Chapter Thirteen Taissa
Chapter Thirteen
Taissa
The team sits haggardly around the table in Taste of Delhi, the platters of kathi rolls, aloo tikki, and matar kulcha growing cold on the worn wooden table.
Hardly anybody has eaten—hardly anybody has spoken since the short press conference they were forced to do with the NCL Cockatrices before departing Dunanaird.
Usually, reporters at a Minor League press conference would be few and far between (if anybody showed up at all, honestly), but the “Dust Bite” (as the headlines are already calling it) somehow summoned at least fifty journalists, all from different news outlets.
Kion, as captain and coach, had fielded all questions for the Stymphs.
Unfortunately, Kion’s version of fielding questions involved the gratuitous use of his favorite word.
Niamh had looked like she was going to have a stroke.
The train ride back to Pinion-upon-Keat had been a somber affair.
Taissa had curled up with her crocheting, but she hadn’t been able to concentrate on even a simple pattern.
Her fingers were shaking and they kept slipping from the metal hook.
There was still blood underneath her fingernails, all dried and brown and gunky.
It had made her nearly vomit, right there, all over the poor trolley woman who was attempting to hand her a small glass of ginger ale.
She’d washed her hands fervently in the restaurant’s small bathroom (there’s now no soap in the dispenser at all) but even after the scalding water and foaming suds, she still feels contaminated.
Even after changing into clean clothes on the train.
There had been so many bodies, dead bodies, crushed underneath the ruined stands or by the cockatrices.
The few fans the Stymphs had left had come out to steadfastly show their support—and were repaid with death.
Now, Taissa picks at her naan. Typically, after a game, she’d be hungry enough to eat an entire horse (and a cow, plus probably a couple of goats and a hog for good measure) but her stomach is still in knots and she doesn’t trust her hands to be well and truly clean.
Knox is the only one eating, but his eyes are rimmed red as he quietly munches on a kathi roll.
When Adriel speaks, everyone starts, nearly jumping out of their skin. “We shouldn’t have won,” he mumbles, burying his face in his ringed hands. Mahina rubs his shoulders, looking at him with concern. “We were losing. Like, pretty badly. It’s not right.”
Taissa can’t help but agree. Even though they’ve dodged dissolution, there’s no feeling of victory, or anything except shock and horror.
Even the amber glow of the faerie lights strung across the rafters of the restaurant, and the soft music swirling around them does nothing to soothe her.
She feels, simultaneously, like she’s either about to jump right out of her skin or never move again.
“There’s nothing we can do now.” Kion’s voice is gruffer than she’s ever heard it (which she once thought was impossible). “It was a freak accident.”
“I have never seen anything like it,” says óríon, next to her. His white hair is covered in debris from the field. “Nei. These beasts, they don’t fall. I don’t understand.”
Taissa meets Kion’s eyes from across the table. Was it only this morning that he’d demanded she bare her neck to him? She can’t mask the stab of hurt she feels as she remembers Magis Elder’s cold violet eyes demanding she confirm she hadn’t been meddling in dark magic.
Kion looks away first. Taissa goes back to picking at her naan.
“There’s nothing we can do,” he repeats firmly. “The DMC and the magistrates are looking into it.” She watches as Kion’s throat bobs. “We move on.”
James stiffens next to him. “Move on?” the player repeats, and tension settles over the team as James glares at Kion. “It was a genuine massacre, Kion. We cannot just move on.”
Does the captain flinch? “James—look, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Taissa’s eyes widen as James shakes his head, his knuckles shining bright around the armrests of his wooden seat.
“Some of us may actually want to talk about what happened, about how we feel. I’m not quite sure that you understand that, Kion.
” His voice is rising, as if emotion after emotion is bubbling, boiling, up inside of him, and spilling out after being kept inside for far too long.
The few other diners in Taste of Delhi are shooting the team curious looks.
A sinking feeling in Taissa’s stomach tells her this is not just about the disaster on the pitch.
Something like a deep hurt flashes through Kion’s eyes before it’s replaced by a furious scowl.
But she saw it, she saw it as plainly as Nessie on a clear, sunny day.
And it wasn’t the sort of annoyance she would have expected from Kion at a comment like that.
It was like seeing candy snatched from a baby, it was: a deep betrayal and a reeling shock.
“What do you mean by that?” Kion’s sharp question sounds more like a threat.
“I mean, Kion, that not all of us are as deeply repressed as you.” She can tell, from the moment the words leave his mouth, that James regrets it. It’s the way his face pales, how his eyes tighten behind his tortoiseshell frames. For a moment, she thinks he’ll take it back.
But he doesn’t.
Even the music in Taste of Delhi seems to falter.
The Stymphs are all staring at James and Kion in varying degrees of surprise and confusion.
Mahina has frozen with her glass of water halfway to her mouth.
Isla’s cheeks are growing redder and redder.
óríon is suddenly fascinated by the food on his plate.
And Kion…He’s so very, very still. He’s not even blinking. Looking at him, Taissa feels herself (or perhaps that lingering awestruck fangirl of a teenager inside her) rail in righteous anger.
“Leave him alone,” she snaps, and she’s only realized that she’s gripping her fork like a weapon when she stabs it into the wooden table. Oops. “You wee, fancy shite. Aren’t the two of you the best of mates?”
James straightens in his chair, like he’s just been waiting for Taissa to give him a reason. “I,” he sneers with withering scorn, “am not entirely certain why, exactly, you continually insist upon butting your head into conversations, and situations, and teams, you’re not welcome in, Taissa.”
Oh, classic.
“I’m a member of the NCL Stymphs,” she hisses back. “And you just insulted my captain.” Next to James, and in the corner of Taissa’s eye, Kion seems to make an infinitesimal movement. (The sudden rise, then fall, of his chest? Taissa can’t tell.)
“Why are you?” James demands.
Taissa blinks. “What?”
He leans forward, eyes glittering with unconcealed dislike. “Why, honestly, are you a member of this team? You’re just as terrible as the rest of us; just as washed up and pathetic, incapable of performing like you used to.”
Keep the heid. Keep the heid.
“I’ve been off the field for two years,” she snaps back, even as his words hit home.
He’s right. She’s been playing like a blindfolded rookie, and it’s maddening.
Two years shouldn’t be enough to completely obliterate her, to reduce her to this.
It’s struck her as odd (well, mostly infuriating) but now’s not the time to dwell on it.
Not in the middle of this verbal sparring match.
“And Locke recruited me to give you lot a fighting chance.”
“Interesting,” seethes James, nimble fingers slowly tearing his naan to shreds. He’s not looking at her anymore. “Not, perhaps, because you were sleeping with him?”
The restaurant is suddenly so quiet that one could hear a pin drop. Taissa’s stomach twists even more, almost painfully.
Kion’s head snaps toward James. “Is this what you’re fucking on about?” he asks hoarsely.
A guilty silence from James follows.
“Merlin,” Knox chimes in, sounding exasperated. “Look at his face, Cap. It definitely is.”
“James?” Isla says, furrowing her brow. “This isn’t like you…”
Bronte clicks her tongue. “I mean, he has a point. What happened to the whole, ‘don’t you fucking dare date your teammate, Bronte’ speech? A lot of us were, well, surprised.” She glances at Isla, who suddenly blushes furiously and ducks her head with a hollow little shrug.
“James.” Kion’s voice is uncharacteristically uncertain. James renews his naan-shredding with vigor. He drags a hand down his face, glaring accusatorily at Taissa through his fingers like this is all her fault (rude). She glares right back, shaking her head.
Out of the corner of her mouth, so subtly that she’s barely moving her lips, she mouths: Don’t you dare tell them. It’ll put everything in jeopardy—her ability to pay off her bills and help her mum (as well as afford a fancy pair of trainers that aren’t of the bunny variety).
I have to.
No, you really, truly, don’t.
“It’s just that,” says James, and his voice is thicker but somehow now calmer as he sets down his shreds, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know until you brought her here, and I don’t know why.”
Kion regards his friend for a long, long moment. His neck is red again.
“I tell you everything,” continues James, and Taissa looks away as his voice breaks. “Everything.”
The two men stare at each other for a long broken moment. There are secrets swimming in James’s gaze, hidden truths kept quiet to everyone but Kion.
Taissa averts her eyes, suddenly feeling like she’s intruding on something she shouldn’t be. She hadn’t been expecting a posh, snippy twat like James to have such a darkness in his eyes.
But still.
Is Locke really going to risk her losing it all?
“Right,” Locke finally says. His voice is raspy, and she knows he’s decided. “Team meeting tonight. My flat.”
Oh, she could just kill Kion Locke.