Chapter Twenty-Seven Kion
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kion
“So we go to this club tonight,” says óríon as the team stretches on the dew-drop slick pitch, breathing in the early morning air, “and we, what? We ask the púca to erase our curse? Nei. This will not work. I am embarrassed by all of you.”
Kion scowls at the Icelander. It will work. It needs to work.
“That’s why you’re coming. You’re big and scary.” With one hand, Mahina taps her chest twice, her fingers slightly curved. “If anyone can fuck those púcas up, it’s you, Magnússon.” Adriel laughs softly next to her, not looking up from his phone as he leans into a quad stretch.
“Better stretch your muscles, old man,” says Knox, grinning cheekily as he rolls his shoulders and bounces on the balls of his feet. “You don’t want to keel over mid-fight, later.”
Magnússon bristles. “And I don’t want my fist to meet your face, but accidents, they happen.”
“I truly don’t think this is a good idea,” James presses from next to Knox.
He looks even worse than yesterday: haggard and pallid, with puffy eyes from what must be a lack of sleep.
Unease swarms in Kion’s gut. James insists he’s fine, but he sure as hells doesn’t look like it.
Or maybe it’s just stress. This morning, walking out onto the pitch, he confided in Kion that his mother has been pressing him to leave the league immediately and apply to law school. Again.
“No shit,” agrees Bronte, hopping up from a butterfly stretch and looking toward their stymphs, standing on the sidelines of the pitch and watching their players. “But it’s better than sitting back and trying nothing—”
“OH MY GOD!” Adriel screeches, and Kion nearly jumps a foot into the air. Clearly, there’s some sort of—of emergency happening. Adriel is usually so quiet—
“What!”
“You guys did porn?” Adriel gasps, expression scandalized. His hazel eyes are as wide as coins.
Merlin’s saggy scrotum. Slowly, Kion looks toward Taissa, who’s grimacing as Cronus walks toward her, cackling—clearly intent on seeing whatever photograph Adriel is looking at on his phone.
Cato isn’t far behind, and the others—Jemmy, Mab, Ahava, Robin, Valsa, Icarus, and Kahoali—are also vying for a peek.
All of their eyes glitter in acute avine interest.
“Show me,” says Cato in clear delight, bumping Kion’s shoulder with the tip of his bronze beak.
Mahina grabs the phone from Adriel; her jaw drops as she passes it to óríon.
óríon blinks rapidly as Knox leans over and crows in delight before snatching the phone and giving it to Isla.
The redhead’s entire face is flushed pink as she takes a peek and hurriedly passes the phone to Bronte, who looks delighted.
James silently turns his head and with a delicately raised hand, dramatically refuses to look, casting his eyes up to the heavens as if praying to Merlin to strike him down.
“What the fuck are you on about?” snarls Kion. Bronte, waggling her eyebrows, offers the phone to him. He snatches it with an ominous feeling uncurling in his gut.
“Wow,” says Cato, looking over his shoulder. He feels Taissa’s stymph breathing down his back, too. “Is this how humans procreate? Why do you wear trainers during it?”
Ah.
Fuck.
There, on the screen, are he and Taissa.
She’s atop him on a bed full of rumpled white sheets, her perfect little arse an upside-down heart, the pink thong of her lingerie matching those ridiculous bloody trainers and the flush on Kion’s face as he stares at the Wily Witch photograph.
His stomach tightens as he moves his gaze up and sees the photographer has captured them mid-kiss.
His eyes are closed, his hands are moving down her back, one tangling in her hair, the other squeezing her arse.
“You’re very good at…pretending,” Cato snickers.
“Let me see,” Taissa demands, striding to his side and narrowing her eyes at Cronus, who seems to be laughing at her. “It can’t be that bad.” She leans over and chokes on her own spit.
“Oh,” she says, reeling. “Oh.”
Bloody hells. Kion scrolls through the article, photos interspersed with text from their interview. Here’s Taissa, underneath him, her hands clawing at his back. Here’s him, nibbling on her neck, her head thrown back in rapture. Here’s her, kissing him.
He’s almost scared to look up at her, to see regret on her face. He makes himself do it, anyway.
She’s grinning at him. With sparkling eyes.
Look, he tries to hold it in. He does. But a low rumble and a small smile escape him despite his best efforts.
It’s like everybody on the pitch has gasped at once—including the Wingeds, and the handful of Pinion-stationed DMC agents in the stands who seem to be trailing their stymphs around everywhere these days.
Just to take them outside, they’ve had to check in with the federal agents, who’ve been watching over the stables for any signs of illness. Bloody overkill.
“Captain,” Knox chokes out, “did you just laugh?”
That snaps him back into himself. Kion presses his lips together and glowers at Knox. “No.”
“He’s lying. Look at his neck,” signs Mahina with a knowing smirk as she taps her own.
“Wait.” Taissa’s frowning now, looking down at the phone with pursed lips, a little line forming between her two brows. “Scroll up a little. What was the title of the article?”
“ ‘A Wee, Wily Shag’?” Bronte suggests, and then snickers with ill-concealed glee.
“ ‘Playing for Keeps’?” Knox chimes in.
“ ‘Look at These Fuckers’?” Mahina adds.
Cronus turns and squawks something to his progeny, who throw their heads up toward the sky and cackle. The old beast looks hesitantly pleased with himself. Kion doesn’t want to know what title the smart-arse bird came up with.
But, Merlin. Any of those options would be better than this. Kion feels himself grow very fucking still as he scrolls up to the headline.
Carriwitchet’s Newest Couple—The Captain and the Cheater (Wily Witch Exclusive)
He sees it.
The light guttering out in Taissa’s eyes, her smile fading as she swallows hard and stares fixedly toward the siege towers, pushing away Adriel’s phone with a sharp motion.
“Cho,” he tries gently.
“I’m fine, Locke,” she mutters back. And just like that, she sinks into a frown, crossing her arms and glaring at the siege towers like they personally offended her. Wary of the team’s curious ears, Kion struggles to find words to say.
“I can burn down their offices,” he says seriously. He’s not joking. He’s committed arson before, after all.
A weak smile. Too weak. “I’m fine. I am.”
Unable to pick any more words from the hundreds rushing through his mind, Kion mentally drafts a scathing letter to whoever picked that fucking title. He’ll get it taken down. But for now, it seems like she just needs a distraction. A way to get out of her own head.
Kion knows what that’s like.
Tossing the phone back to Adriel, he claps his hands. “Right,” he says, “circle up—”
“What’s the point?” laments Knox. “We’re cursed, Cap. Even scrimmages end with grievous injuries—”
“That’s why we’re not scrimmaging,” he says, looking directly at Taissa. Fuck. He’ll do anything to put some light back in those eyes. “We’re playing Head-to-Head.”
“I haven’t played that in years,” whoops Knox as the others murmur amongst themselves.
Kion isn’t surprised. Head-to-Head is a kids’ game: an easy way to introduce competition to new riders.
It’s essentially a racing warm-up: During the initial round, all players line up at a starting point on their Wingeds.
The first one to pass the finish line—usually a siege tower—wins.
In the next round, the winner sits out from the race, instead playing as a sort of Knocker, focusing on slowing down the racers by bumping into them or knocking them off their steeds.
It’s a remnant from the nostalgic days when carriwitchet was just pure fun, when there were no bloody worries about brackets or dissolution.
A game that’s so far from the real carriwitchet that he’d be ruddy shocked if the curse can affect it.
He and his players take to the skies. As he watches Taissa smile slightly atop Cronus while they line up in formation, something in his chest lightens.
“GO!” he roars, and they all shoot forward like fodder from a cannon, wind whipping through their hair.
He and Cato take the lead, and he twists back to see Cronus and Taissa in last place, the stymph’s sparsely feathered wings flapping determinedly.
She cocks a brow at him, whispering something to Cronus, who cackles and begins to overtake Icarus and Bronte.
“GET BACK HERE, CHO!” cries the latter.
“Tough luck, Rihowl!” he hears Taissa shout as he turns back around. “Catch me if you can!”
He’s nearly reached the siege tower when Knox, on Robin, hurtles past—turning around to stick out his tongue and blow a raspberry at Kion.
“Very mature,” Kion bellows, and then watches in amusement as óríon overtakes Knox with the most determined fucking look on his face that he’s ever seen in his life.
“Defeat, o bitter defeat!” mourns Knox, throwing up his hands as óríon wins, but they’re all windswept and laughing, and Taissa’s cheeks are glowing pink like fucking cherry blossoms, and he can’t remember the last time he had this much fun.
Even James has some color back in his face as they all race back and forth, Isla laughing so hard that she comes in last each consecutive time, Mahina and Adriel tying each time, Taissa and Cronus steadily moving upward in rank with each race.
Merlin, even the gerontological stymph is obviously enjoying himself, red eyes glittering as he flies with his children, even seeming to exchange a few squawking jokes with Mabb and Cato, who chatter excitedly back.
By the end of the game, they’re all flushed and sweaty as they dismount their stymphs.
It must be a remnant of the adrenaline, but Kion feels like a soppy git as he watches Bronte and Knox sling their arms around Taissa’s shoulders, laughing over some joke Knox made about the game and/or óríon, who Isla is beaming up at as he gently returns her high five.
Mahina is on Adriel’s back, her fist pumping at the sky as she grins.
It’s like the team is their own little world again, their own universe, and maybe that’s why Kion doesn’t notice the pallid-faced DMC agent hurrying over to them until he’s huffing and puffing in Kion’s face, his collared shirt stained with sweat as he listens to somebody through the phone he holds to his ear.
Kion’s heart sinks to the bottom of his riding boots. “What?” he demands, but he already knows.
It’s happened again.
To all the other Wingeds.
The dragons. The pherrexes. The hippogriffs, the phoenixes, the perytons. The rocs, the griffins, the rarins and pegases. They’ve all been afflicted.
All of them…except the stymphalians.