Chapter Thirty-Nine Taissa
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Taissa
Victory Field Pinion-upon-Keat, England
One Month Later
The roar of the stadium is louder than bombs as Taissa soars upon Cronus’s back, still smiling slightly at the riddle the old bird had posed to her before allowing her—with an excited gleam in his red eyes—to mount him.
“Turn me onto my back, open up my stomach. Wise you will be, though at start, a lummox.”
She’d gotten it immediately. Of course she had. “A book.”
Over the crackling speakers, Helena Hedgecomb and Basil Tumberhatch chatter away excitedly as the match enters its final division of play.
The NCL Stymphs have already stolen two draconian jewels from the NCL Perytons’ siege tower, and there’s only one left to go.
Only one shimmering, glittering, opulent draconian jewel standing in the way between reclaiming a spot in the Major League.
Only one, shining like a beacon across the field: a beacon of hope.
The warm afternoon wind whips Taissa’s plait behind her as she maintains the Echelon Position, with Bronte, Knox, and óríon clearing a path toward the Perytons’ wooden tower, shoving aside their defensive players.
The NCL Perytons, who ride upon the winged stags with antlers that prove a formidable weapon, are good players, at the bottommost rung of the Major League.
They’re just not as good as the Stymphs.
Taissa whoops as their Echelon Position breaks.
James, wind-flushed atop Mabb, sends Taissa a smile as she whizzes past him, eye on the jewel.
He’s healthy, and whole again, and although a swot he may still be, he’s a rather friendly swot.
(Usually. Morgana help her if she tries to keep Kion from their weekly scheduled Lad Time.) Last Taissa heard, Edward was comatose in Shackell Penitentiary, wrinkled and gray, with none of the angelic beauty she’d at first been impressed by.
Just an ugly, sickening man, inside and out.
Taissa breaks into a grin as Kion comes up on her left, Cato angling his bladed feathers to deter an incoming defensive player.
Oh, she should have known they were cursed from the start.
She and Kion, they move together effortlessly as they transition into the Gemini Formation, whirling around each other like shooting stars.
Laughter and pure joy bubble up in her chest. This. This is where she’s meant to be.
As Knox slams aside a defensive Knocker, Taissa and Kion break apart, hurtling for the jewel.
It doesn’t matter which one of them snatches it, as long as one of them does, but they’d both be (massive) liars if they said that old competitive streak doesn’t come to life between them during games.
Splitting apart, they race for the jewel from different sides of the tower.
Taissa’s fingers are only a hairsbreadth away when Kion gets there first, forcing both of them to pull back to avoid colliding.
“Numpty,” she hisses, but Kion only laughs.
“Irritating boy,” seethes Cronus, but he sounds amused as Cato squawks something teasingly back to him. “I will bake his brains into bread.”
“A, you don’t know how to bake,” Taissa informs him as Cronus dives after Kion, while she keeps herself open in case he needs to toss the jewel to her.
“And, b, you don’t even eat bread, you old fart.
You subsist entirely on the bones of your enemies and the blood of your children.
Or so you say. Really, I think you’ve turned a softie.
You and your children, you seem like a family again. ”
“Hmmph,” he grumbles, but doesn’t deny it.
These past weeks, it’s seemed that he and the other stymphs, his flock, have been stitched back together.
Whenever she sees her grumpy old bird, he’s either laughing with Cato, tending after the shy Mabb, or in animated conversation with the other stymphalians.
The birds seem to gravitate toward him now, perhaps eager to meet their father for real, rather than the angry mask he’d worn for so long.
He is, thinks Taissa, the beating heart of Yggdrasil.
The tabloids had laughed at him, at first, when the carriwitchet season restarted. Her “decrepit” stymph, with his few feathers and scarred bronze beak.
Nobody’s laughing now.
As a Knocker escapes óríon’s clutches and speeds toward Kion, he hurls the glistening jewel through the sky.
It refracts the blinding light of the sun as it arcs toward Taissa.
Cronus, anticipating the jewel, drops downward, allowing Taissa to catch it neatly above her head with two hands.
Kion, evading the Knocker, shouts her name, urging her to go, go, go.
Cronus hurtles through the air as Taissa keeps her eye on their side of the pitch, at the three draconian jewels still glinting atop their tower, at Isla, Mahina, and Adriel guarding them as fiercely as a bear does her cubs.
The screams of the crowd, the sea of purple and silver, the excited hollers of the commentators…
it all fuels Taissa as she leans forward on Cronus, tucking the draconian jewel to her chest, mentally urging him to fly faster. They can do this.
She can do this.
For her team.
For Kion.
For the girl that this sport tried to break.
For all of them, she will win.
Screams erupt from the stands as Cronus hurtles across the half-point boundary and Taissa once again lifts the jewel above her head.
She holds her head high, breathing hard, looking with gleaming eyes at the world around her.
At Isla, bursting into joyful tears atop Jemmy, at Mahina and Adriel, the latter leaping off his stymph and onto Mahina’s, in order to give her a big bear hug—and a kiss, speaking toward long-felt feelings finally making themselves known.
Bronte whoops and cheers as she circles Taissa on Icarus, joined by Knox and óríon…
And Kion. Taissa smiles so hard that it hurts as Kion pulls Cato up beside her and looks at her with eyes shining like constellations.
Purple-and-silver streamers, loosed from paper canons, burst into the air from the crowd below. Enchanted lavender banners float into the sky, reading, in looping font: The Stymphs Are Back! The Stymphs Are Back!
Admidst the fluttering confetti, Taissa turns her head up to the sky, and she smiles.
In the Nexitory’s media room, Taissa sits at the long table, staring out at the excited sea of reporters.
Their multicolored Pell-Mell Plumes waver in excitement.
She recognizes pink-haired Glinda Davero in the crowd, already scribbling away.
Fear knots in Taissa’s stomach, and she tries her best to breathe steadily.
(It’s not working.)
Underneath the table, Kion holds her right hand, and Mahina holds her left. They know how hard this is for her, what comes next. But it’s finally time.
Kion clears his throat, tapping the microphone with his free hand. “Before we start going over the game,” he says in a loud, gruff voice that has the chittering writers quieting, “Taissa Cho has something she’d like to say.”
The reporters glance back and forth, eyebrows raising expectantly between the two of them.
Someone—probably Glinda—squeals and swoons.
(Morgana, does she think it’s a wedding announcement?) Sweat slides down the nape of Taissa’s neck as she swallows hard, glancing to the media room’s door, where Estee Cho stands by Niamh and Bill, nodding and holding her daughter’s gaze.
Her dark hair is peppered with confetti; the sight almost makes Taissa smile. Almost.
“You can do it, sweetheart,” Kion murmurs. “We’re all here with you.” He squeezes her palm four times, their signal for I’ve got you. She’d come up with it after accompanying Kion to his first therapy appointment, sitting next to him on the couch, her hand in his.
Now, it floods her with strength.
She can do it. She phoned Felicity Vance last night, and this morning, DMC agents and Banallan magistrates launched an official investigation into the threats against Sansa in exchange for Taissa’s silence. And right here, right now, Taissa is going to make the truth known.
Her truth known.
“Two years ago,” she says, her voice strong and hard, carrying throughout the media room with iron steel, “Coach Colum Frasier of the NCL Wyverns held me down in the locker room and forced a Luck glyph onto the back of my neck.”
Tally Ho Tavern is nearly shaking from the vibrations of pint glasses being thumped down, shoulders bumping into one another, fists pounding on the tables, and hands clasping one another as the post-game celebration begins.
A leprechaun musician plays a guitar, his song nearly lost over the din.
Roger is grinning from ear to ear as he hurries over to where the Stymphs sit around one of his largest tables, setting down their grease-marked baskets of chips.
Taissa can’t help but to smile back. The bitter, seething man has transformed completely into the picture of a jolly pub owner, plying them with free chips and drinks. His happiness is contagious.
Isla is already hiccuping, much to the amusement of her girlfriend, the gorgeous leannán sídhe from the Shrieking Pumpkin.
Knox is trying to steal óríon’s flask of something (óríon muttered that the cheap beer was “viebjóeslegur”), Mahina and Adriel are laughing hard over a joke that nobody else understands, and James is arguing with Bronte over who should ask the musician to play a 50 Centaurs’ song (James refuses to budge: for such an “egregiously ridiculous scheme,” it should be Bronte).
Taissa doesn’t think she’s ever been more full of joy than in this moment, eating greasy chips with her head on Kion’s shoulder, a weight lifted from her own.
The press believed her today. They didn’t laugh, or call her a liar.
No, they wrote down her every word, and looked at her with shame.
She received nearly thirty apologies today from the reporters alone.
Apologies that she is still debating whether to accept.
(She’d be lying if she said their shame wasn’t extremely satisfying.)
“GIVE ME BACK THE KETCHUP!” Knox howls as óríon shoves it out of his reach.
“Then stop trying to steal my vodka.”
“Fucking hells,” mutters Kion, pinching the bridge of his nose. “They’re children.”
She pokes him with a chip. “You know you love them.”
His face softens. “I do, yeah. Bunch of idiots.”
Taissa snorts, reaching across the table for another chip.
“So we meet the new coach tomorrow?” she asks.
Money’s been streaming into the club; enough for Bill to hire a new coach, Junie Farrow.
Taissa likes the sound of her already, and with the Phoenixes match in a week, Farrow’s arrival is welcome.
“Disappointed you can’t make us sprint laps anymore? ”
“I’ll miss making Tanaka run,” Kion admits, and they both laugh, Taissa delighting in the sound of Kion’s joy. She reaches back for another chip.
Before she can grab one, Kion’s hand closes around hers, their fingers interlocking as he raises the back of her hand to his lips and kisses it. She blushes; she can’t help it.
“What was that for?” she asks.
“You know why,” Kion says with the smile he saves only for her, squeezing her hand four times.
“Say it,” she teases, enjoying how it’s his turn to blush.
“I love you,” he murmurs against her lips as raucous cheers fill the small pub. “I think I always have.”
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Inside her chest, her heart soars like Cronus in the skies, like Sansa through the clouds.
Giddiness rushes through her blood like the most potent sugar rush; she feels her cheeks pinken and flush.
“I love you, too,” she whispers, and as he exhales shakily, she tweaks his nose.
Kion fondly rolls his eyes, rubbing the offended appendage.
“Menace.”
“Numpty.”
“Light of my life.”
“Bane of my existence.”
“Newbie.”
“Pookie.”
“You’re horrib—” Laughing, Taissa cuts off, as Kion slants his lips against hers.
They’re a perfect fit, like lock and key. Morgana save her, but she never wants the kiss to end. Yet perhaps she shouldn’t worry.
Something tells her that they have all the time in the world.