Chapter Thirty-One Kion
Chapter Thirty-One
Kion
It’s too fucking early for a team meeting.
A sentiment that’s echoed by all his other players as they slump in the media room, staring up at Felicity Vance and Rowan Elder as they sit at the raised table in front of them, like they’re holding some obscure press conference.
Which, he guesses, this is.
Spare DMC and CCB agents line the room, hands clasped behind their backs.
Bill and Niamh sit at the table, too, but Kion knows for a fact that they also have no fucking clue what’s going on.
It’s written all over Dodds’s face, his blue eyes puzzled.
Niamh beams at the players, trying to look optimistic, but most of her attention is fixated on her tablet, probably finding ways to milk the benefits of the press flooding in because of the boudoir shoot.
“Right,” says Vance, clearing her throat. “Thank you all for being here so early. We appreciate it.”
“I was literally dragged out of my warm, soft bed for this,” groans Knox, his head in his hands as he sits sandwiched between Bronte and óríon, who both look worse for the wear.
A night of partying at the Shrieking Pumpkin has turned each one of them weary and sickly looking.
In fact, out of all his players, Isla is the only one looking anything but dead on her feet.
In fact, the girl is glowing, with a light in her eyes that Kion hasn’t seen in a very long time. He glances back to Bronte, who’s glaring at the ground and looking abjectly miserable. How the tables have turned.
Some people don’t realize what it is they’ve wanted all along until it’s gone. It’s a hard lesson, but one that Bronte will have to learn.
“We have called you here to discuss new breakthroughs in both investigations,” Elder adds, obviously trying to steal the lead from Vance, who seems to be seething. Elder puffs away on his pipe, ignoring what is plainly Vance kicking him underneath the table.
As he dives into “their” findings—bullshit, he and Taissa did all of the legwork—and explains that both curses originated from a púca, Kion sneaks a glance to his left, at James. He’s really not looking too well, sitting limp in his chair, eyes half closed, breathing shallowly.
Bloody hells. Warble-ing took a massive toll on him.
But…
Alarm slowly spreads through Kion. He looks worse than yesterday, which looked worse than the day before.
Whatever this is…it can’t just be stress, or a hangover.
Lines bracket his friend’s face, and his eyes are red, almost bloodshot.
Damn it. He should have been keeping a closer eye on James’s…
condition, whatever it is. No matter how much James might try to deny that something is wrong.
Guilt makes his chest tighten. James was right, last night. Kion hasn’t been spending as much time with him as he should have, because—fine, because now he’s obsessed with Taissa Cho and takes any excuse to be near her despite his fear that this is all just fake to her.
There’s nobody I’d rather be in a fake relationship with more than you.
Fuck. If he weren’t so broken, and so sure that she could obliterate the shattered pieces of him into nothing, he would have told her that he wants them to be more than a scheme.
But he gets attached too easily. She might destroy him.
Utterly.
“James,” Kion whispers under his breath, gently grabbing James’s wrist.
His skin is cold, clammy to the touch.
James jerks his hand away, shaking his head and scowling. Kion doesn’t give a damn.
“Is it the Fading Fever?” he demands as Elder continues detailing the newest revelations. “Have you run out of meds? I can—”
“Truly, Kion,” James insists irritably, “I’m fine. I’m told I drank rather a lot last night. I know quite well what it is to be ill; this is nothing. A mild case of Vizzleworth’s Voddy, I daresay.”
He tries to keep his voice measured, even as concern flares inside of him like a bloody firecracker. “This started long before your Warble-ing last night,” Kion whispers. “You’ve been looking poorly for days, mate. If there’s something going on—”
“ ‘Poorly’?” Real anger sparks behind James’s spectacles. “I’m always poorly, Kion. If not for the lacker pills, I’d be long dead by now. This is nothing new to me. I’m elf-shot; I will always be elf-shot. But I apologize if my poorliness disturbs you.”
His stomach bottoms out. How does Kion always manage to get it so completely wrong?
To say the wrong fucking thing in the wrong fucking way?
He swallows hard. “James,” Kion says, and wants to do something, say something, but it all sticks in his throat.
All he can think about is last night, James hugging him and slurring the truth: They rarely see each other these days.
His friend turns back toward Magis Elder, who’s come to the end of his long-winded recap, in clear dismissal.
“Two curses,” the magis finishes with a bit of a flourish. “One on the Wingeds. And one on you.”
Kion’s so enveloped by his worry for James that when the room devolves into chaos, at first he barely notices that his teammates are exploding with anger, lobbing barbed questions at Vance and the geancánach, their voices tight and angry from the injustice of it all.
Knox looks like he’s halfway toward throwing his chair at the wall, his cheeks burning pink as óríon holds him down, braving the lad’s shaking fist. Adriel and Mahina, as synchronized as ever, are jabbing accusing fingers at Dodds, Adriel hissing something about “can’t believe you were going to dissolve us when it was literally never our fault,” while Dodds massages his temples and looks like he wants to die.
Next to Kion, Taissa is shifting in her seat, eyes narrowed at Felicity Vance, who’s apparently trying to get a word in edgewise—which is impossible, because óríon is cursing loudly in Icelandic as Knox elbows him in the face, Isla is shouting questions over the din, Mahina’s hands are flying at the speed of light, Adriel is still running his mouth off on Dodds, and Bronte is trying to tell them all to shut up but is making everything so much louder.
Right.
“OI!” shouts Kion, rising from his seat. “FUCKING QUIET!”
The room goes dead silent. The only sound is a faint scuffing as óríon finally wrestles Knox back into his chair, which he’s successfully prevented from being thrown at the wall.
Underneath the eyes of the Stymphs, Kion makes an impatient gesture toward Vance, who looks paler than she had when she entered the room.
Yeah. His team will do that to some. “Listen to her,” he bites out, irritated beyond belief.
His players appropriately subdued, Kion sits back down.
Vance clears her throat. “As we were saying, the investigation into who hired the púca is…ongoing. The CCB will be handling that aspect of the case. Meanwhile, for weeks now, the DMC has been researching ways to reverse a púca’s curse.
It’s hard stuff. We’re working based on legend and fable, but we all know that the stories are usually true.
We finally connected the dots, and we need your help. ”
Kion frowns, folding his arms as he settles back into his chair. Their help? Sure, he and Taissa have done a decent job of playing sleuths, but that’s all it is. Playing. Now that the DMC and CCB are finally getting their heads together, what use can a handful of cursed athletes be?
He’s not the only one with questions.
“What are you talking about?” Knox pipes up.
“Why can’t you lot ever do your job by yourselves?” groans Bronte.
Mahina signs something roughly along the lines of Knox’s questions, but with a nice smattering of curse words and enraged expressions.
Vance folds her hands in front of her. “How do you feel about a summer trip to Ballyford?”
A—what?
The ensuing silence is so thick that it’s suffocating. Kion and his players all stare at Vance in varying degrees of confusion. Even Niamh sets down her tablet, pursing her glossy pink lips and frowning at the DMC agent.
Ballyford?
What the fuck do they need to go to Ballyford for?
The Hidden City in Northern Ireland is the tiniest slice of land in the UKHC, smaller even than Banallan in Scotland. Nothing’s there, nothing except a tiny Witchery and the NCL Rocs, Rank One in the Minor League circuit. The rocs are asleep, so playing them is out of the question. Why…
“In a week, on June fifteenth, Ballyford will be directly underneath the Summer Eclipse,” continues Vance.
Unimpressed, still-confused eyes stare back at her.
The Summer Eclipse is nothing special. While total solar eclipses occur outside of the UKHC at a fairly rare rate, they happen every single summer in the UKHC. The world works differently within the wards of the Hidden Cities, influenced by the magnetic pull of magic on outside natural forces.
Or something.
Kion had never paid much attention in the Witchery, unless he was out on the pitch.
It’s possible he’s regretting that now.
“And during the Summer Eclipse,” says Vance, “the annual Wild Hunt will take place in Ballyford’s mountains. Specifically, the Sliabh Réaltach range.”
All the more reason to avoid Ballyford, then, Kion thinks, still puzzled.
The Wild Hunt is the largest Unseelie gathering in the world, so large that Seelie officials as well as UKHC law enforcement have decided that really there’s not one damn thing they can try to do about it without risking their lives.
Lackers, they have Glasto or whatever the hells it’s called in Pilton.
The Unseelie have the Wild Hunt, a night of revelry and, obviously, hunting.
Hunting whatever Seelie is stupid enough to get in their path.
It’s not uncommon for Seelie citizens of the town directly underneath the Summer Eclipse to evacuate days prior to the Hunt.
That night is a purging of Unseelie chaos.
Maybe the law enforcement looks away because it’s better to sacrifice one night to the bedlam than to live with a year of it.