The Raven King (All for the Game Book 2)
The Raven King: Chapter 8

October arrived without warning. Neil knew their match against the Ravens was coming up fast, but it still startled him when he realized they were already a week into the month. The game was only six days away.

If the Foxes were having a typical season, the match might have drawn a little less attention, even with Kevin on their line. This year, however, they were at an unprecedented six-and-one record. The only game they’d lost was their opener against Breckenridge. They’d won three games by the skin of their teeth, but victories were victories no matter how they got them. The Foxes were pulling together and getting stronger one week at a time. No one expected them to win against the Ravens, but it was obvious they’d put up a spectacular fight.

The Foxhole Court didn’t have enough seating to accommodate the crowd this game was sure to draw, so the school sold discounted seats in the basketball stadium and promised to broadcast the game live on the scoreboard televisions there.

Palmetto State University spent the entire second week preening and prepping for its day in the spotlight. Groundskeepers trimmed every square inch of the sprawling campus. Cleaning teams drained and scrubbed out the manmade pond in front of the library. Student clubs were invited to design and hang banners wherever they could fit them. Rocky Foxy the mascot walked the campus for hours every day and poked his oversized head into classrooms to get the students worked up. The Vixens set up camp in the amphitheater to pass out temporary tattoos and foam paw prints.

There was an event every night leading up to Friday. The school’s choir and jazz band had free concerts on the stadium lawn on Monday. Seventy percent of the student body wore orange for Tuesday’s Orange Day. Wednesday was White Day with a higher turnout. Thursday was the pep rally, which the Foxes were required to attend. Several thousand students stopped by to cheer and party. News cameras were on hand to televise the festivities and take comments from the small team. Wymack kept Neil away from the microphone, not trusting Neil to behave himself.

Thursday was when Dan finally started to lose her cool. This was her fourth year as the team’s captain. She’d been subjected to verbal abuse and outright hatred since she started. Seeing people finally rally behind her and her team flustered her. She kept a brave face in front of the cameras, but she spent Thursday night in Matt’s bed.

The more excited the students grew, the more uneasy the Foxes felt, and the tension at their practices that week was suffocating. They were sick with nerves by Friday. Andrew was the only one completely unaffected. He bounced off the walls and harassed his teammates endlessly. Kevin, on the other hand, didn’t say a single word at Friday morning’s practice.

Traffic that day was completely out of control, no matter how much outside help campus security called in. Wymack signed his Foxes out of their afternoon classes and called them to the stadium at three. Serve wasn’t for another four hours, but he wanted to shield them from the madness unfolding around the university. Dan turned on the TV and flipped channels until she found a movie to watch. Aaron and Matt went into the foyer to do their homework in peace. Neil and Kevin went to the inner court and sat on the Foxes’ bench in silence.

At five-thirty Wymack ordered them enough food to feed a small army. The Foxes sat in a circle to eat but didn’t speak. Only when they’d thrown their trash away did they finally look at each other. Dan pulled the Ravens’ roster out and began going over it, but by now the Foxes knew all of the Ravens’ names and numbers by heart. They’d been studying the Raven line for weeks, watching old games and memorizing statistics. They’d watched recordings of past Raven games to get an idea for how their opponents played and looked for any weaknesses they could exploit. They’d come back empty-handed. The only chink in the Ravens’ armor was Kevin’s absence.

Kevin tried explaining Raven synchrony earlier this week, but Neil almost wished he could forget that story. Ravens came to Edgar Allan University for one reason only: to play Exy. Every athlete Coach Moriyama accepted was expected to sign to a professional team upon graduation. School was a secondary concern for all of them. They were all enrolled in the same undergraduate degree and took their classes together in groups of three or four. They weren’t allowed to go anywhere without taking at least one teammate with them. They weren’t supposed to socialize with anyone outside the team.

They didn’t even live in the student dorms, but they didn’t live where everyone thought they did, either. Edgar Allan was a smaller university than Palmetto State, with fewer sports and more arts programs. One perk they offered was interest-based housing in lieu of general dorms. Sororities, fraternities, and larger clubs could all petition to have special living arrangements. The Exy team had a house of its own, but the Ravens only slept there when keeping up appearances.

Evermore wasn’t on school grounds for a reason. It belonged to Edgar Allan, but it doubled as the national team’s stadium. Because of its dual purpose Evermore was built with extra amenities: towers for celebrities and the ERC, lounges for high-profile guests, and spacious living quarters for visiting teams. Those quarters were built underground beneath the court floor, and that was what the Ravens used as their dormitory. That was where Riko and Kevin grew up.

If the Ravens weren’t in class, they were expected to be at Evermore. They lived and breathed Exy on a scale no other team could or would. Their intense lifestyle, forced integration, and vicious punishments put them on a whole different scale than any of their opponents. They were, in short, the complete opposite of everything the Foxes knew and understood. Tonight’s game pitted a hive mind against a fractured bunch of rejects.

An hour out from serve the stadium guards unlocked the gates and started letting people in. Neil thought he could feel the stadium shake beneath the weight of tens of thousands of feet. He dressed to the distant rumble of excited voices and met his team in the foyer. Wymack had the stick rack out already. Kevin opened the lids over his pair and threaded his fingers through the nets.

‘Can you do this, Kevin?’ Abby asked, searching his face for any sign he was okay. ‘Can you play?’

‘If I am breathing, I can play,’ Kevin said. ‘This is my game too.’

‘Words to live and die by.’ Wymack motioned for them to line it up. ‘I expect a double-digit score from my offense line. Kevin, you know their defense better than anyone else and they don’t know how to face you right-handed, so run them into the ground. Neil, get at least five points or I’ll have you running marathons every month until graduation.’

Neil stared at him. ‘Five points?’

‘You got four last week.’ S~ᴇaʀᴄh the (F)indNƟvᴇl.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

‘We weren’t playing Edgar Allan last week, Coach,’ Neil said.

‘Irrelevant,’ Wymack said with a jerk of his hand. ‘Five points or twenty-six miles. Do the math and decide which one makes you happier.’

He didn’t give Neil a chance to argue but looked at Allison and Dan. ‘You ladies let offense drown if you have to. They’re not your concern. Your focus tonight is keeping the defense line afloat. Get me? We know the Ravens are faster and bigger and better than us. We only have a chance so long as we can control their score. Defense, keep the strikers away from goal. Period, end of story. Andrew, for once in your miserable midgety life play like you want us to win, would you?’

Andrew looked amused by that request, which Neil didn’t find at all reassuring. The warning buzzer sounded over their heads, alerting them they were due in the inner court in a minute. Neil wasn’t the only one who started when it went off and he was more than a little alarmed that Kevin was one of the ones who jumped. Abby fixed Kevin with an intent look that Kevin refused to return. Wymack clapped his hands at his team until they fell in line.

‘Let’s do this,’ he said. ‘The sooner we kill these bastards, the sooner we can get roaring drunk at Abby’s place. I spent all damned morning stocking her fridge.’

It wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence, but it made most of Neil’s teammates smile and Nicky whooped a little in glee. There was no point pretending they weren’t going to get completely slaughtered tonight. Wymack was offering them a chance to drink themselves to sleep so they wouldn’t stay up all night stewing on their failure. Neil guessed that was better than nothing, even if it didn’t help him at all.

Wymack pushed the door open. Dan threw her team a tight-lipped smile over her shoulder before leading them into the stadium. Neil couldn’t see the stands until they were almost to the inner court, but the noise that crashed over him seemed twice as loud as it’d ever been. The roar escalated to screams when the Foxes finally stepped into view. The Vixens waved their pom-poms and bounced around in ecstatic greeting. The school’s performing band, the Orange Notes, blasted the school fight song as loud as they could. Somehow it still sounded muffled by the rest of the chaos.

Neil looked up into the sea of orange. He could spot the out-of-towners by the neutral ‘1 – 2′ signs they carried in tribute to Riko and Kevin. The Raven fans were even easier to find. They’d come all in black and took up an entire reserved section directly opposite the Foxes’ bench. It was like a black hole had swallowed up part of the stadium.

With all of the noise, Neil missed the announcement that signaled the Ravens’ entrance, but he couldn’t miss the sudden heavy pulse of drums. The tune struck him as oddly familiar, but it took him a second to place it. It was the music that heralded Riko’s arrival at Kathy’s show: Edgar Allan’s fight song. It wasn’t upbeat and confident like any other song Neil heard at games. This was a dark and heavy tune, an intimidating message of death and domination. The Ravens took their image seriously. Neil guessed they had a lot of intensive counseling in their futures.

The crowd’s reaction was violent. Palmetto-clad students chanted derogatory phrases and screamed hateful boos. Edgar Allan’s section roared a battle cry. Fans who had traveled here just to see a good show cheered for the Ravens as fiercely as they had the Foxes.

The teams were sent on warm-up laps, but Wymack ceded the inner court to the larger Raven team. The Foxes ran their laps on the court itself, following the court walls and going the opposite direction as their opponents. Neil saw the Ravens pass as an endless line of black and red in his peripheral vision but refused to look at them. He kept his eyes on the orange and white jersey in front of him.

They followed laps with drills, but Moriyama only sent half his team onto the court. The Raven defense continued running laps while the seven strikers and five dealers took shots on goal. Even with only roughly half their team on the court they outnumbered the Foxes by several bodies.

The referees kicked them off the court long before Neil was ready to go, leaving only Dan and Riko behind. Somehow the captains managed a civil handshake at half-court. The head referee flipped the coin and signaled Edgar Allan for starting serve. He stayed where he was as Dan and Riko left the court.

Moriyama and Wymack set up their starting lines near their respective doors and waited. The Foxes’ three subs went down the line, cracking racquets with their teammates and offering tight, tense smiles.

‘For the Foxes, tonight’s starting line-up,’ the announcer said. ‘Number two, Kevin Day.’

Anything else he might have said was swallowed up by the crowd. Kevin ignored the ecstatic roar and stepped onto the court. Neil’s knuckles popped as he clenched his fingers tighter around his racquet.

‘Number ten, Neil Josten,’ the announcer said.

‘Five points,’ Wymack said.

Neil sighed and stepped through the door. He went to his spot on half-court line and turned to watch as his teammates entered the court. Allison was the starting dealer, and Nicky and Renee were on as the Foxes’ starting backliners. Andrew was the last one on for the team and he got comfortable in goal.

Neil didn’t hear Riko’s name, but he heard the crowd react. Riko strode onto the Foxhole Court like he owned the stadium. Instead of taking his spot, however, he stopped at Kevin’s side. He took his helmet off, but the cheers echoing off the court walls drowned out whatever he was saying. Kevin unstrapped his own helmet and hooked it over his fingers as he answered. Riko said nothing else, seemingly content to stare Kevin down as the rest of the Ravens took the court.

When the Raven goalkeeper was in place and the referees moved into the court doors to check the teams, Riko finally moved. Neil was sure every Fox tensed when Riko reached for Kevin, but all Riko did was wind an arm around Kevin’s shoulders and pull him into a short hug.

The crowd’s response was ecstatic and deafening. Riko let go after just a second and walked down half-court to his place. Kevin stood frozen a few seconds longer. The unmistakable crash of a racquet against the court wall snapped him out of it and Kevin jerked around to look back at Andrew. Andrew beat his racquet against the goal a second time in warning. Kevin got the hint and yanked his helmet on.

The head referee waited until Kevin lifted his stick in an okay, then walked to the Raven dealer and handed over a ball. He left the court, and the referees bolted both doors closed.

Neil closed his eyes and breathed. He locked away everything he was, burying his father and Nathaniel and the Moriyamas into a mental safe for later. He didn’t need or want any of that right now. All that mattered was this game: the racquet in his hands, the Ravens’ goal, and the clock counting down seconds to serve overhead. He wasn’t Neil right now. He wasn’t anything or anyone but a Fox, and he had a game to play.

The buzzer sounded to start the game and Neil raced up the court. He saw the Raven dealer serve but didn’t look for the ball until he’d caught up with Johnson, his backliner mark. The dealer had served to the home court wall. Allison was the only one who stayed still long enough to watch it, and she snagged it on the rebound. She threw the ball to Andrew, who slammed it all the way up the court. Neil and Kevin pushed their way further up the court, racing the backliners to the ball.

Kevin was up against Jean. Jean was the Ravens’ strongest backliner, but Neil was more worried about the psychological toll he might take on Kevin.

Jean was taller than Kevin, not by much but by just enough he caught the ball first. Kevin smacked his stick to fight him for possession. The sharp crack echoed off the walls as they struggled with each other. Foxes and Ravens yelled encouragement from around the court. Kevin switched tactics and slammed a shoulder into Jean hard enough to make him stumble. The ball finally popped free of Jean’s racquet. Kevin didn’t have time to aim with Jean in his face, but he threw the ball at goal anyway. It’d barely left his net before Jean checked him hard enough to knock him over.

The ball hit the wall and rebounded in Neil’s direction. Neil dove past Johnson to catch it, and Johnson went straight for his racquet. He checked Neil’s stick so hard it rattled Neil to his elbows and, in the same move, slammed into Neil to clear him away from the ball. Neil stumbled in a desperate search for balance. Johnson twisted his stick around Neil’s in a lightning-quick move and gave a hard jerk. A bolt of hot pain ratcheted through Neil’s right wrist. He let go of his racquet instinctively and Johnson ran off after the ball.

Neil gave his hand a fierce shake and chased after him. Johnson had a short lead, but Neil was faster. Johnson caught the ball and brought his racquet up for a throw, and Neil didn’t try to slow down. He crashed into Johnson hard enough to take them both off their feet. Neil hit the ground and used his momentum to roll back to his feet. He ignored Johnson’s snarled threat in favor of locating the ball. It’d fallen far short of its intended goal. Allison and her dealer were fighting each other for it. The Raven dealer won and heaved the ball down the court.

Neil almost lost track of it as it shot between the Raven strikers. It went to Riko, then the dealer, then the other striker, and back to Riko the exact second he out-stepped Nicky. Riko moved in a blur, and the goal lit up red. The buzzer sounded to signal the point and the crowd screamed.

The Ravens wheeled back to their starting points with triumphant whoops. The Foxes were slower to react, and Neil didn’t budge until he saw Andrew move. Andrew was half-turned as he stared at the red wall behind him. They were only two minutes into the first half; it was the fastest anyone had ever scored against Andrew.

Andrew waited until the glow completely faded before facing forward again. Neil hoped the loss would galvanize him. Andrew was still riding the coattails of his drugs and wouldn’t start fading for another fifteen minutes or so. He probably thought it funny to be scored on so quickly, but there was the slim chance he would perk up and now see the Ravens as an interesting challenge.

‘Let’s go,’ the dealer yelled, and Neil obediently went to the half-court line.

The buzzer got them moving again, and the teams slammed into each other once more. The Foxes were a little shaken by getting scored on so quickly. They fought harder, but it wasn’t enough. Five minutes later Riko scored again.

‘This is humiliating,’ the other Raven striker said as he headed past Neil for half-court. ‘I can’t believe we’re wasting our time here.’

Neil contemplated throwing his racquet at the man’s head, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Riko. Riko wasn’t going back to his starting spot but was headed for Andrew. Andrew moved to meet him and they faced each other with just the goal line between them. Andrew waved off whatever Riko said to him with a careless waggle of his hand, but Riko didn’t leave. The referees gave them a couple seconds to speak, then thumped on the court door in warning. Riko finally turned away and got in place for the next play.

The Foxes pushed up as fast and far as they could, but the Ravens shoved them back. Neil could only watch as the ball made it back to the Ravens’ offense line. His stomach shredded to bits as he watched the strikers pass to one another. Riko snagged it and fired at the goal. Neil’s shoulders went tense in preparation for another lost point, but Andrew slammed the ball away from his goal as hard as he could. Neil used his intense rush of relief as extra fuel to chase after the ball.

The Ravens didn’t score again for another fifteen minutes, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. They were so much better than the Foxes were that Neil couldn’t help but feel humiliated. This was worse than Breckenridge’s brute force. The Ravens made the Foxes look like clumsy children. Riko was simply too fast for Nicky to compete with. He could catch and pass in one easy flick, and his aim was scarily accurate no matter how quickly he moved. The only reason the Foxes weren’t getting completely slaughtered was because Andrew had their goal, but he’d start going through withdrawal soon.

After the third goal, the Ravens sent on two substitutions: a striker to replace Riko’s partner and a new dealer. Wymack took advantage of the break to send Matt and Aaron on for Nicky and Renee. Despite the score, Matt was grinning as he stopped on the first-fourth line. He was set to mark Riko and looked eager for a fight. Neil was frustrated by how the game was going but Matt’s obvious excitement was almost enough to make him smile.

Matt was the strongest Fox and Aaron could outplay Nicky any day. Their arrival on the court made an immediate difference, and the Foxes finally started to hold their ground. The Ravens weren’t expecting that, judging by the aggressive turn the game took. Neil wasn’t at all surprised that the fights started with Riko and Matt.

Riko almost made it past Matt for a shot on goal, but Matt twisted in an impossible move and used his body like a battering ram. They collided with such a loud crash Neil cringed in sympathy pain. He forgot about them a second later when he saw what Andrew was doing.

It wasn’t against the rules for goalkeepers to leave their goals, but it was extremely ill-advised considering how big their goals were and how fast a ball could move. A goalkeeper only risked it in extreme cases. Apparently tonight was one of those nights, because Andrew was moving before Matt and Riko even hit the ground. Aaron, the other striker, and both dealers were all racing for the ball, but Andrew was closer and faster.

A goalkeeper’s racquet was flat, meant to deflect a ball rather than catch it, so Andrew couldn’t scoop the ball up. He knew how to redirect it, though, and gave the ball a short, fierce swat. It hit the ground first, the wall second, and rebounded high. Andrew cleared it all the way up the court to his strikers with a hard swing. Neil only needed a second to realize Andrew was sending it to him, and his heart beat with savage triumph.

Jean and Johnson had pushed Kevin and Neil all the way to half-court. With that much open space Neil could outrun anyone. It didn’t matter that he started with Johnson right at his back or that Johnson was better than he was. Neil had plenty of room to run and he was the fastest player in the game. He was two steps ahead of Johnson before he passed the far-fourth line and he’d widened the gap to six by the time he caught the ball.

He spared one second to look for Kevin and one more to calculate his throw. On his tenth step he fired the ball at the away goal wall. All those long nights learning Raven drills from Kevin had to pay off here. The perfect rebound wasn’t just about getting the ball to the right racquet; it was getting there at the right angle so Kevin wouldn’t have to aim. Kevin just had to bring his racquet back on the catch and fire straightaway. It was the same trick the Raven strikers had been pulling all night, but the Ravens weren’t ready to see it from Kevin and Neil. Jean and the goalkeeper thought they had more time to react, but Kevin wasn’t waiting. The Raven goal lit up red when Kevin slammed the ball against it.

The reaction from the stands was wild enough it almost drowned out Matt’s excited yell. Neil saw the Fox subs and Vixens celebrating at the edge of his vision but he couldn’t take his eyes off Kevin to look at them. He and Kevin met on their way back to half-court and clacked their sticks together almost hard enough to hurt. Kevin’s smile was fleeting but fierce. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. It was the first sign of approval Neil had gotten from him since they’d met and Neil felt it like an adrenaline boost.

Finally getting on the scoreboard reenergized the entire team. The next time Riko took a shot on goal Matt tripped him. A couple seconds later they were fighting, and the game ground to a halt as the referees ran to break it up. Matt got yellow-carded for throwing the first punch, but the furious look on his face said Riko started the fight. Neil didn’t know what Riko said to set Matt off, but he couldn’t believe Matt let his temper get the better of him. A foul gave Riko a penalty shot. The teams lined up to watch it happen, and Andrew missed by half an inch.

The game’s sportsmanship died with that shot. Neil lost track of how many times someone hit the ground in the final twenty minutes of the half. By the time Neil got elbowed in the face at the forty-four minute mark, every player on the court had a yellow card and one Raven had been kicked off with a red card.

The referee who carded Johnson called Abby on the court when he saw the blood on Neil’s face. Exy helmets had protective shields to cover players’ eyes and noses, but Johnson got under it with an upward swing. Neil’s gloves were too bulky to do much more than smear the mess around, but Abby brought gauze with her. Her tight expression was at complete odds with how carefully she wiped his face. This was her fifth trip onto the court so far and she wasn’t happy with how violent the game was getting.

‘He could have broken your nose with a hit like that,’ Abby said as she dabbed blood off his upper lip.

‘But he didn’t,’ Neil said. ‘Can I play now?’

‘The referees won’t let you play if you’re bleeding out your face,’ Abby said, unrushed by his obvious impatience. She curled her fingers around his chin and tilted his head this way and that. Neil felt a trickle of blood and sniffed it back. The sour heat of it was a familiar burn on his tongue. Abby didn’t look convinced, so Neil sniffed again. Finally she sighed and gave his helmet an encouraging pat.

‘I’ll check on you again in a minute,’ she said, and followed the referee off the court.

Everyone else was already set up for Neil’s penalty shot, so Neil took his place and caught the ball the Raven dealer tossed him. Neil liked penalties because they were easy points, but because they were easy he usually found less satisfaction in them. Against the Ravens he’d take what he could get. It was just him, the goalkeeper, and an oversized goal. He was only allowed two steps for momentum, but Neil didn’t take them. He feinted and fired the ball home against the bottom corner of the goal. Matt thumped his shoulder hard enough to set Neil’s nose bleeding again.

‘Maybe you should get your face smashed in a couple more times if it means you can score on it,’ Matt said.

‘Not a fan of that strategy,’ Neil said.

Matt laughed and jogged to first-fourth. The last minute of first half was over in a heartbeat and the teams left the court to the screams of a rowdy crowd. Neil looked back at the scoreboard as he followed his teammates into the locker room. They were standing at six-three, an amazing start considering who they were up against, but an impossible score to come back from.

Second half was a downward tumble. The Foxes were on their second wind against an entirely new line-up and Andrew couldn’t hold his ground much longer. Neil knew they were losing him the first time he saw Andrew stumble. It could have been that Andrew was just moving too fast in an effort to clear the ball away, but Neil knew better. Andrew was fast running out of steam. It was early for him to be getting this sick, but the Ravens were accelerating the process by running him into the ground.

Neil wished for a moment that Andrew had taken his drugs tonight. He dismissed that thought as quickly as it came. Andrew on his drugs would have more energy, but he’d also be infinitely more unreliable. Andrew was putting himself through this because he knew this was the only way he would actually play for them. Neil was equal parts grateful and irritated. The latter was self-directed; Neil wasn’t anywhere near good enough to make that sacrifice worth it and he hated feeling incompetent. No matter how hard he pushed he couldn’t make enough of a difference.

The game ended at thirteen-six: the most goals anyone had ever taken from Andrew and the worst point gap the Foxes had seen in three years. The stands’ disappointed reaction was expected and understandable, but Neil barely heard it through the buzzing in his ears. Neil’s heart was pounding so violently he was sure it was beating bruises into his lungs. Every breath he managed to suck in knifed his throat open. The only strength he had left he put into holding onto his racquet.

Neil wanted to cross the court to his teammates, but he didn’t trust himself to move. He and Kevin had just run two full halves against the Raven defense. He thought it a miracle he was still standing. He felt his legs only in flashes. One second they were on fire; the next they were gone entirely. Neil looked down at his feet to make sure they were still there and blinked shadows out of his eyes.

The roar outside the court escalated to feverish screams high-pitched enough to break through Neil’s exhaustion. He looked up, wondering what he’d missed, and stared across the court. Andrew’s hands hovered empty in front of him, and his racquet was on the ground at his feet. As Neil watched Andrew leaned over to pick his racquet up. He tried, anyway. He only got it a foot off the floor before he lost his grip again.

It reminded Neil of their first practice together, when Neil almost blew his arms out playing against Andrew. He looked up at the scoreboard. The Ravens had taken an incredible hundred and fifty shots on goal; it was unbelievable Andrew had only missed thirteen of them. He looked back as Andrew tried again to get his racquet. Andrew didn’t fare any better this time, so he gave up and sat down heavily beside it.

The court doors opened and the subs flooded on. Abby and Wymack stepped into the doorway to watch their team. The subs were heading for the goal, as had become tradition since Andrew started playing full halves, so Neil took a couple unsteady steps in that direction. He didn’t get far before Kevin appeared at his side.

Kevin didn’t say anything, but he rested his racquet against one shoulder and paced Neil all the way down the court. They were the last to the Foxes’ huddle but their teammates made room for them easily. Neil answered the tired smiles sent his way with an exhausted one of his own. Kevin had eyes only for Andrew as he crouched in front of the downed goalkeeper.

‘So,’ Kevin said, ‘did you have fun?’

Andrew was too tired to put any heat in his words. ‘You are despicable, Kevin Day. I don’t know why I keep you around.’

‘Foxes,’ Riko said as the Ravens came up at their backs. All the Foxes save Kevin turned to face him. ‘I admit I’m at a loss as to what to do now. I cannot thank you for the night’s game because I can’t call this debacle a game. I thought I knew what to expect when we came here tonight, but I am still embarrassed on your behalf. You have fallen so far, Kevin. You should have stayed down and saved us the trouble of forcing you back to your knees.’

‘I’m satisfied,’ Kevin said. It was the last response any of the Foxes expected from him. They forgot about Riko in favor of gaping at Kevin. ‘Not with their score or performance, but with their spirit. I was right. There’s more than enough here for me to work with.’

‘How many balls did you take to the helmet?’ a Raven asked.

Kevin only smiled, slow and sure and pleased, and offered Andrew a hand. Andrew looked at it, then at Kevin, and let Kevin haul him to his feet. Renee was ready when Kevin let go and looped her arms around Andrew in a fierce hug. It had to be awkward with all the armor Andrew was still wearing, but it gave Andrew a couple seconds to find his balance. Kevin distracted the Ravens from Andrew’s unsteadiness by facing them.

‘Thank you for the game tonight,’ he said. ‘We will see you again at semifinals. It will be an interesting rematch, I promise.’

Riko wasn’t expecting that calm confidence after tonight’s awful results. ‘One man cannot carry you that far,’ he said, sounding torn between incredulity and disgust. ‘Even you are not stupid enough to believe that. You should give up now.’

It was a threat, not friendly advice, but Kevin said, ‘One is enough to start with.’

‘Thanks for nothing and good night,’ Dan said. ‘We’re out of here.’

The Foxes filed off the court to the shouts of a still-riled crowd. Wymack was speaking to a couple reporters, but he excused himself at their arrival. Renee and Andrew weren’t waiting for him to catch up. Renee had an arm around Andrew’s shoulder still and she propelled him toward the locker room as quickly as she could without being obvious about it.

The rest of the Foxes stayed behind, waving at the cameras and crowds. They’d lost, but they were buoyed by Kevin’s assessment and their fans’ unflagging support. Finally Wymack got them all into the locker room. Renee was waiting in the foyer, but Andrew was nowhere in sight. Neil assumed he was puking in the bathroom.

Wymack locked the door behind them, buying them a minute or two before the press came looking for comments, and faced them. ‘When I told you this June you’d be facing Edgar Allan on your court you said there was no way you could do it. But you faced them tonight and you didn’t let them push you around. You took six points from the first-ranked team in the nation. You should be pretty fucking proud of yourselves right now.’

‘Proud of that mess?’ Aaron asked, tired and annoyed. ‘We were destroyed.’

‘I’m just glad it’s over,’ Nicky said. ‘They’re terrifying.’

‘I’m proud,’ Allison said, earning a startled look from Nicky and a half-smile from Wymack. She turned a condescending sneer on Aaron, looking more like herself than she had since Seth died. ‘This is only your second season with us. I wouldn’t expect you to understand what a game like this means.’

Dan nodded. ‘Allison’s right. Losing hurts, but it’s not a total loss. Last year we wouldn’t have managed a single point against them. This is the strongest we’ve ever been, and we can only get better from here. Kevin already said it: when we meet the Ravens in semifinals we’re going to knock them down a peg or two.’

‘Well said,’ Wymack said. ‘Kevin, Neil?’

‘Twenty-six miles?’ Neil guessed.

‘I’ve got something better in mind. Starting next week everyone’s finally back in their proper spots. If you two can run a full game against Edgar Allan, you’re ready to take on the rest of the season alone. Everyone else: thank you for your patience and cooperation while Kevin and Neil adjusted. Renee especially—you’ve been a damned good sport this year. Welcome back to goal.’

Dan’s wild whoop drowned out Renee’s more modest response. Matt gave Renee a triumphant hug, and Allison clapped a hand on Renee’s shoulder in a quiet but fierce show of support. Neil wasn’t sure he and Kevin wouldn’t let the others down in the upcoming weeks, but he couldn’t lean on his teammates forever. They’d spent half the season with a screwed-up lineup. He and Kevin had been playing longer stretches each week in preparation for tonight’s game. Now it was time for them to take the offense line back and run with it.

‘We’ll go over details of tonight’s game on Monday morning,’ Wymack said. ‘Meet here instead of at the gym. Dan and Kevin, you’re on press duty. The rest of you stop yapping and wash up so we can drink. Make sure you take everything important home with you tonight. I have a cleaning crew coming in tomorrow to wash the Raven stench off our court. Let’s get the hell out of here and get wasted.’

They were exhausted, sore, and more than a little disappointed by their loss, but the Foxes left the stadium feeling like champions.

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