Chapter Ten Kion #3
Usually, it would be James sitting next to Kion for the train ride, but his friend has been walking around with a hazy mixture of disgust, betrayal, and lingering disbelief written all over his face for a week or so now.
Remembering it, Kion tries to ignore the sting in his chest, focusing instead on not losing this game.
But still, there’s that niggling worry that this lie is going to cost him his family instead of saving it.
If his team finds out that he deceived them all, they might hate him.
Despise him, in a different way than their groans and tired glares directed at him while he coaches.
Being hated as a coach is a rite of passage. Being hated as a friend, though…
Formations and feints swim before his eyes. He can’t ruddy concentrate.
Right when he’s finally getting somewhere, there’s a hesitant knock on the compartment door.
Kion’s head snaps up, hoping it’s James, but it’s that bloody medic Edward.
His mouth twists as the golden-haired boy smiles at Niamh’s chirpy greeting and holds something out to the glamoured Taissa.
Whatever it is, it’s wrapped in a napkin.
“Fudge pasty,” Edward says with a small smile. “From the trolley.”
Who eats fudge pasties from the trolley? Kion grits his teeth. If they weren’t on such a money-eating losing streak, they could have kept the team’s personal bus, with its tinted windows and spacious seating. And then there’d be no fudge pasties from the trolley.
Taissa looks shyly surprised as she accepts it. “Thanks, Edward.” She’s no longer murderously crocheting. Her cheeks are pink. Pink. Not red with frustration. Not pale with fury. Pink, like ruddy carnations. Pink, like the fudge pasty has gone straight to her heart.
Edward, the tosser, is blushing, too. Meanwhile, Niamh is looking horrified, staring at Kion with a do something expression.
He can’t fucking take it. “Oi,” he snaps to Edward, slamming his notebook shut and leaning over to grab one of Niamh’s magazines. He tosses it at him. Unseelie Weekly hits his chest and flutters to the ground.
“Locke!” Taissa hisses as Edward stoops to pick it up. The lad’s face goes white as he studies the cover. In a little box over the púca is a grainy photograph of Taissa and Kion walking in the park in the Baboobie Formation.
“Take a good long look at that,” says Kion. “And then when you’re done, fuck off with your fudge pasties.”
Annoyance and some confusion flash across Edward’s apparently beautiful face. He holds up his other hand, where a brown paper bag is held. “Er, okay. But I got them for the whole team. There’s one for you, too, Kion. You’d do well to get some carbs and sugar into you, everyone looks half asleep.”
Oh. Fucking great.
Kion is a massive git.
And Taissa is glaring at him like she’s going to disembowel him with her crochet hook. Physically unable to admit when he’s wrong, Kion sneers right back.
Admitting you’re wrong gets you beaten to a bloody pulp in the orphanage bathroom.
“Is there one for me?” says óríon, oblivious to the tension crackling in the compartment.
Edward pulls one out of the bag and hands it to him. óríon bites into it with relish—and finishes it in two bites. “Good,” he says thickly. “Very good. Hann var gómsaetur.”
“Glad somebody thinks so,” Edward says. “Ah, do you want yours, Kion?”
“No.”
“Give it to me,” demands óríon with all the stern expectation of a military general.
“What the hells was that?” Taissa demands as Edward leaves, looking both embarrassed and upset. Kion shifts in his seat. “What is wrong with you—”
“He is possessive over you.” óríon has a bit of fudge around his mouth, but nobody is brave enough to tell him.
That includes Kion. He once saw óríon pick up a rabid, mouth-foaming raccoon and hurl it away from him.
Without even flinching. “In my country, people do not give women fudge unless they want to sleep with them. It is traditional.”
“You’re making that up,” accuses Taissa, but she doesn’t sound too sure.
“Yes. Obviously.” óríon dusts off his hands, looking unimpressed and annoyed.
“But Kion is jealous. It is natural when two people are having passionate sex.” His lips thin.
This is the longest Kion’s heard óríon speak in a long time, and it’s obvious that he’s done now, having lost all interest in the conversation.
Taissa’s pale cheeks are bright red and splotchy. “Oh. Yeah. We’re having loads of passionate sex. Loads.”
Kion’s neck itches violently.
“And óríon has a point,” offers Niamh, nibbling on a pink nail.
“Jealousy is a perfectly normal reaction, since you two are in a relationship.” Although óríon seems oblivious to the odd stressors on each word, Kion is not.
He glares as the elf looks pointedly between him and Taissa.
“It wouldn’t be good for the relationship if someone had feelings for someone else. ”
Taissa huffs in agitation, folding her arms. “I frankly don’t know what you’re talking about, Niamh. Edward is nice, and—adorable. Like a cherub. Or a kitten. That’s all. Nice. And adorable. Unlike some people.”
Adorable? Cherub? Kion rolls his eyes, and Taissa’s soft smile flashes through his mind. She’d given it to Edward as he bandaged her up, and as he offered her the pasty. She’s never looked at him like that. At least, not that he remembers.
And not that he cares.
“Good,” the elf says, looking relieved. “I’m happy to hear it.”
“You know I only have eyes for my pookie.” Her eyes cut toward him, full of spite.
Agitation makes his muscles lock in place.
What is it with her and that cursed pet name?
He is not a pookie. “Same here…” He tries to think of an even worse pet name.
Cupcake? Kitten? Sugar lips? Disgusting, all of those.
But then he panics, and the silence has gone on for too long and is suspicious, so he ends up biting out: “…sweetheart.”
Merlin fucking damn it.
Sweetheart? Sweetheart? What the fuck?
With the way Taissa is staring at him, you’d think he’d murdered a puppy. Or kicked a child in the face.
Fuck off, mouths Kion. óríon is scrolling on his phone, tapping Play on a song that might just be bloody “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
No, you fuck off, mouths Taissa right back, making disturbingly violent gestures with her hands. Sweetheart?
A headache is beginning to pulse through his skull.
Kion scowls violently. This is the longest they’ve “spoken” in days—he doesn’t count her cursing at him, and him cursing right back during their morning drills as speaking—and he wishes it would stop.
Immediately. Nobody can agitate him quite like Taissa Cho.
Niamh taps away on her tablet, oblivious to the silent war waging between the “couple.” Kion grimaces as the damned thing chimes with an alert.
Assuming that they don’t lose this match against the Cockatrices and face dissolution head-on, Niamh has arranged a ridiculous itinerary for them in Dunanaird.
The scheme will continue past Taissa’s big reveal as the Stymphs’ new player. It has to, in order to rake in the money they need. Of course, if they lose this game and are dissolved by Dodds, there’ll be no point in the PR move.
Good news: Kion will be free from Cho.
Bad news: His worst nightmare will have come true.
He’d rather take Taissa Cho.
Kion breaks their glowering contest with a huff and opens his playbook again. Taissa turns back to angrily crocheting before her phone rings. Excusing herself, Taissa steps into the train’s corridor to answer it.
Meanwhile, óríon seems to be dozing with his cold blue eyes open.
Like a fish. Knox once reported that óríon sleeps like this, with his qyl in one hand and a huge knife in the other.
How Knox found that out, Kion has no bloody idea.
How he escaped with his life after waking him up is also a gigantic mystery.
Knox Tanaka is too much fucking trouble for his own good.
What he does know is that Magnússon has trouble sleeping.
Who wouldn’t, if the Icelandic government was after them?
It’s probably why óríon is blasting soothing lullabies into his ears.
Kion can just hear the faint melodies of “Baa, Baa Black Sheep” trickling out of his earbuds.
It would be comical if James hadn’t once told Kion that he’d caught the cold, stoic player staring mournfully down at a worn Polaroid of a light-haired girl.
Something happened to óríon in Vesturbaer.
Something really fucking bad.
Kion knows the feeling. So he never asks, never pries, into óríon Magnússon’s past. He’s not sure he’d like what he might find. And in turn, óríon doesn’t ask about his history.
Magnússon somehow understands more about Kion than he’d like him to.
James would never share Kion’s secret, but sometimes the player gives Kion glances that are just a little too knowing.
And he’s not being paranoid. Look. One Halloween, a costumed Knox jumped out at Kion with the intention of scaring the shit out of him, triggering a—well, a fucking episode.
And óríon, with no prompting, had stepped in front of a suddenly vacant-eyed Kion to hide him from the team while James helped him outside.
The next morning, óríon had looked at him and nodded. Just slightly, but enough to send a message. Kion hates it, that óríon might know, but the other man hardly ever opens his mouth.
And when he does, there’s a ninety percent chance it’s just to curse in Icelandic.
Helvíti. Rassgat. Djofulsins gunga.
As the train chugs on through the gray-smeared clouds of Britain, Kion turns back to his notebook and futilely tries to concentrate while óríon snores slightly to “Rock-a-Bye Baby.”