Chapter Twenty-Six Kion
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kion
He’s a fucking mess. The entire night, he tosses and turns, unable to get Taissa Cho out of his mind.
Merlin. He wishes he’d said yes.
He wonders if she meant it the way he wants her to.
Fuck. Sleeping is an impossible chore that he just doesn’t have the patience for.
So when his phone buzzes, he’s happy to roll over and grab it, squinting at the bright light.
When he sees who’s texted him at the bloody ungodly hour, he sits straight up.
Jacks Jun Clarke, the bastard, has finally gotten back to him.
Jacks: Why do you keep calling me? I am very busy and important.
Jacks: (If this is about the recent string of grand larceny in Saintfast, I know nothing about that)
Jacks: (Although I have recently happened to come into possession of a great deal of Rolexes if you would like one)
Kion: How do I find the Withers
Jacks: HAHAHA
Kion: Do I sound like I am bloody joking
Jacks: I’ve actually never heard you make a joke, Kion.
Jacks: Do I need to know why you’re trying to track them down? Sliiiiightly concerned
Kion: No.
Jacks: That does not comfort me
Jacks: All I’ll say is that Shrieking Pumpkin on Lantern Street is a second home to Orla Banes. And when you go—for your mysterious purposes—please tell her to stop ignoring my wooing. Am dreadfully in love with her, you see
Kion: No.
Jacks: I’ll do it myself, then
Jacks: Let me come along. Haven’t seen you in some time.
Kion: No.
Jacks: Is this about the hair?
Kion: Bye.
Jacks: WELL THEN
Shrieking Pumpkin. He’s familiar with the Unseelie club on Lantern Street—it’s on the way to Rules. Satisfied, Kion shuts off his phone and tosses it aside. Finally: a bloody starting point.
It’s five a.m. when he gets up for good after a sleepless night thinking about the softness of Taissa’s lips and the little freckles dappling her face.
This—this is why he’d chosen to sleep on the sofa, instead of tangled in the sheets with Taissa.
The boudoir shoot has run through his mind on repeat.
Merlin knows what would happen if they slept together.
Probably he’d become even more obsessed with her.
Probably she’d grow bored of him. And that would cut him. Deep.
Too deep.
James says he has a fear of loss. Maybe. If a “fear of loss” is that constant gaping chasm in his chest when he looks at his team, his friends, and Taissa, then yeah. He might have a fear of loss.
It was fine when it was fake. When there was a line between them.
When touching her was calculated and part of one of their “formations.” But now that line is blurred.
Who blurred it first? Was it him, hunting down that Frasier bastard for her?
Not that he wouldn’t go to such lengths for any of his other teammates, but with Taissa, it was different.
Listening to her soft cries had stoked a fire in him.
He’d wanted to kill Colum Frasier. For her. To protect her. To avenge her.
Because he’s quickly becoming enraptured by her.
That’s the only way he knows how to describe it. And for him, that’s a big word. Yet somehow too small to describe the sudden lightness in him when he looks at her. When she laughs and glowers and then tells him to sod off.
The night of the storm in her cottage: He hadn’t realized it, but not one single flashback had come after she’d led him into her bedroom.
As she’d showed him that hideous caricature of him on her wall, framed like it was the damn Mona Lisa.
Being with Taissa had staved off the memories of the Waywardly Home. Distracted him.
Enchanted him, as sure as any glyph.
As quietly as he can, he leaves the flat.
When he returns, bags in hand, Taissa is rummaging through the dark-painted cabinets of his kitchen.
He’ll never get tired of how his shirts are the length of dresses on her.
Trying to steady his breathing because it’s ridiculous how the sight of her makes him approach cardiac arrest, Kion clears his throat. “Morning.”
She turns. Her curls are rumpled, her glasses slightly askew, and he has begun to have heart palpitations even though she’s glaring at him.
Taissa Cho, it seems, is not a morning person.
He’s noticed it: that she’s grumpiest between the hours of seven a.m. to eleven a.m. After those hours, her smiles come easily enough. In comparison.
“Why do you only have health-nut food, Locke?” she demands, before her eyes snap to the bag. “Please tell me that’s real breakfast or I’ll murder you.”
It’s not psychologically right that her threats make him want to smile.
“It’s food. And something else.” Feeling suddenly awkward, he shifts on his feet as Taissa stomps over on her abused bunny slippers.
She goes for the plastic bag first, and hums in joy as her fingers find the greasy wrapper of the sausage roll.
Before he’s so much as blinked, Taissa has unwrapped it and stuffed a good portion in her face.
“I suppose I forgive you for having nothing but fruits and vegetables,” she snarfles.
“What’s in this bag?” He grimaces as her brows raise. “Gone shopping, I see.”
The bags are cream-colored and thick, with golden embossing reading Havergourden’s in looping letters.
The elite, nymph-owned department store had not been pleased to find him banging on their glass doors at the ungodly hour of five-thirty a.m., but a too-exorbitant sum from his wallet bribed the workers to let him into the shop.
The boudoir shoot money hit his account this morning, and probably Cho’s, too, but Kion hadn’t seen the harm in doing it himself.
“They’re for you,” he grumbles, reverting to grumpiness out of habit.
Taissa stares. “What?” she demands, mouth full of sausage roll. Before he can offer a limpid explanation, she’s wiping her hands on a greasy brown napkin and diving into the bags.
She pulls out the shoes first, thank Merlin.
Warmth unfurls in his chest as he watches her lips part.
The trainers are black with light blue stripes and white laces—by a brand that merges athleticism with comfort.
He’d looked in her riding boots for her size, and had opted to pass on purchasing those pink platform Shus after watching her angrily chuck them off in the train station, shrieking about “pinched toes.”
“Your bunny slippers are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,” Kion explains gruffly as Taissa stares, mouth agape, at him.
He points at one of the poor, abused things.
“That one’s ear’s literally coming off, Cho.
They look demented.” It’s true. One of the gray, floppy ears is holding on by a literal thread.
Her cheeks are pink. “I—Thank you.” Taissa blinks hard a few times, and hugs the shoes to her chest. “I mean it. I love them.”
Why is it that he feels happier than he did when the Stymphs won the World Cup? Kion feels one corner of his mouth quirk slightly upward as he points to the other bag. “This, too.”
Giving him a gratefully bewildered look, Taissa opens the next bag, and goes quiet.
When she looks back up at him, her eyes are glittering with what he thinks might be suppressed laughter. “Morgana, Locke. That’s a lot of underwear.”
He’d enlisted one of the store attendants to help him gather anything and everything that Taissa might have been robbed of. Until yesterday, Kion had no idea that there were so many types of women’s knickers or bras. He was dizzy by the end of it. Hells, his head is still swimming.
There’s one item he’d picked out himself. One he couldn’t resist. As Taissa digs around in the bag, he knows she’ll see it soon.
Right…about…now.
Her cheeks redden adorably and he knows she’s seen it. Tugging up the tiny slip of the silky black nightdress, she raises her brows.
“Locke,” Taissa drawls, but he can see that she’s growing pinker by the moment, “do you know what ‘mixed signals’ are?”
Kion bites on the inside of his cheek. Yeah. He just hadn’t been able to resist slipping it into the shopping basket. His filthy brain had been imagining peeling it off her. “It’s just to replace whatever the bastard took.”
She’s clearly not fooled. “Right.” Taissa hesitates, and then steps forward. When she puts her arms around him, Kion goes as rigid as a board. What is happening? What is this?
Taissa Cho is hugging him. Not for the cameras, not for the deal. She’s hugging him to…hug him.
“Thank you,” she mumbles against his chest. “You didn’t have to do this.”
Awkwardly, he embraces her back. Kion can probably count on one hand the number of times he’s been hugged like this. His voice feels rough and scratchy against his throat. “It’s nothing.”
Taissa pulls away. “It’s not nothing, and you know it. You’ve saved me from a life of being knicker-less and wearing bunny baffies. I owe you my dignity,” she says seriously. “I do.”
Kion ducks his head to hide what might be a fucking smile.
The horror.