Chapter Thirty-Two Taissa #4
“Kion, the note…” (Please don’t destroy it.
Please don’t destroy it.) “We need to show it to Magis Elder. Will you give me back the paper, please?” Stomach sinking, she waits to no avail.
“I understand you’re worried about James,” she tries again, “and I am, too. But I’m also worried about carriwitchet, and—and Sansa.
” Taissa holds out her hand expectantly.
“This could help her,” she presses, but he doesn’t relinquish the one tiny slip of evidence they have.
“I know James. He put me back together. I’m not going to rip him apart.
You can’t ask that of me.” His voice grows harder with each word, and suddenly, he’s looking at her like she’s a threat.
Panic flickers in his eyes and he’s shaking like the noise in his head is too loud, like everything is too much.
She wants to help him. She knows he won’t let her.
Taissa bites down on her lip hard enough that she tastes a hint of copper and feels a small burst of pain as frustration coils deep in her chest…because Kion’s fingers have begun to close around the note, slowly crushing it.
That slip of paper might be one step toward finding who hurt her little wyvern, and he’s bent on destroying it for—what?
For James, who may very well have gotten Sansa ill in the first place?
Withholding evidence is a crime, and he’s forcing her to be complicit.
Her frustration slowly edges into anger, tinged with betrayal.
“You’re making us into accessories,” she snaps, throat beginning to hurt.
“If us hiding this evidence gets out…” They already call her a cheater.
How long before they’re calling her a criminal?
Kion could get away unscathed, she just knows it.
But when has she ever not been hunted by the press, her every mistake printed in big, bold, black letters?
“This isn’t just about you and him, Kion.
This is about everybody else on the team.
In the NCL. And it’s about me.” Taissa’s voice cracks, right down the middle.
She feels her heart splinter like the wood of a destroyed siege tower.
So quick—he was so quick to accuse her of cheating during that dreadful match two years ago, so utterly convicted of her inarguable guilt…
and yet, even holding this evidence in his trembling hand, he shields his best mate from scrutiny.
Protects him, like she wished he had her.
Covers for him. Lies for him. “Please. Please, just give me the paper.”
“I can’t.” Kion’s eyes are flashing, and she knows that hers are, too.
She can empathize with what must be roiling through his head right now, and if circumstances were different—if Sansa weren’t as still and as silent as a statue—she might reach for him, and not for the paper.
But terror is roiling through her, too, and terror pushes her to start edging around the counter.
“Don’t make me take it,” she begs. Her heart is pounding. Sansa, Sansa, Sansa. “Kion, please—”
“I said I can’t,” he snarls, and she can only watch as his eyes narrow in angry panic, as his mouth opens, and he half snarls, half gasps: “Take it from me, and I swear—I swear to Merlin, I’ll have you kicked off this team.”
Taissa freezes where she stands, her entire body growing cold. Whiplash. That’s what this is. From kissing in the lift to…this. It’s just barely been twenty minutes.
Whiplash.
(Pain. Pain in her chest, squeezing her heart. Pain tightening her throat, scraping behind her eyes.)
It would be better, honestly, if he had just stabbed her through the heart.
Taissa sways where she stands, suddenly feeling like she’s underwater. The world is painfully muted. Everything is muted except the roaring in her ears.
“You would do that?” she rasps. The kitchen spins. She feels sick to her stomach. “You would…do that to me?”
For the first time in what seems like hours, he falters. Regret flickers across his face.
“Tell me,” she continues numbly. “Tell me if you really meant what you said. I need to know.” Maybe this is another misunderstanding. Maybe he’ll procure another explanation later, like a lacker magician revealing a bunny from a hat.
Maybe he’s so swarmed by rage and confusion and hurt that he didn’t know what he said.
Maybe. Probably.
But she still can’t stop herself from crumbling into pieces. Silence settles over the kitchen like heavy snow. Frostbitten and cold. Kion has gone very still. She hugs her middle, like it might keep her from falling apart, avoiding his eye. Morgana, she can’t look at him right now.
“No,” he rasps immediately. “No, I didn’t mean that. Fuck. Fuck, Taissa, I didn’t. I didn’t.”
(Why does it still hurt?)
“Sweetheart…” There’s so much regret in his voice. Yet somehow, it’s not enough. For she is on the verge of committing real murder, and has a beautiful vision of her crocheted nooses choking his neck. Preferably the bright pink one.
“Don’t call me that right now, numpty.”
There’s a dull thump on the floor, and when she turns back to him, she flinches.
Kion is on his knees before her.
Taissa’s vision swims; half of her is in the kitchen of her Banallan cottage, while the other half sways in Kion’s flat.
There’s an anguished beat as Kion gazes up at her, desperation bracketing the lines of his face, a hopeless plea in his gaze.
And she feels herself begin to crumble in the face of his despondency.
“Please.” The word is broken, he tries again.
“Please…just give me until after Ballyford. It won’t make a damned difference if you give me this time.
I swear. We’ll break the curse. This won’t get out.
Nobody will know.” His voice cracks, and so does her resolve. Right down the middle.
It’s pathetic, honestly.
Pathetic how Taissa Cho will do anything for Kion Locke. If he begged her for the Milky Way, she’d fly into that unfathomable darkness on Cronus and pluck all those stars out of the sky like apples, even if they burned off her fingertips.
Some terrible, awful part of her will give anything to him—anything for him. She’s tried to amputate it. It stays, a phantom limb. It’s as much a part of her as her love of carriwitchet, and her hatred of mornings. These things, they are intrinsic. Not so easily forgotten.
It’s why she came here, isn’t it?
Oh, she wanted to play again, wanted it more than oxygen itself. She would have killed for it.
But she also came because he called.
Because he got down on his knees in front of her and begged.
“Fine,” she whispers before silently making her way to the door. “Fine, Locke. Do what you want. You have until after Ballyford.”
She’ll find somewhere else to stay tonight.
And possibly crochet another noose.