Chapter Nine Taissa #4
“One moment,” she snaps back before turning toward Cronus, who’s leaning down threateningly toward her.
She eyes the scar on his bronze beak, and slowly—aware she’s risking her fingers—lifts a hand to gently touch it.
Cronus’s eyes flare, and his feathers bristle, but he doesn’t chomp down like Taissa half expects him to.
“I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” she tells him as her stomach sinks.
Was Locke right? Was glyph-bonding with a traumatized, ancient, filicidal beast a mistake, after all?
She’ll never hear the end of it from his fat gob.
“Okay? Ever. So if you don’t want to go again because you didn’t like it, you don’t need to.
We can get you back to your nest, or you can stay here and watch the game outside. It’s your choice.”
Cronus blinks, slowly, before jerking his head away. “I get to decide?” he asks suspiciously.
“Yes. It’s up to you.”
Her stymph cocks his head. “Why?” He’s confused, she can feel it. Baffled. Incredibly wary.
“Because you’re the one flying through the air at deadly heights and getting attacked by the other stymphs.
” Taissa sighs. “It’s a privilege to get to ride you, Cronus, it’s not a right.
That’s how carriwitchet started, in Ye Olden Days.
Some people forget that. But I’m not going to force you to carry me through a game if you’re unwilling.
We can figure something out.” She hesitates.
“At the same time, though, you should also know that I’ll never hurt you.
That’s not who I am. And if you hate me steering you, then I’ll ask you if you can go in a certain direction.
Like we did earlier, to get the weapons.
We can figure out what works, and what doesn’t.
We can also prove to all of them”—she gestures upward to where her teammates and their stymphs fly—“that we’re not to be fucked with. ”
His confusion abates, replaced by hesitant hope and begrudging respect.
Cronus’s sparse feathers ruffle, revealing his spots of pink skin here and there, pebbled with gooseflesh.
He tilts his head the other way, talons scratching at the dirt, bronze beak clicking together in contemplation.
After a long, long, moment, he grumbles: “You had a different Winged before me.” He steps closer; his beak bumps against her sternum, where their Bonding glyph burns—over the little splotch of what remains of hers and Sansa’s.
“I can feel it,” Cronus adds, and she’s surprised to hear bitterness in his voice, a touch of…
jealousy? Resignation, at coming in at second place? “I can feel her.”
Taissa doesn’t have time to wonder if all Wingeds, glyph-bonded to a rider who lost their first, can somehow sense the long-gone presence of the other before Cronus adds, “I’m not her.
But you’re not Markus, either, hatchling.
” He snaps his beak, and flaps his wings once, then twice.
“Don’t steer me, and don’t squeeze me. If you do, I’m done. ”
“Fair enough,” she replies, her face breaking into a grin. Cronus rolls his eyes.
“This is still going to be bad,” he warns her as she completes the High Mount, and he’s right.
The rest of practice is even more of a nightmare (or a night terror that Taissa wishes she could wake screaming from) than before.
It’s almost like Locke is trying unnecessarily hard to compensate for James’s snide comment about favoritism.
Even throughout all the long years of their hatredship, she’s never heard him yell like this.
It would be impressive if she wasn’t on the verge of murder.
“OI, NEWBIE! If you can’t stay in formation, at least stay in your fucking saddle!”
“CHO! What the fuck was that? If I never see that again, it’ll be too bloody soon!”
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? CHO! CHO! GET BACK HERE. NOW!”
And then her personal favorite: “YOU ARE PLAYING LIKE A DROWNED RAT!”
“Holy shit,” pants Bronte as she flies alongside Taissa, shielding her from the opposing Knockers as she tries to reach the tower, “he’s not going to have a voice tomorrow, is he?”
Thank Morgana. Taissa grits her teeth as Cronus swerves away from a reserve player’s attack, acquiescing to her mental request. “Or a head!” she shouts back.
Bronte cackles, and her stymph, Icarus, laughs with her. “I like you!” she yells over yet another one of Kion’s insults as he furiously zooms past (“IF YOU FLEW AS FAST AS YOUR GOB RUNS, WE’D HAVE WON ALREADY!). “You’re not too bad, Taissa!”
Taissa’s mouth twitches upward in a smile, but she mashes it back down. Bronte could be just like her friends on the Wyverns and have no trouble leaving her to rot if the time comes. Friends are finicky, and friends are fake. Friends always leave you, in the end.
Taissa’s not here to make friends. She’s here to be a teammate. That’s it. That’s all.
So she just leans forward in Cronus’s saddle and keeps her eyes fixed on the draconian jewels as Bronte, grinning, futilely tries to catch her eye.