Chapter Thirty-Five Kion
Chapter Thirty-Five
Kion
Despite all the utter bullshit happening, Taissa Cho turns Kion into a sap within the span of four days. Somehow she morphs him into a weak-kneed romantic.
It’s fucking ridiculous and wonderful all at once.
The others have noticed, because it’s impossible not to. He catches himself fighting back smiles during Wild Hunt training, when Taissa tries to pick fights with him and his orders, smiling wryly the whole time.
“So,” Bronte says one afternoon, as she leans against the fence of the local equine stable, panting and grass-stained from an afternoon of practicing riding horses, “the two of you, you’re shagging for real, then?”
Adriel chokes on his own spit. Mahina gives him a good thumping on the back, probably harder than necessary, grinning like a fiend.
“Er,” says Kion, momentarily lost for words, and wishing desperately that James were there—to scoff, to smirk, to raise his brows in that annoying posh way. But he’s not, and something sinks in Kion’s chest as he looks toward where his best mate should stand, only to find empty air.
The Stymphs seem to take his monosyllable as confirmation.
Knox places a hand over his heart and mimes swooning, yanked back up by an amused-looking óríon.
Isla claps her hands, beaming, while Bronte snorts and says something about, “the pot calling the kettle black.” The news is taken well, though, except for Knox apparently cornering Taissa to inform her that if she breaks his heart he will “send her very NOT gently into that good night.”
Somehow, word gets around to Niamh, who looks like a child on Winter Solstice, clapping her hands and squealing wildly as if this is the best present anyone could have given her.
She vigorously attempts to coax the two of them into one more press junket, which Kion shuts down with a well-placed glare.
Ire sparks in the elf’s eyes, and her lip curls almost dangerously, but her rage is the least of Kion’s worries.
James is still comatose, despite Edward’s ministrations.
Much as Kion dislikes the beautiful blond boy solely on account of his obvious crush on Taissa, he has to admit that the lad is a good healer.
But James doesn’t wake, and as Kion stares at his friend’s unconscious face, he wonders if he ever really knew him at all.
He’s keeping his secret, for now, just in honor of what their friendship is.
Apart from pulling Edward aside and muttering that there may be illicit drugs in James’s system, Kion has kept quiet, kept the evidence close to his chest. But as the days go by, and as the Wild Hunt looms closer, he begins to waver in his conviction that there’s a way to prove James’s innocence.
The note from the púca, the traces of Fury, the gray hair and wrinkles lining his face…
The cards are stacked against him. James’s mum had been pressuring him to quit the failing NCL team, urging him to chase success as a lawyer.
What if James had sought out Púca Púca LLC to prove her wrong?
To show her that he could win? He wouldn’t have expected the púca to fulfill the plea with the Sleeping Death.
But that’s why you never make deals with the fucking Unseelie.
They’ll twist your words and cause mass destruction for the fun of it.
He should have known better. Damn it, why hadn’t he known better? Desperation is no bloody excuse.
It’s only Taissa that stops him from going mad.
Taissa, snuggling up against him in his bed as they watch reruns of Potions Master, laughing as the host shouts at the struggling contestants.
Taissa, playing with his hair and making his head feel…
quiet, in a way he didn’t know was possible.
Taissa, there for him after a flashback, with a hot cup of tea and a look in her eyes that tells him she understands.
They haven’t shagged yet: After their days of training, they’re both usually too tired to do anything but sleepily kiss each other good night.
Kion doesn’t mind it, though—it’s almost like they’ve settled into the slow, lazy routine of a couple who’s been together longer than the lustful honeymoon phase.
And yeah, part of him might still be convinced that she’ll up and leave him after they’re together like that.
But that fear has begun to chip away with each casually affectionate touch she gives him: little nudges with her hip when they’re standing next to each other, holding his hand and kissing the back of it with a small smile.
He’s glad that this affection is balanced out by their endless bickering, because he’d be a puddle of lovestruck sludge otherwise.
Plus, they’ve beaten the twenty-four minute and three second mark.
That says something.
Knox told him about “love languages,” once, and Kion’s decided that bickering is theirs. Maybe it always has been.
Currently, though, they’re bickering together, arguing against Felicity Vance as she stands with her arms crossed in front of Yggdrasil, preventing them from taking Cato and Cronus onto Lantern Street on a quest to buy them meaty treats as an apology for the days that they’re about to be gone in Ballyford.
“I’m sorry, but we need to keep them close for careful monitoring.
And your midnight game successfully scrapped all your chances of getting me to say yes.
Rabid reindeer? Seriously? I could arrest you both for that.
Or, well, get Rowan to arrest you for that.
” Vance raises an eyebrow pointedly, and Kion grimaces.
So maybe there were rules against midnight scrimmages. And maybe certain American DMC agents were vexed when they were broken.
“If you’d like to just do a few laps around the pitch, that would be fine, but as of right now, the Sleeping Death is still a threat—”
Kion bites back the words that it’s unlikely that the stymphalians will fall ill at all. He and Taissa exchange defeated looks, settling for a few loops around the pitch instead, with Vance watching carefully from the top of a siege tower.
“You should take me with you,” Cato insists as they land, Kion sliding off his back. “I’ll protect you. The Wild Hunt is dangerous.”
“I know that,” he replies as Cato ducks his head, allowing Kion to rub his bronze beak, which glints with summer sun. “But you’re safest here.” More like Vance will never allow it. “Besides, the magis is coming with us. We’ll be in…fine hands.”
Elder will be accompanying them to the Wild Hunt, participating in the festivities, and ready to intervene should anything happen to any of the players, Merlin forbid.
Cato is only fractionally placated. “I still want to come. So does my father.”
Apparently so. Cronus seems to be putting up a similar fuss. The old bird is stomping his feet and farting in equal measure, snapping his beak at a beleaguered-looking Taissa who’s being forced to duck and dodge to avoid his sharp bite. Her nose is wrinkled.
“You have a job to do here,” Kion tells Cato.
“Minding my stinky father isn’t a real job,” his stymph says with a sigh, but he’s smirking as much as one possessing a beak can smirk.
“He’s not even trying to eat us anymore.
He’s almost boring. Did you know that now he’s started trying to make jokes?
Not that he has even the slightest sense of humor.
I think he’s stealing punch lines from Taissa. ”
Kion bites back a laugh. “I meant you should stay to take care of Mabb.” Already timid and withdrawn by nature, James’s stymph has been in despair ever since her rider fell ill.
She won’t eat, and despite the DMC’s interventions, has begun losing feathers.
He’s learned through Cato that she won’t even touch the food Cronus chews up for her—some disgusting stymphalian behavior that turns his stomach but is, apparently, a staggering show of fatherly warmth and paternal empathy from Cronus.
Cato considers this. “Well, fine”—he sighs again—“but I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too, Cato.”
By the time that the day of their departure swoops around, Kion and his players are more than on edge. They’ve already tipped over the verge of it. The morning of, Taissa is even more grumpy than usual, and only grows grumpier when Kion finds her scrunched nose and lowered brows adorable.
In the train’s compartment, she dozes against Kion’s shoulder while he resists the temptation to marker a mustache on her face, instead gazing outside the window at the sky beyond, tinged with rosy streaks of late dawn.
The flight to Ballyford is only a bit under two hours; tomorrow, the team will have plenty of time to make it to the Sliabh Réaltach range before the Summer Eclipse, and the ensuing Wild Hunt.
The train is packed full of Unseelie headed to the same destination: Kion even spotted Jacks Clarke lounging in a compartment with his arms slung over two beaming, yet perenially teary-eyed, banshees.
Apparently, not even selling Kion and Taissa out to Orla in Shrieking Pumpkin was enough to win the pùca’s interest.
They’d hurried by the dullahan before that deep, unnerving emerald eye could fixate on them.
Magis Elder is flipping through a copy of UKHC Unveiled as he sits across from Kion, puffing away on his pipe even though the train has clear No Smoking signs all around it.
Next to him, Isla is smiling down at her phone while Knox tries to sneak peeks over Elder.
On Kion’s left, óríon is asleep, listening to the lullabies on his phone.
“Are we almost there?” Knox asks impatiently a few minutes later, and Kion fixes the lad with an exasperated look. “What?” He jitters his knee. “I’m nervous. What if I get eaten by a church grim? Or an afanc? A hobyah?”
“You’re far too stringy for their tastes,” says Elder around his pipe, and he doesn’t sound like he’s joking.
“Thank you,” says Knox, beaming. Then he frowns. “I think.”