Chapter Sixteen Kion #3
“Your player?” James’s eyes glitter. “We’re all your players, Kion.”
Merlin’s fucking mustache. He can’t say anything right, can he? He feels a familiar twist of self-disgust, but pushes on, refusing to show James how much he’s wavering. “I just want to know what’s going on. I’m asking as your friend right now. Don’t make me ask as your coach.”
James’s throat bobs.
Kion uncrosses his arms, letting them fall helplessly to his sides.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lied.” His stomach aches with guilt.
“Look, I didn’t want to. You of all people should know that.
And it feels like by coming out with the whole scheme, I’ve only made it worse.
But I was only trying to make things right. ”
Fuck, he hates being this vulnerable. It’s like he’s baring his jugular to a wolf and saying, Go on.
Bite me. It would be so much easier to just be angry instead, to snap at James and get him right back for giving him the cold shoulder.
He feels it rising in him, stubbornly overtaking the guilt and shame. Kion shoves it down.
“You didn’t tell me about recruiting her, either.” James is staring fixedly at the ground. His glasses slide down his nose bridge; he pushes them back up with a finger.
Kion grimaces. He has a point. And while it wasn’t exactly a lie, it wasn’t not one, either.
“I didn’t think she would actually go for it.
” Not until he’d seen her reduced to gardening, of all things.
“Didn’t want to get the team’s hopes up.
Besides, you know how Tanaka chatters. He might have leaked the plan to the press. ”
“Or you didn’t want us to talk you out of it.”
James knows him too sodding well. “That, too.”
A small snort. “You’re a prick.”
“Yeah.” Kion bites the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, I know that.”
“I don’t trust her. And you shouldn’t, either.” James looks back up, and the set of his jaw is determined. “Don’t you remember? She hurt you, Kion. She told Unseelie Weekly you were dating a troll—”
“A jaundiced troll,” agrees Kion.
“—she spilled wine all over you at that awards ceremony—”
“Right before I had to make that bloody speech.” Somehow, she’d expertly made it look like he had done it to himself. And that suit had been a bloody expensive rental, in the end.
“—and she ruined your relationship with Chasca—”
“You never liked her, anyways.” James had hated the pampered Summertides princess with every ounce of his being, although he’d valiantly tried to hide it from Kion. When they broke up, Kion caught James dancing in his room.
Literally bloody dancing out of joy.
Now, James is glaring at him in what looks like abject annoyance. “Why are you smiling?” he demands. “These aren’t happy memories, Kion.”
Smiling? Kion jerks back to himself and flattens his lips. He doesn’t smile. Least of all because of Cho’s shenanigans. The business with the troll rumor had cost him weeks of humiliation. He’d gotten hungry looks from Unseelie creatures for over a month afterward.
“I’m not.” He shakes his head to clear it. Smiling. Fucking hells. What’s next? Will he be pulling rainbows and flowers out of his arse? “Can you forgive me, James?”
Merlin’s balls. His voice hitches at the end, and he knows James can hear how bloody terrified he is that he’s gone and lost his best mate over someone as incorrigible as Taissa Cho.
He’s not exactly the greatest at making friends.
He’s even worse at keeping them. All he wants is to go back to normal.
Drinks in his flat. Sundays spent racing their stymphs for outrageous bets—If I win, you have to go out wearing full-body Cockatrice merch—and swimming in River Keat until they’re as wrinkled as prunes and fighting off hungry merrows and greenteeths.
For a moment, James looks like he wants to say more. His mouth opens slightly, and hesitation crosses his face. Almost like he’s about to tell Kion a secret.
Something like foreboding scuttles down Kion’s spine. The hells’ going on with him? Even James’s eyes are suddenly dark, darting around the hall like he’s checking to see that nobody else is around.
“Kion…”
But then James’s hesitation is gone as quickly as it came, like sun breaking out of rain clouds, and he’s shaking his head. His mate gives him a weak smile.
“Of course I forgive you,” James mumbles. “I’m just a colossal prick.”
Kion’s not fooled.
He might not be a genius like Cho apparently is, but he’s not foolish, either.
That wasn’t what James was going to say. It’s as clear as day. Kion hesitates, caught between coach and friend, caught between forcing whatever’s happening out of him and letting it go entirely. With difficulty, he does the latter, reaching out to clap James’s shoulder.
“Yeah, mate. Can’t argue with you there.”
“Idiot,” says his friend, quietly but fondly. His eyes aren’t so hard anymore. The lines of his face have softened; he looks up at Kion with a tiny smile.
“Spoiled brat,” Kion returns, and when James rolls his eyes, for a moment it almost feels like everything is back to the way it should be.
He has a feeling it won’t last.