Chapter Nine Taissa
Chapter Nine
Taissa
“Er,” Kion is saying, looking like he has a terrible headache, “good morning, everybody.”
The team is gathered in the locker room, all sitting on the benches in front of their purple-and-silver cubicles.
Taissa stands next to him, winded from yet another early-morning session of excruciating drills.
It’s torture, it really is. Humiliating, also.
While she huffed and puffed her way through the sadistic set list Kion had laid out, the bastard somehow completed the laps and subsequent drills without wheezing like an old trombone.
It would be easier to despise the drills entirely if Kion didn’t also run himself ragged.
He pushed himself just as much as—if not more than—he pushed her. But he was also a lot more in shape.
(“Bloody hells. Stop making those sounds, Cho,” he’d snapped.)
(“I…do…hrrrk…as I…hrrk…please.”)
Even worse, Cronus had joined them for the torturous pre-practice workout, and there was no denying how much the old bird had enjoyed watching Taissa flop around on the grass like a weak little worm.
In true child-eater fashion, her lovely stymph had decided to use his knife-sharp beak as a motivator for Taissa, snapping the giant thing at her every time she faltered in her crunches, or her push-ups.
Faster, hatchling, he’d squawk. Faster, or I munch on your bones.
Needless to say, she’d gone as fast as possible. “Good,” Kion had gruffly muttered at the end of it.
Taissa is of the opinion that he is a masochist.
The masochist’s hand is in the pocket of her riding leathers. She has yet to choose a number to paint on its back. Her old number, 18, just doesn’t feel right anymore. Like a pair of jeans she’s outgrown, or rather, is no longer able to squeeze into without feeling a burst of shame.
A whiteboard behind Kion is marked up with plays: Solomonari, Trigon, Echelon, Vic, Finger-Four. The office behind it (where the coach would usually reside) is dark and empty. Taissa tries not to grimace nor clench her buttocks as so happened yesterday.
Neither of them has spoken about That Kiss. Like mature adults, they departed from Tally Ho in a horrified sort of silence.
Wily Witch, however, covered the story with glee, plastering the photos of That Kiss all over their physical mags and their online blogs. This morning, Niamh sent the screenshots over to Taissa, clearly ecstatic with how well her plan was going and praising her for using Cauldron to her advantage.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the tabloids by now,” Kion says to his team through his teeth.
“Uh, no. I didn’t see the tabloids,” Adriel says slowly, pointing at her, “but I did see her Cauldron post. I thought the photo that went viral of you two on the train was just gossip, because we saw it after you recruited her…but then this? Can someone please finally explain?”
Kion’s glare, directed at Taissa, could light someone on fire. There’s real fury in there, not the exasperated anger that so often seems to be directed at her.
Fine, so perhaps, maybe, possibly, probably, she should have waited for Kion to break the “news” to his team before posting such a…
daring…photo on Cauldron. Yet in Taissa’s defense, it was quite clear that Kion was dreading that particular conversation, so she simply did it for him.
Besides, the team would have found out from the headlines, anyway.
She had taken it upon herself to have them find out directly from the source: her dusty, unused, fossil of a Cauldron page. An act of generosity, really.
(Besides, Niamh had texted them multiple eye, heart, and stymph emojis on their way home, which Taissa took to mean: Tell the team you love each other as soon as remotely possible.)
There’s a murmur of agreement. Knox grins. “ ‘Pookie,’ ” he croons. Bronte sniggers. Mahina smirks.
óríon is not smiling.
Neither is James Ridgeshaw. Behind his glasses, his eyes are hurt. “Kion,” he says quietly. “Is this why you recruited her? How…Honestly, how long has this been going on?”
Kion hesitates. There seems to be some sort of nervous rash creeping up the side of his neck, all angry and red. It’s clear how much he hates lying to the Stymphs.
Luckily, Taissa has no such qualms.
If she has to lie to play carriwitchet, she’ll do it.
She’ll lie right through her teeth. “About six months ago,” she says, stepping closer to Kion and batting her lashes simply to piss him right off.
“He was so distraught, knocking at the door of my cottage and weeping with remorse for every terrible, horrible thing he’s ever done to me.
Then, he professed his love with a beautiful poem.
Turns out”—as Kion looks to be contemplating murder, she turns back to the slack-jawed team—“he’s loved me, secretly, for years. Ever since we first met.”
Kion makes a strange, strangled noise in the back of his throat. It sounds like he is choking. What a numpty, thinks Taissa.
“A poem?” Adriel asks, looking even more confused, and annoyed, than before.
“A poem?” Bronte asks with a very different attitude, looking overjoyed. “Will you read it to us, Kion?”
óríon closes his eyes and mutters something under his breath.
Kion has gone very white around the mouth. “No,” he snaps out, “because she’s a li—”
Taissa shoots him a warning look.
Again, that strange choking sound. “Because she’s a lovely woman,” he finishes through his teeth, “and the poem is—it’s personal.”
“Ach, it’s okay,” says Taissa, who is still sore from his morning torture and would like to inflict pain unto him, as well. “Give them a wee taste.”
As the Stymphs dissolve into whispers, Kion grabs her wrist. “I will kill you,” he whispers with all the open honesty of a choirboy.
“I’d love to see you try.”
“Menace.”
“Numpty.”
“Go on,” calls Knox, interrupting them as he settles back onto the bench with the air of someone about to be very entertained. “Woo us, Captain!”
“Woo us! Woo us! Woo us!” That’s Bronte, creating the same amount of noise as a stadium. Taissa is reluctantly impressed.
Adriel glares at her with his soft hazel eyes. “You’re hurting my ears. I hope you know that.”
“Woo us! Woo us!” Knox has joined in, pumping his fists while óríon seethes equally loudly in Icelandic.
“All right, bloody fine!” roars Kion. As Bronte falls silent, eyes wide, Kion takes a deep breath. This should be rather interesting.
He clears his throat. “Roses are red, violets are blue…”
Taissa nods encouragingly at him.
“I’m fucking annoyed at the lot of you—”
“Oi!” yells Knox, clearly offended. Kion skewers him with a look.
“Cho,” he mutters as Knox throws his hands into the air, “go sit down.” His hand slips out of her pocket.
Rolling her eyes at his tone, Taissa stomps off, plopping down between James and red-haired Isla. “What?” she whispers to James, who’s glaring at her from the corner of his eye.
“I’m very sorry, but you shouldn’t be here,” he says quietly as Kion launches into discussing today’s practice. “And you know it.”
She stiffens. “Excuse me?”
“He hasn’t loved you since you met,” he whispers, frowning. “He’s hated you. I’ve heard the way he talks about you. To put it plainly, he’s never despised anybody more.”
Taissa ignores how that stings, how her stomach drops. It’s nothing she doesn’t already know. “He lied to you, James,” she says with as much haughtiness as she can muster. (A lot. She can muster a lot. Taissa Cho lives in a perpetual state of displeasure.)
James sneers, but can’t seem to hide a small flinch. “Kion would never do that.”
There’s a heavy note to his voice that Taissa chooses to ignore. “Don’t take it personally,” she says sweetly. “He lied to himself, as well. All because he was too frightened to face the truth: that he is madly in love with me.”
“He doesn’t write poetry.” James seems to be clinging to this specific detail like it’s a lifeboat. “Even if you held him at qylpoint, he would never write poetry.”
Kion is glaring at them in a clear but silent order to shut up. Taissa blows him a kiss. “Love makes people do mad things,” she tells James as a muscle pulses in their captain’s jaw.
Frustration, and something else, gleams in James’s eyes. “I don’t know what game you’re playing at, Taissa, but if you’re using our team to do it, I really do suggest that you stop.” With that, he turns his attention back to Kion, leaving Taissa with an uncomfortable knot in the pit of her stomach.
Taissa’s forehead gleams with sweat as she grits her teeth, gently but firmly steering Cronus back toward the Echelon Position for the fifth time.
“Stop toiting me about!”
“Then stop leaving the formation!”
Cronus’s frustration burns brighter, and hotter, inside of her. James shoots her an impatient, angry look from where he sits on Mabb. Kion’s accusing stare isn’t much better.
“Cho!” he snarls.
They’re in the midst of a practice game. Three draconian jewels sparkle tauntingly at Taissa from across the pitch, where yellow-jerseyed reserves fly about, acting as the opposing team.
And they’re shite. Like truly, horrible, incorrect-ably shite.
It should be an easy victory, but there’s the small fact that the NCL Stymphs are, also, shite.
She doesn’t remember them as being this bad.
No, they’d been formidable opponents, a cohesive team with a sleek sharpness in their formations, their attacks and defense.
But now, seeing them in action, they’re bumbling.
The Blunduns really have done a massive number on them.
It’s one thing to see it on the telly. It’s another to watch it unfold right here, on the pitch.
The offensive Dozers—Knox, óríon, and Bronte—consistently misjudge the distance of their targets, their stymphs either veering too far to the left or too far to the right.
Their formations lack unity, and Taissa has counted five of Knox’s and óríon’s infamous arguments in the short six minutes they’ve been playing.