Chapter Thirty-Five Kion #2
“Have you ever gone to a Wild Hunt before?” Isla asks the geancánach. Elder smooths down the dark vest of his three-piece suit. How he wears them without sweating bullets in the summer heat is a mystery to Kion.
“A few times, in my youth.” Elder’s nose wrinkles. “The debauchery is excessive.”
“Will the Unseelie royalty be there?” she prods, and Kion blinks. Fuck, he hadn’t even considered that the terrifying king and his equally as horrifying queen, Puck and Pike, would make an appearance at the Wild Hunt.
“Yes,” says Elder, leading Kion to grimace, “I would expect so.”
“Is this going to complicate things?” Kion asks in a low voice.
King Puck and Queen Pike haven’t exactly made their hatred of the Seelie unclear.
Not that he blames them—all these Seelie lawmakers have massive sticks up their arses—but avoiding their subjects’ notice will be hard enough, even with their Glamour glyphs.
Avoiding the shrewd stares of Puck and Pike will be even worse: Queen Pike’s left eye, said to be a milky blue, possesses the Sight.
Like Jacks, she can see through any glamour, including those created by qyls.
There will be two Unseelie able to see who they really are with only one glance.
Yeah. Fantastic.
The immortal Puck and Pike’s infamy stretches back to Ye Olden Days.
The two dark elves have been the main instigators of all the Seelie-Unseelie Wars, and during the first, King Puck was known to have a bloody torture chamber, where he fed captured Seelie warriors to his giant pet demon, Glutvoxxas.
Actually, now that Kion thinks about it, that torture chamber never really went away. Puck is still feeding unfortunate souls to Glutvoxxas, despite several or twenty or hundreds of interventions from law enforcement.
His stomach churns.
Elder shrugs. “You will simply have to keep out of Queen Pike’s way.”
Isla clears her throat nervously. “Have any Seelie ever done what we’re trying to do? I mean, how much of a secret is this whole Seelie wish-granting thing?”
“Nowadays, it’s very much an Unseelie secret, known but not spoken. In Ye Olden Days, it was a badly kept one. Many Seelie foolishly tried their luck.”
“And?” prompts Kion.
Magis Elder exhales a cloud of smoke. “And I am afraid that many Seelie died.”
That brings down the mood in the carriage.
The rest of the trip passes in silence, save for the time Kion demands if Elder has found any new leads on Taissa’s stalker and the magis says that it hasn’t exactly been top priority, since it just seems to be a knicker-thief, and knickers don’t fall into his very important jurisdiction of curse-catching.
Prick.
Ballyford is a quaint Hidden City in Northern Ireland surrounded by lush hills and forests, so thick and dark that they hint at older times.
The city isn’t where the team heads—although Kion could do with a good pint in a cramped pub—instead renting a van to take them to a tiny hamlet, right on Sliabh Réaltach itself, where their inn rests.
Kion has to admit that the mountains are glorious in the summer, their green pointed peaks scraping against the sunny sky and craggy rocks jutting from the mountain’s slopes like facial features.
It’s fucking huge, Sliabh Réaltach, and they’ll have a long bloody hike up there tomorrow night.
The inn, the Rollicking Pony, looks like it’s been standing for hundreds of years.
Its roof is still thatched, for Merlin’s sake, and the inkeeper—a red-cheeked gnome who hasn’t evacuated like most of the town’s Seelie—gives the team a wary look as they check in.
Luckily it seems the majority of the Unseelie have chosen to stay in Ballyford—more to do—and the inn is mostly empty save for the team, an elderly lantern man, and a trio of little goblin women who putter around the tiny inn in search of refreshments.
Taissa yawns as she flops into the squashy bed in their room, face down on the quilt.
The others have already paired off in terms of rooms: Adriel and Mahina, Knox and óríon, and Isla and Bronte—Kion wearily anticipates another brief Isla–Bronte saga being kicked off this weekend.
The jealous but determined look in Bronte’s eyes as she’d followed Isla up the rickety stairs toward their room had confirmed it.
Merlin, how the tables have turned. Elder gets a room to himself.
Kion leans against the yellowed wallpaper, admiring the sprawl of Taissa’s body against the bed, how her right hand twitches slightly as she dozes. She’s like a cat, he thinks in amusement. Able to fall asleep anywhere. Especially in the sun.
The light streams from the window, peeking out from the rest of the murky clouds, blanketing Taissa in a halo of gold.
With a funny jolt in his chest, Kion notices that her dark brown hair has a deep, reddish tint to it just now, like the dark syrup of maraschino cherries.
She doesn’t snore, not really, but at random intervals does snort like a truffle hog.
Bloody hells, he’s a fool for her. How else to explain the way those little snorts make him bite back a grin?
Kion Locke doesn’t smile. Except for Taissa.
She’s dangerous.
Swallowing a yawn of his own, Kion settles down next to her on the bed, the mattress creaking a bit underneath his weight.
Taissa, snorting some more and still deep in slumber, stretches out an arm toward him.
Well, maybe stretches isn’t the right word.
Flings an arm at him, more like. It hits his sternum, and then Taissa sleepily snuggles closer to him, pressing a cheek to his chest. Kion runs a hand through her hair.
Her arms have light dustings of freckles and moles on them, and her brows are furrowed in her sleep.
She’s probably telling someone off in her dream. Kion could watch her for hours.
Fuck, he wants to give her the world—but giving her back carriwitchet will have to do.
His stomach tightens uncomfortably at the thought of fumbling the hunt’s reward.
The two people he adores most in this world, Taissa and James, stand to lose so much from failure at the Wild Hunt.
A familiar sort of pressure starts building in his head, but as he breathes in Taissa’s familiar fragrance of honey and thyme, it abates—just enough. Just enough.
“Off me lawn, ye wee dobber,” Taissa mumbles drowsily into his shirt.
“Off your lawn,” agrees Kion amicably, who has grown fond of Taissa’s sleep talking.
In recent nights he’s learned that Taissa inexplicably becomes more grumpy, and more Scottish, in her sleep.
Other honorable mentions include “away and throw yer shite at the moon” and “wit a fuckin’ tadger ye are. ”
“Off me…GRRGBHFFF—” Taissa jumps about a foot in the air, eyes flying open, her hair basically standing on end as a shrill ringing pierces the air. Kion gags as she lands with her elbow pressing into his stomach. “Sorry, sorry,” huffs Taissa, fumbling for her phone in the back pocket of her jeans.
Kion grimaces.
“It’s my mum,” Taissa grumbles, but there’s a sparkle in her bleary eyes as she answers, and then she winces, pressing the speaker button.
The bedroom is suddenly filled with the aghast shouts of a woman Kion knows to be Estee Cho, Taissa’s mum.
“—THE POSTBOX! THAT’S WHAT I HAD TO FIND OUT FROM—RIGHT OFF THE TRAIN—STRAIGHT UPON GETTING BACK—I OPENED IT UP AND WHAT DID I SEE BUT MY OWN DAUGHTER ON THE COVER—”
“Mum,” tries Taissa, looking like she’s smothering a laugh.
“—WITH HER BUM OUT—”
“Mum…”
“AND ON TOP OF THAT HORRIBLE BOY SHE’S STEPPING OUT WITH!” Estee pauses, and there’s a crackle like she’s gasping for air. Kion can’t decide whether to smile or be concerned.
Do parents usually yell so much? Is it normal? He doesn’t exactly have anything to compare this to.
But Taissa is just shaking her head fondly. “Mum, Mum, that issue has been out for days.”
“Yes, well, I’ve been in New Sinsi, reading the esteemed Godly Gossip instead of whatever it is that was.” She sniffs. “Your bum did look very nice, dear. I hope they made it worth your while.”
“They did.” Taissa grins. “And I’m with that horrible boy right now. Would you like to talk to him?”
A sound vaguely like a spluttering fish escapes Kion’s mouth.
Estee Cho hates him almost as much as Taissa once did.
He remembers a small woman with black hair and angry eyebrows waving a Taissa Cho > Kion Locke sign at one of their old games, decked out head-to-toe in Wyvern red.
Is he scared of this tiny, five-foot woman?
Yeah.
Yeah, he bloody is.
Before he can run away like he’s sorely tempted to, Taissa is tossing the phone at him. Out of reflex, he catches it. He clears his throat. “Er,” he says, “hi.”
A peeved inhale from the other end of the line.
“Hello,” says Estee frostily, and that’s enough for Kion to toss the phone back to Taissa like it’s a hot potato and hastily make his escape.
“Mum,” says Taissa, clearly fighting laughter, “we have a lot to catch up on.”
Night falls in Sliabh Réaltach much quicker than Kion would have expected.
As he warily watches the fire crackle in the inn’s dining room, nursing a mug of Gobbworth’s with the team around a worn oak table, it’s bloody impossible not to notice the tension bracketing their bodies.
Moonlight streams in through the small, circular windows, highlighting it.
As the fire crackles and pops, Kion fights back flinches and flashbacks, the only thing grounding him the feeling of Taissa’s hand in his underneath the table.
Warm and calloused and also vaguely sticky from the sweets she filched from the inn’s kitchen earlier that day.
“We’re going to die,” says Knox with somber finality, polishing off the dregs of his drink across from Kion. “We are going to perish. Oh, mercy, please, mercy—”