crude. Taissa meets his eyes. “Put your hand in the back pocket of my jeans.”
“So—on your arse.”
“Bahoochie. Yes.”
“Why the blazing hells do you prefer this over hand-holding?”
“You have sweaty hands.”
“No, I fucking do not.”
He doesn’t. “I want you to put your hand on my bahoochie, Locke. Will you do it or no?”
“You’re a menace to society.” His throat bobs. Kion is still staring at her sketch like he wants to burn it alive.