Chapter Thirty-Two Taissa #3
But, why? James loves carriwitchet as much as the rest of the team; she’s seen the way he pours his heart, his body, his soul, into the sport.
In fact, to Taissa it seemed like James had been taking the Stymphs’ losing streak worse than anyone else—even Kion.
Why on earth would he pay for a curse that destroyed carriwitchet, and the Wingeds?
James adores his stymph, Mabb. She finds it hard to believe that Ridgeshaw would ever put her in harm’s way.
There has to be another explanation. Besides, didn’t Elder hold interviews with each teammate, prodding for clues?
Not with Truth glyphs, she remembers. They had been interviews—not interrogations.
(Oh, dear hells…)
Kion is shaking his head. “No.” His voice is hard, but there’s a waver in it. Doubt? Taissa’s heart sinks. If even Kion is doubting James’s fidelity, well, there’s as sure a sign as any that something is quite wrong. “You’re not reading the chart right—”
“I am. It’s taken a toll on his body, hence the symptoms you’re now seeing.” Edward looks regretful as he says, “I’m obligated to report this, you understand. I’m sorry.”
“No.” Kion moves forward in a sudden lunge, only to seemingly hold himself back at the last moment. “James has nothing to do with the curses. And—if word of this gets out—he’ll be fucking blacklisted—”
“I’m sorry,” Edward says again, sounding genuinely remorseful, “but it’s protocol.”
“Fuck your protocol—”
“Kion.” Taissa feels Edward’s eyes on her as she places a gentle hand on his heaving chest. “Come on,” she whispers. “There’s nothing we can do right now. James is asleep. He’ll just have some hard questions to answer when he wakes up. And he will wake up, won’t he?” she asks over her shoulder.
Edward jerks his eyes away from her hand on Kion’s chest. “I would expect so, yes.”
“Would expect—” Kion snarls, but Taissa is shaking her head at him. The last thing they need is for Kion to somehow become tangled up in this mess. James needs to explain.
He owes the team that much.
He owes Kion that much.
As she hurries Kion out of the infirmary, they pass Niamh waiting by the door, wide-eyed and clutching her tablet to her chest. It’s clear she’s overheard everything, yet excitement still gleams in her eyes. “Um, Cruttenbolt’s just called to—”
“Not now, Niamh,” Taissa snaps, ignoring the withering flowers in the elf’s hair.
How shallow can she be? Can she not see the stricken expression on Kion’s face, the way he’s hunched in on himself?
And she wants to talk about the commercial?
Kion’s words from the lift come back to her: All we are to them is a cash cow. “Not now.”
“So,” Taissa says slowly as she watches him tear through James’s flat a few minutes later, “are we looking for evidence? Or to…destroy evidence?”
Somehow, James Ridgeshaw managed to turn the standard flat given to all players of the team into something even fancier. They’ve broken into it—with a Level Three Unlocking glyph, courtesy of her, she might add—and she is suitably stunned.
His furniture, all perfectly upholstered, looks straight from Havergourden’s and is laden with the most luxurious-looking silken pillows Taissa has ever seen.
The floor is covered in a sprawling white rug so soft that it feels like Taissa is walking on clouds (Kion made her kick off her trainers, apparently a strict rule of James’s).
And the walls have been covered in a tasteful, almost regal-looking blue wallpaper, which rests underneath gilded frames wherein paintings lie.
The flat is neat, as polished as a new coin, and Kion is currently crashing through it like an angry bull in a pen. He’s yanking open cabinets in the kitchen, he’s ripping through James’s tidy bookshelf, and he is greatly concerning Taissa.
This is not exactly how she envisioned the afterglow of their first official Real Kiss (and Complicated Feelings Talk).
“There has to be another explanation,” Kion says with a breaking voice as he strides into James’s bedroom, where the largest bed Taissa has ever seen swims with an ocean of regal dark purple silken sheets. “There has to be—”
She hears what he’s not saying.
There has to be another explanation because if there’s not, Kion will be just as wounded as any fallen warrior on a battlefield.
There has to be another explanation because it’s James, his best mate, somebody who’s shown him steadfast love.
Taissa can tell, as Kion rips the pillows off James’s bed, that he’s terrified that his love and friendship never meant anything at all.
These past weeks have been hard on him, and this…
Oh, Morgana. Her throat is suddenly so tight as she watches Kion move on to the bedside table—and make a sharp, hitching noise that speaks more than a thousand words ever could.
Slowly, so slowly, Taissa walks around the monstrosity of a bed and joins his side. It was inside the drawer, she sees. This piece of paper that Kion’s holding in a hand trembling with emotion. Rage and hurt. Disbelief. All of this she sees in his shaking fingers.
Like approaching a feral, frightened animal, Taissa slowly plucks the crumpled paper from his hand.
She looks down at the handwriting, the words written in a spindly hand.
The black ink is smeared as if it had been delivered fresh and then crushed immediately.
Taissa smooths out the paper’s wrinkles, like if they go away, so, too, will the incriminating message.
(A foolish hope.)
It’s a deal, reads the message undoubtedly written by one of Banes’s púcas. As per your request, the NCL Stymphs will have no competition. The cost will come when you least expect it.
Oh, dear.
Her mouth dries out as she slowly folds the paper back up, meeting Kion’s eyes.
Once, in the early days after her father’s death, a goblet filled with dark wine slipped from Estee’s grasp onto the cold, hard floor. Neither Taissa nor her mum had moved to clean it up, both staring down at the glittering, broken glass.
The look on Kion’s face is that shattered glass.
Taissa slips the note into her pocket and tentatively takes his hand.
“Come on,” she whispers, and it’s like she’s leading the ghost of Kion Locke as she brings him back into his own flat and makes him a hot cuppa.
He sits at the counter, shoulders hunched in, staring down at the white marbled surface until she pushes a mug of chamomile toward him.
(This is the third cup of tea she’s made him, she realizes, and then wonders why such a small thing feels so…significant.)
Kion takes a sip and mumbles a thank-you, but it’s clear that his thoughts are far from his kitchen.
Taissa makes herself a cup, trying to think rationally.
With evidence sitting neatly in the pocket of her jeans, it would be easy to go find Elder and Vance.
Combined with Edward’s diagnosis, it would be enough for the idea to be taken seriously.
“Taissa,” Kion says roughly, startling her. Taissa turns away from the electric kettle to see him reaching out a hand. “The note.”
She hesitates, wondering if he’s going to destroy it. Wondering if she should let him.
He makes an impatient noise low in his throat. “Please, Taissa.”
Warily, she slides it over to him. Kion stares at it, with a mouth growing tighter by the moment. Taissa bites back a sigh, cupping her mug in her hands.
“He wouldn’t do this.”
Words rise to Taissa’s lips; she presses them down, waiting. Listening.
“James…” Kion shakes his head. “He’s my brother. I know him. He wouldn’t do something like this.” His throat works. “Maybe someone framed him. Broke into his room—”
He’s so utterly in denial that it hurts her heart.
“Kion,” she says gently, “I know it’s hard, but you need to consider the possibility that he might have been behind this.
” Taissa watches as his hard mask slams down, but pushes on, reaching over to tap the wrinkled slip of parchment.
“Look at the wording of the bargain. ‘The NCL Stymphs will have no competition.’ Is it possible that he went to the púcas to try and bring the Stymphs back to the Major League? To be better players than everybody else? ‘No competition.’ That’s what it says.
” Her mind whirls. “Our Wingeds are the only ones left untouched.”
“Markus said they’d be next—”
“What the hells does Markus know? He was just the bargainer’s messenger, and he’s the type to make empty, blustering threats.
It’s not a coincidence that our stymphs are perfectly fine.
” And Elder is going to realize that soon.
Uh-oh…“Kion, the Unseelie are tricksters. Púcas more than most. The Sleeping Death—it’s a roundabout, extreme, awful way of fulfilling the bargain.
It’s not what James asked for. The púca put their own…
spin…on it.” The pieces are slowly coming together in Taissa’s mind.
“He was conned. James is paying the bargain’s price right now.
You’ve seen his wrinkles, haven’t you? His gray hair?
How many years of his life do you think he sold off? ”
Kion mumbles something unintelligible, eyes rimmed red.
“I’m sorry.” She takes a small breath. After all Kion’s gone through, accepting this will be—torturous. “I know this is hard for you.”
“ ‘Hard’?” he whispers. “Hard?” Kion laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Hard is trying to get Cato to stop talking about how much he wants meat. Hard is hiding óríon from Icelandic assassins—”
Surely, she misheard him. “Erm. Ah. What?”
“This isn’t hard, Taissa. This is—fuck.” Kion scrubs a hand down his face.
“I don’t know what this is. Just that it isn’t possible.
” She watches warily as he turns the note over and over in his hands, a tremor wracking them like he’s going to rip it into shreds.
Alarm bells once again ring in her head, and Taissa slowly sets down her mug. There’s a chip on the rim.