Chapter Thirty-Six Taissa #2
And then they’re moving together, and she wonders at it: how they’ve known each other for so long on the pitch, how she’d once foolishly thought there was nothing left to know about Kion Locke…
Morgana, how wrong she was. This, this is utterly new…
The way he feels, the way his eyes become heavy-lidded with pleasure, the noises he makes—the way he looks at her.
She gazes up at him the whole time, drinking in his expressions, the beauty of him, captivated. Together their pleasure builds until she’s not sure where she ends and he begins, until she’s crying out his name and he’s burying his face in the crook of her neck, breathing hard.
“Taissa,” he murmurs into her skin, like a plea, or a prayer. “Taissa, Taissa, Taissa.”
They make love twice more that night (honestly, they’re worse than rabbits). Afterward, she lies with his arms around her, breathing sleepily. She’s just on the verge of falling asleep when Kion evidently decides to take revenge for earlier, whispering her name right when she’s closed her eyes.
“Gsghdfj,” she mumbles incoherently. He’s turned her mind to mush, he has.
“I…have something to tell you. Something I didn’t tell the others.”
Frowning, Taissa blinks the sleep away from her eyes. Something in Kion’s voice has given her pause. Has made her heart stumble. Her stomach begins to drop.
“What is it?” she murmurs back. He’s tracing nervous circles on her stomach.
She would turn to face him, but something tells her that Kion doesn’t quite want, or isn’t quite able, to meet her eyes right now.
As his anxiety practically fills the air, she takes one of his large, calloused hands in her own and kisses the back of it. “You can talk to me, Kion, love.”
“I…” He takes a ragged breath. “There was a fire at Waywardly Home.”
“Good,” she spits before she can stop herself, the word bitter. “I hope it fucking burned to the ground.”
“I started it.” The words are just barely audible. “I killed Quaid. That was his name. I murdered him, Taissa.” His finger pauses on her back as her breath hitches.
It’s like the words don’t permeate her mind, not in the way they’re supposed to. She supposes she should feel something other than outright satisfaction (perhaps some horror? Disbelief?) but either there is something fundamentally wrong with her…
Or she loves Kion Locke very, very much.
(Loves? No. Surely it’s too early for that. Likes. She likes him. Likes him…very, very, very, very, very, very much…)
“I’m glad,” she finds herself whispering back instead. “I’m glad of it, Kion. Hells, if you hadn’t, I might have tagged along with Knox and committed a wee bit of arson myself.” Every syllable rings with undeniable truth.
Kion stills against her. “Really?” he rasps.
“I know you, Kion. I know that fire couldn’t have been…unprompted.” She traces the calluses on his hand. “I’ve seen your scars.”
After a long moment, Kion makes a small sound that seems to be half relief, half disbelief.
“I’m not going to run away from you,” Taissa says firmly, rolling around to face him.
His eyes are dark, and so, so wide. “I promise.” She pauses, making the connection.
“When the fire exploded, in my sitting room. You went…back there, didn’t you?
” So much is making sense. The way he warily watches every fire.
The minute jumps when it crackles or snaps.
Perhaps if she understands more fully where he goes when his flashbacks happen, the more fully she can help him.
He nods, throat bobbing. “Kion, have you considered, maybe, seeing a therapist?”
A long pause. “I—yeah,” he mumbles, tracing patterns on her shoulder. “I don’t know if I could do it. Talk about it like that. What if—” His voice breaks a bit; he clears his throat to try and mask it. “What if they tell the fucking paps? Or the magistrates?”
“There are rules against that,” she whispers. “Ethical and legal regulations. Besides, you don’t need to admit to starting the fire. Please, will you consider it? For me, if not for you?”
Another long moment of silence stretches by before Kion sighs. “Fine,” he mumbles. “Anything for you, sweetheart.”
They fall asleep like that: wrapped around each other, the weight of each other’s secrets upon them—but not uncomfortably, no.
Their secrets, thinks Taissa, are like the quilt above them.
Heavy, yet somehow so comforting to share.
Despite all the openhearted chattiness of the team the night prior, nobody feels much like talking that morning.
Honestly, Taissa is more nervous than she was before her first World Cup (which is saying something, because she boked twice before that first match). The NCL Stymphs are as taut as an electrical wire, their nerves sparking as evening—the commencement of the Wild Hunt’s gathering—draws closer.
Already, Unseelie are flooding the mountain, flocking to it in great masses.
Staring outside the bedroom’s window, Taissa had watched a herd of nuckelavee gallop past, their skinless bodies swaying on their skinless horse bottom-half, hooves pounding against the ground.
As one turned its head slightly toward the inn, Taissa ducked back down, hitting her head on the windowsill.
“Ouch,” she grumbled sullenly.
(Smooth, isn’t she?)
Since then she’s steadfastly refused to roll out of bed, which is well enough.
The team needs to stay hidden until they’re properly glamoured, and besides, there are so very many episodes of Potions Master to watch.
(Does she have a wee crush on the blond-haired, vampiric judge? Yes, yes, perhaps, she does.)
Kion, however, is restless—roaming through the inn, pacing back and forth, hounding Magis Elder about everything and anything until the geancánach literally swats him away with a violent hand and a few choice words.
It’s going to be fine.
It is.
(Right?)
By the time one p.m. rolls around, Taissa’s not quite so sure. Games, matches, those she can handle. A wild race through the forest atop a púca’s back? Well, there’s a first time for everything, and this certainly is one of those.
Eventually, Kion literally drags her out from underneath the covers. What an utter numpty.
As the inevitable draws closer, the team gathers in the large suite that Knox and óríon somehow wrangled, applying their Glamour glyphs amidst the peeling wallpaper (a bewildering kitten-and-rose print), creaky floorboards, and quaint bookshelves (boasting a concerning number of porcelain frogs).
They’ve decided to use the same glamours they had outside of Shrieking Pumpkin: The familiarity of the illusions makes it easier for them to apply them quickly.
Taissa visualizes herself as the dark elf as she scratches the glyph onto her skin with a qyl: pointed ears; pale blue skin; straight, inky hair.
The illusion settles over her like cool water, and she eyes herself in the smudged mirror of the suite’s bathroom, tilting her head this way and that.
She’s wearing her riding leathers, but they’re glamoured as well, to look like nothing but a sleek purple dress.
Taissa nods at herself in the mirror. Both illusions will hold.
“Ugh,” says a geancánach Knox, blinking his purple eyes as she returns from the washroom, “you look awful, Magnússon.”
Apparently discovering that óríon Magnússon is in fact the prince of a crime syndicate has done positively nothing to deter Knox’s usual antics, proven by how he makes a face of disgust at óríon, who is currently a lumpy troll.
“I hate you,” retorts óríon through a twisted mouth.
“The feeling is entirely mutual,” sings Knox in reply.
Mahina and Adriel, both disguised as pale banshees, sit on a settee, their synchronism more eerie than usual thanks to their glamours. Their heads tilt left, then right, as they watch Kion—a vampire—pace restlessly back and forth.
Taissa leans against the wall, hands tapping her sides nervously.
As she looks at the glamoured team, she half expects to see werewolf James, another sharp reminder of his betrayal.
She can tell that Kion’s not found any name-clearing evidence, and she wonders if he’ll resent her upon their return to Pinion-upon-Keat.
No point in worrying about it right now, she tells herself, but of course she worries about it, anyway.
“Right, you lot,” Kion says, clearing his throat as Rowan Elder slips into the suite, eyeing them warily. “We can fucking do this. Because we need to fucking do this.”
“Some pep talk,” mutters Adriel. Bronte boos, cupping her mouth with a hand.
“Give us a real one,” Isla chimes in, smiling slightly. “Like the one before that one Dragons match.”
“I remember that one,” Knox pipes up gleefully. “You got so fired up you punched a hole in the wall. I was just glad it wasn’t me poor face.”
Taissa fights back a laugh as she pictures it. Kion rolls his eyes, but the frown on his face is his Fond Frown, not his I Hate You Frown.
“It helps when you threaten us,” adds Mahina seriously. “Do some of that, please.”
“Hells,” he grumbles, “fine.” Taissa watches as he draws himself up to his full height, a sharp canine poking his bottom lip. “Listen up, you sorry little pricks.”
“Stronger opening,” says Bronte. “Very good.”
“You sorry-faced, weak, whingeing ninnies.”
Knox winces. “Okay. Little too much, there, Cap.”
“We only have one fucking chance to do this—”
“Technically,” says Adriel, raising a finger, “we could try again next year…”
Kion pinches the bridge of his nose, looking aggrieved. “Will you all just shut your gobs?”
“I have not said anything,” says óríon sullenly. “Do not lump me in with them.”