Chapter Thirty-Three Kion
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kion
Dark gray clouds brew over the pitch as Kion’s feet pound on the grass, leading him from one siege tower to another, then back again.
“Faster, Tanaka,” he barks out as he passes Knox, who’s begun to lag behind. The panting lad looks peeved at his sharp tone but Kion doesn’t give a single damn. He’s running his team ragged, yeah, but no more than he’s running himself.
James still hasn’t woken up. And Taissa hasn’t come back to his flat since he’d been an utter arse to her two days ago now.
Kion’s never hated himself more. And his head, his bloody head, has never been so loud.
Maybe that’s why he’s shouting. To try and drown the fucking thoughts out.
“RIHOWL!” he roars as he turns around, touching the siege tower’s wooden base and turning to watch his players try to catch up. “Did you use a Stamina glyph?”
“Yes, Coach,” Bronte snarls between pants.
“Then fucking show it.” He ignores the dirty looks he’s being sent.
One of them, though, burns the hottest. Taissa overtakes Rihowl, skidding to a stop before him and glaring with the power of the sun itself.
Kion bites hard at the inside of his cheek.
During their private morning drills, which they’ve recently resumed in preparation for the Wild Hunt five days away, she hasn’t even looked at him, except for the occasional scathing glance. He doesn’t blame her.
And if he could think past the pounding in his skull, he would try to find the words to tell her so.
Instead, he points a finger to the ground. “Thirty burpees, all of you,” he snaps. “Let’s go.”
He’s the first one to drop to the ground, trying to focus on the burning of his muscles instead of his screaming worries.
Kion has been up all night since James collapsed—only getting through the days by relying on Wakefulness glyphs and strong coffee—in favor of trying to prove James’s innocence, which is getting harder by the minute.
James wouldn’t.
He just wouldn’t.
Even if it was a mistake, like Taissa had suggested—if the púca had “embellished” the bargain—James would never seek out an Unseelie like that. Right?
But then last night he remembered James, slipping into Banes’s office at Shrieking Pumpkin.
Was he really there for the right reason?
Or did he have another motive for seeking out Orla Banes?
Maybe to discuss their deal gone wrong? What had James said in the club…
Must make Orla help me. Not “us.” Me. Kion had been losing his mind so much that he’d broken into James’s flat again, this time alone, tearing it apart from top to bottom.
He hadn’t really expected to find anything else. Which is why when he’d discovered the packet of sparkling red Fury in his bedroom wedged between his bookshelf and the wall, he’d felt the blood drain from his face. The straitlaced James that Kion knew would never touch the stuff.
Although the stimulant enhances physical performance, it’s dangerous, with more hazards than fucking cocaine has for lackers. But the packet had been half used, and when Kion ripped through James’s loo, he’d found traces of the powder on the counter.
Never in his bloody life would he have expected James to be mixed up in Fury. Never. It goes against every single thing he thought he knew about him. It ripped a seam in the fabric of his understanding of James William Ridgeshaw IV. And now he’s drowning.
Taissa gave him until after Ballyford. Kion has the awful feeling that if they don’t find another suspect before then, or break the curse, James will be sent to Shackell and there’ll be nothing he can do about it.
He’d debated destroying the evidence. Taissa must have seen that: Her eyes had been wide with fear as he’d begun to crush the note.
He couldn’t follow through. Not with her looking at him like that, pleading like that.
The Stymphs are wobbly on their legs when Kion finally calls practice.
He watches the team fall back, muttering amongst one another, and head toward the Nexitory’s locker room.
Kion stays back, stretching some more. They won’t want him in there.
Fuck, he’s sick and tired of being coach.
Means that the others will bitch and whine about him, and he can’t join in.
It’s only right to give them their space to groan and mumble about what a bastard he is.
He’s stretching his quads when a shadow falls over his face.
Kion straightens, looking down at Taissa, whose dark eyes are hard.
“I’ll meet you in front of Cruttenbolt’s around two,” she says, voice clipped.
Kion stares at her blankly. “The commercial, numpty,” she snaps. “Niamh scheduled it for today.”
Merlin’s tits. “That’s today?” he asks, voice rough. They have to go pretend to be a happy couple today? They’re each the furthest possible thing from happy. As for whether or not they’re a real couple, he has no sodding clue. “Are you sure?”
In the lift, he’d thought yes.
And then he’d gone and sabotaged it before she could leave him. It had been too bloody good to be true. So Kion had panicked, had burnt it all down in a matter of minutes.
That had to be a record, didn’t it?
A world record.
From a scene of a cheesy rom-com, back to bickering like elderly neighbors who viscerally hate each other.
Maybe I will get sick of you. Or maybe you’ll get sick of me. Or maybe we’ll fly off into the sunset on our stymphs and have a hell of an adventure. Or maybe tomorrow, the entire world will end, and we’ll die not knowing. Wouldn’t you like to know? I do.
Not even a half hour had passed and they couldn’t stand each other anymore.
And now he’s disoriented, confused, and frankly fucking ashamed of himself.
Or I’ll kick you off this team. Snatching away the sport he gave back to her after he stole it from her in the first place.
It was the one thing he could have said to get her to stop, and he knew it.
That didn’t mean he should have said it.
But it was a knee-jerk reaction, what James—sounding all wise and stuffy like a Witchery professor—would call a “defense mechanism,” and now it’s too late to take it back. Isn’t it? The pressure in Kion’s head builds and he can’t think straight.
He wants to reach for her. He wants to run from her. He wants to punch himself in the face for speaking to her like he did.
Maybe he will.
Maybe he’ll ask óríon to.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Cruttenbolt’s is today,” she snaps, jerking him back to the present. “I’ll see you there.”
She waits for a moment, and in that moment, there’s so much he wants to say.
But Merlin’s teeth, he doesn’t know how to say it.
The words cluster on his tongue but then he swallows them because he’s not sure she wants to hear it from him this time.
Maybe she’s done forgiving him. Or maybe she needs time?
A part of him whispers that he was right to sabotage this before she could break him into irreparable pieces.
Unless—unless he’s broken her. It doesn’t occur to him that…
that he might not be the only one suffering in silence until he sees a small tremor wrack her bottom lip.
Taissa is so strong, so resilient. He didn’t think someone as inconsequential as him could bring her to this.
The surprise is enough to take him aback.
When Taissa’s face falls with his reticence, Kion realizes that she was giving him a chance to apologize, or to say something, anything.
Cursing himself, he reaches for her, but she stomps away, cheeks clearly red with anger.
Behind her back, she flips him the bird with a gusto that clearly says, You utter bampot.
Ah. Fuck.
Kion is reminded painfully of James as he steps into Cruttenbolt’s Calamity Candies, holding the door open for Niamh and Taissa. James could never resist buying a box of Jumping Jellies and plowing through them at the speed of light.
Once a cheerful memory, it now makes Kion wonder if James’s addiction to the Jellies translated into his Fury use.
The giant shop sprawls before him, its wooden walls warm and welcoming underneath golden lights, and crammed with barrels and barrels of every sweet imaginable.
The air smells of sugar and chocolate, and a counter behind a sea of barrels manned by a plump Autumntides elf boasts homemade fudge.
In the air, will-o’-the-wisps dart like minnows, illuminating hanging banners: 50% Off Jumping Jellies! ; New Love Pops—Choco Raspberry! (18+).
Kion doesn’t have time to puzzle over this interesting last banner before a frazzled-looking, hairy hobgoblin bustles over to meet them, bat-like ears waggling in excitement.
The name tag on his bright blue vest reads, Creevus Cruttenbolt.
Creevus Cruttenbolt is trailed by two cameramen, one of whom has a mouth smeared with chocolate.
“Oh, good day, good day!” Cruttenbolt chirps merrily, shaking Niamh’s hand vigorously, before moving on to Taissa, who’s come to stand beside Kion and is smiling fixedly.
When Cruttenbolt shakes his hand, Kion’s surprised to find that his grip is crushingly strong.
“It is such a pleasure to meet you both! Welcome, welcome to my humble store. We’re all so very excited to have you here!
Come, come, and we can get started.” Cruttenbolt totters off, and Kion’s heart skips a beat as Taissa glances up at him.
“Bahoochie Formation,” she demands with a saccharine smile that’s too good to be true, because then she’s slipping her hand into his jeans pocket, and pinching his arse so hard that he yelps and almost falls into a barrel of Sugar Pumpkins.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, pookie,” Taissa says in over-the-top, faux concern as Cruttenbolt looks back in concern. “Is something the matter?”
“Behave yourself, please, you two!” Niamh pleads, looking on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Taissa pinches him. Again. Merlin, he’ll be black and blue by the time this is over.
He deserves it.