Pinion-upon-Keat, Victory Field

July 2024

Two Years Earlier

Kion Locke hated a lot of people. An extraordinary amount of people. A jaw-droppingly, shockingly large number of people.

He hated people who had sex while wearing socks. He hated children who smeared their sticky fingers all over upholstered furniture. He hated dogwalkers who strutted around with more than two dogs at once, he hated the giggling pixies who seemed to have a penchant for tugging at his ears in a desperate ploy for attention, he hated the irritatingly friendly hobs who snuck into his room to clean, and he especially hated the crowds of glossy-haired women who threw themselves at him simply for his prowess in the NCL.

Which would be flattering, save for the time that one literally burned his summer house down when things went sour.

And yet, somehow, there was nobody he hated more than Taissa Cho. Especially during games.

Especially now.

Kion leaned forward on the giant back of his stymphalian bird, his muscular thighs straining as he veered the enormous creature left, hurtling along the edge of the arena to the raucous cheers of onlookers. He shot past two of his teammates, his eyes on the looming wooden siege tower in the middle of the Wyverns’ side of the field. There was a sharp ticking in his mind that reminded him of a bomb’s countdown.

In a way, it was.

Because if he lost this game, he would be bloody furious.

And, like a bomb, Kion Locke tended to explode. Violently. With casualties.

He was on the brink of it now. This game was going like absolute shit. The Knockers, their defense, were off their rhythm, allowing the Banallan Wyverns’ offense to slip through the cracks toward their siege tower.

Plus, it didn’t help that in the fifteen minutes they’d been playing, fucking Taissa Cho had already stolen two sparkling draconian jewels from its highest tier. She’d also snatched hearty handfuls of weapons from the bottom levels, which the Wyverns’ three Knockers now wielded as Kion swooped closer.

A shining axe. A golden sword with a gem-encrusted hilt.

A . . . slingshot?

Please. Kion smirked. That pathetic thing must be from the bottom level of the siege tower, where the most useless armory was stashed. The player wielding it half-heartedly shot a stone at the white-haired Óríon as he overtook Kion and dozed aside the boomerang-wielding lad. Óríon’s stymph shot bronze beak–first into the soft underbelly of the wyvern’s dark, scaled body. The wyvern shrieked, veering away. As it sought shelter from the stymph’s attack, the two other Knockers dropped back apprehensively, leaving an open path toward their tower.