Chapter Thirty-Four Taissa #2
Sneaking the stymphalians out under the eye of the DMC agents is, ultimately, a heist like no other: óríon Magnússon takes the lead, and Taissa truly does wonder what it was he got up to in Iceland as he causes a “small distraction” to lure away the DMC guards and keep them occupied.
The wee distraction in question turns out to be using a very illegal Level Three, or possibly even Four, Summoning glyph to pull a horde of frothing-at-the-mouth reindeer from somewhere in Siberia into Pinion-upon-Keat, and encouraging them to run amok within the Nexitory.
Not that Taissa is about to complain, oh, no.
Not when she’s soaring through the darkened sky and light rain above the pitch on Cronus, will-o’-the-wisps drifting across the velvety expanse of night and illuminating the draconian jewels sparkling at the very tops of the siege tower.
Without the reserve players, they can’t play a proper game of carriwitchet, but after dividing the eight of them into four, and swapping óríon’s and Isla’s usual positions of Dozer and Knocker to Bailers, they’ve got a veritable mini-match on their hands.
Mabb, with no James to grace her back, watches somberly from the sidelines of the pitch with her wings mournfully tucked in as Taissa shoots like a comet toward the opposition—Kion, Adriel, Bronte, and óríon—determined to snatch the first draconian jewel and snag the lead.
Surely, with the curse, something will clearly go horribly wrong tonight.
Yet Taissa can’t find it in herself to care. They need this, even with all the fumbles and near-misses with grievous injury. They need carriwitchet.
(That’s another curse, she supposes, all in itself. A sort of addiction, really.)
“FEAR ME, MY CHILD! I COMETH FOR VICTORY!” screeches Cronus as he snaps his beak menacingly at Ahava, where on her back Adriel readies to intercept Taissa and her steed.
But Ahava only cackles—fondly—eyes glittering in the darkness.
Laughing herself, Taissa asks Cronus to turn in to an aileron roll.
“If I must,” he grumbles, but his own incandescent happiness swirls in Taissa’s chest, belying his grumpy tone.
They dodge the incoming defense with the world spinning around her. She swoops past Adriel, snatching a draconian jewel from the tower, just as she glances across the pitch to see Kion hurtling over to her side, as fast as a crack of lightning against the sky.
Leaning over on Cronus, wind whipping her cheeks red, Taissa allows a sharp smile to curve her lips.
The familiar, excited, and intoxicating edge of competition pounds through her bloodstream with every beat of her heart.
She can feel her Winged’s restless energy, too, his annoyance at being cooped up under DMC watch, his exhilaration at taking to the skies.
He hasn’t even mentioned skewering his children once.
“We’ll triumph tonight, hatchling,” croaks Cronus, and there’s a distinctly birdlike smile in his ancient voice.
She waits for the punch line. “As long as you don’t impale your head with feathers again, or hit someone in the face with an axe, or fall off me and nearly die a pathetic, sniveling death—”
“Oh, hush,” retorts Taissa, but inside, she’s snorting as her sarcastic stymph barrels through the air, snapping and spitting at his children, rushing at a breakneck speed through wind and will-o’-the-wisps, red eyes shimmering like pools of blood.
As she passes Kion on the pitch, there’s a moment—a singular, almost slow-motion moment—where the two of them lock gazes, and smile.
(His eyes crinkle in the corners, and one side of his mouth rises just a bit before the other. Taissa nearly crashes into the siege tower from the sheer wattage of his grin. Keep the heid, Cho.)
This scrimmage, thinks Taissa as she soars through the night, it’s everything carriwitchet should be.
The thrill of the chase, the frenzy of the game, the weightless feeling of flight.
It’s magical, in the purest sense of the word, the stars twinkling above, their light mingling with the opalescent glow of the jewels.
The air smells sweeter up here, like jessamine and honey, dewdrops and clover.
It’s the strangest thing, it is, for even as they scrimmage against one another, Taissa has never felt so…she’s never felt so like, well, one of her crocheted nooses before.
(Oh, hear her out.)
She and her teammates…they’re all just one stitch in a row, yet each stitch is held together by the next, close and comforting, secured by the very existence of the others.
As Cronus’s wings seem to scrape against the stars, Taissa looks at this team of hers—at Bronte pulling a face as she chases after Cronus, at Isla, small face set in determination, at Mahina and Adriel, who’ve broken formation to chase each other round and round, at óríon and Knox, bickering like an old married couple—and knows there is no other team she’d rather be a part of.
Leaning forward, she gently wraps her arms around Cronus’s neck, hugging him as he swoops through the air.
“Is this an assassination attempt? Are you trying to choke me?” he demands as she presses her cheek into his feathers, breathing in the smell of the stables. But her old bird’s burst of joy, and tenderness, is unmistakable.
“It’s called a hug,” she informs him, squeezing tighter. “You give them to those you care about.”
He hesitates. And when Cronus speaks next, his voice lacks its usual bitter edge. “I’m glad you chose me, Taissa Cho. Even though I’m not your first. I’m glad you picked me.”
“I’d pick you a million times over.” Taissa smooths down one of his feathers. “You’re everything to me, you old fart.”
He huffs a croaking laugh. “You’re not too bad, hatchling. Not too bad, at all.”
Even as the unavoidable disaster seeps in (Adriel and Mahina concuss each other, Isla somehow manages to get her hair stuck in her own stymph’s beak, and Knox nearly falls to his doom while shrieking insults at a panicked óríon), it is the best midnight that Taissa Cho has had in a long, long time.
She can almost pretend that nothing is amiss, that Sansa is well, that James is merely asleep, that the Wild Hunt does not loom shadowed in the distance.
Almost.
Not quite.
Imperative question: Do Official Real Couples split between the sofa and the bed?
(No. No, they do not.)
(Unless they are on the verge of divorce.)
(One assumes.)
Taissa ignores the fluttering of nerves in her stomach as, freshly showered and blood still humming from the scrimmage, she pads to Kion’s sitting room, where he’s readying the sofa.
(She feels, inanely, rather grateful to the Knicker Thief for presenting her with so sweet an opportunity.)
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Taissa says softly. “Like I said before, your bed is big enough for two.”
She watches as Kion’s throat works, as he pauses in readying the sofa. It’s incredibly odd, sometimes, seeing him so ferocious on the pitch and so vulnerable elsewhere. “Taissa…” Uncertainty laces his tone.
Her heart breaks a little as she realizes he still believes she’ll get sick of him.
(Understandable, really: They had only lasted twenty-four minutes and three seconds last time. Currently, they are at ten hours and thirty minutes. A vast improvement, really.)
“We’ll take it slow,” Taissa promises, unable to mask the little flare of hope in her voice.
Kion’s breathing seems to hitch. “Okay,” he whispers.
Neither of them gets much sleep that night.
Not because they’re shagging each other’s brains out (sadly), but because they stay awake until the wee hours, whispering about nothing at all, yet everything and anything at once.
Not for the first time, it strikes Taissa—as she props her chin on her hand, gazing down at the man before her—that for all the years that she and Kion Locke have “known” each other, they’re still… almost strangers.