Fantasy meets sports romance in this sizzling slow-burn novel from the #1 Carriwitchet, the violent, rugby-esque game played atop winged beasts, was once Taissa Cho’s whole life, and she was once the United Kingdom’s most promising player. Until her nemesis, rival player Kion Locke, destroyed her career in a single moment. Expelled from the sport in disgrace, Taissa has spent the last two years dreaming of nothing but revenge and relishing watching Kion’s team plummet to the bottom of the league. So when Taissa is offered the chance to redeem herself Yet as a mysterious illness befalls the winged creatures of the entire league--putting both the beasts’ lives and the very sport itself at stake--the athletes find themselves partnering up in other ways, determined to crack the case of the eerie sickness. As their investigation takes them on a whirlwind adventure, Kion and Taissa are prepared for anything . . . Anything, that is, but their fake-for-the-cameras relationship to maybe, just <maybe<, become something real after all.

Autorentext

Sophie Kim

Klappentext

A SUNNIE READS SELECT • Fantasy meets sports romance in this sizzling slow-burn novel in which the disgraced star of a brutal magical sport must team up with the rival who destroyed her career, from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The God and the Gumiho.

“Fourth Wing-meets-rugby is something I didn't know I needed in my life, but now I’m obsessed. The Winged Game is going to be the next big thing for sure!”—Ruby Dixon, New York Times bestselling author

Carriwitchet, the violent, rugby-esque game played atop winged beasts, was once Taissa Cho’s whole life, and she was once the United Kingdom’s most promising player. Until her nemesis, rival player Kion Locke, destroyed her career in a single moment. Expelled from the sport in disgrace, Taissa has spent the last two years dreaming of nothing but revenge and relishing watching Kion’s team plummet to the bottom of the league.

So when Taissa is offered the chance to redeem herself and her career, she can’t refuse—even if the offer is coming from the very man who ruined everything in the first place. It’s close to a dream come true . . . except for that pesky clause in her contract that demands she and Kion enter a fake relationship in order to garner some much-needed positive PR for the team. This could not be a worse match. Taissa and Kion only have two things in common: their love of the game, and their undying hatred for each other.

Yet as a mysterious illness befalls the winged creatures of the entire league—putting both the beasts’ lives and the very sport itself at stake—the athletes find themselves partnering up in other ways, determined to crack the case of the eerie sickness. As their investigation takes them on a whirlwind adventure, Kion and Taissa are prepared for anything . . .

Anything, that is, but their fake-for-the-cameras relationship to maybe, just maybe, become something real after all.

Zusammenfassung
Fantasy meets sports romance in this sizzling slow-burn novel in which the disgraced star of a brutal magical sport must team up with the rival who destroyed her career, from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The God and the Gumiho.

“Fourth Wing-meets-rugby is something I didn't know I needed in my life, but now I’m obsessed. The Winged Game is going to be the next big thing for sure!”—Ruby Dixon, New York Times bestselling author

Carriwitchet, the violent, rugby-esque game played atop winged beasts, was once Taissa Cho’s whole life, and she was once the United Kingdom’s most promising player. Until her nemesis, rival player Kion Locke, destroyed her career in a single moment. Expelled from the sport in disgrace, Taissa has spent the last two years dreaming of nothing but revenge and relishing watching Kion’s team plummet to the bottom of the league.

So when Taissa is offered the chance to redeem herself and her career, she can’t refuse—even if the offer is coming from the very man who ruined everything in the first place. It’s close to a dream come true . . . except for that pesky clause in her contract that demands she and Kion enter a fake relationship in order to garner some much-needed positive PR for the team. This could not be a worse match. Taissa and Kion only have two things in common: their love of the game, and their undying hatred for each other.

Yet as a mysterious illness befalls the winged creatures of the entire league—putting both the beasts’ lives and the very sport itself at stake—the athletes find themselves partnering up in other ways, determined to crack the case of the eerie sickness. As their investigation takes them on a whirlwind adventure, Kion and Taissa are prepared for anything . . .

Anything, that is, but their fake-for-the-cameras relationship to maybe, just maybe, become something real after all.

Leseprobe
**Chapter One
**
Taissa

May 2026
Banallan, Scotland

Taissa Cho, the once-­revered Robber of the Banallan Wyverns, national carriwitchet sensation, and the most popular athlete to ever grace the walls of fans, has gotten rather good at yelling at the happy-­eyed youth to get off my lawn, right this moment, or I’ll make you regret it.

It is a talent she’s been carefully honing ever since her luckless ban from the Wyverns, which sparked a deeply concerning midlife crisis for Taissa at the tender age of twenty-­two. During that transformative period, she morphed into a crotchety old crone trapped inside the body of a twenty-­four-­year-­old witch.

Gone are her days of soaring triumphantly around a cheering arena, replaced instead by a crumbling cottage in Banallan (carriwitchet money dries up fast, especially if one had to bribe reporters with hush money) and angrily crocheting scarves on the porch while eyeing the neighbors’ children with suspicion, lest they encroach upon her territory.

(Which they do. Frequently. Dirty little rats.)

In the past two years, Taissa has crocheted thirty-­seven scarves. And throughout the creation of each, she viciously imagined strangling a certain captain of the NCL Stymphs with the neat, colorful acrylic rows of cable, suzette, waffle, and cluster stitch.

For the past two years, Taissa Cho has lived in if onlys.

If only she hadn’t let her carriwitchet coach force her into wearing the forbidden Luck glyph.

If only she had demanded a more subtle place to have it inked (her back, her armpit, her torso, her *buttocks—­*literally anywhere besides where it had been).

If only Kion Locke hadn’t caught sight of it and chosen to completely destroy her life.

If only any other National Carriwitchet League team would have taken her after the scandal.

But they hadn’t. And so, she turned to scarves. And she has become rather certain that one day, the UKHC Bureau of Unconventional Homicidal Instances will descend upon her cottage, and her unholy piles of scarves will be labeled as murder weapons.

That Kion Locke’s gravestone will thusly read: kion locke, october 1996–­may 2026 death by scarf. oopsies!

Taissa just hadn’t expected today to be the day she brutally murdered him.

All in all, however, the day starts off as it always does. Taissa wakes up and—­over a nice cup of tea—­wallows in her complete and abject misery before dragging herself to her front porch, where she furiously flips through the papers for NCL headlines and delights in certain tidbits of information. Such as, and especially, the fact that the Pinion-­upon-&…