Page 14 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

14

LARK

S nores and snorts permeated the other side of the room, most of them coming from Laurel, who was splayed on her side with her mouth open. I slowly stirred from my nest at another, lower sound and looked over the edge of my bunk.

Marius grunted and puffed on the floor, shirtless, his blue skin coated in a sheen of sweat as he performed pushups with one arm. His defined back muscles flexed, holding my admiring gaze. Males didn’t get as strong as him without significant discipline and focus.

My nerves quavered. If anyone is going to be brutally honest, it’d be him, I reminded myself.

“Marius,” I whispered.

He paused before his next pushup and cracked his neck, standing with a slow roll of those muscles. He looked up at me expectantly. Most of the impatience that I’d seen mark his yellow gaze yesterday was absent. From this vantage, I had a straight view down at his ridged abs and the gold bars piercing his nipples. Most of the thoughts populating my mind vanished. I wanted to ask him…about how much it hurt to get those piercings? No, that wasn’t it.

“What is it?” he muttered, drawing my attention back to his face. Oh, he was going straight back to his usual annoyance with me.

I willed myself to rally. “What do I need to do to improve?” My inner omega cringed when his gaze sharpened. I really should’ve just asked him about the piercings; that’d be a more pleasant conversation. “To…to be more like a princess? And to impress your mother?”

His answer was about as blunt as I’d expected.

Amongst the items the princes had gathered for the return trip was a primer on the Serian language and a blank journal for me. After breakfast, when we’d pressed the top bunks back into their place and stacked the couch cushions over the lower cots, I got to work.

On the first page of the journal, I put a charcoal pencil to the immaculate paper and marked it with my untidy scrawl.

Things to improve on:

1. Learn Serian.

2. Guard your true self.

3. Be charming, strong, intelligent, and cunning.

4. Don’t be a doormat.

To be fair to Marius, he’d only suggested the last point by saying being passive and silent woke the aggressive instincts in most alphas. The Queen of Serian was a tough female who could put most alphas in their place without the help of her kings. If I wanted her to approve of me as her successor, I needed to be more like her.

I read over the list again and blew out a sigh. I could do this, right?

The other thing I’d learned about the royal pack was that the kings supplemented her. They were trained in the same roles as the princes traveling with me. The lord was her charmer. The protector was her strength. The magician was her dreamlander and protected her sleep. And as for cunning…she often passed ideas back and forth with her comfort, as Tormund was official titled.

But the takeaway there was supplemented . The kings only started where she left off. I had so far to go and so little time.

Well, the only view out of the window now was an endless stretch of sea. We kept it curtained to keep a reflected glare out of the room. I had nothing to do for days except sit and work, so that’s exactly what I did.

Lunchtime arrived, and I worked through it in an empty room. I copied the Serian alphabet and tried to get my tongue around the painstakingly spelled-out sounds that accompanied each foreign accent mark.

The way this was going, the queen would never be impressed with me and my stumbling attempts at her language. Maybe she’d laugh and I could be her court jester instead.

I was holding my face in both hands when the door opened, letting in the sound of the princes laughing and speaking Serian so effortlessly out in the hall. “Welcome back,” I said.

Someone wafted a baked treat under my nose. “How’re you supposed to learn on an empty stomach, hmm?” Fal teased.

I peeked between my fingers. The lack of scents from the alphas was already messing with me, as Fal had slipped into Marius’s place next to me and Kauz had his wings spread across the couch on the other side of the table. The dark elf wiggled a chocolate chip-studded muffin at me enticingly while the dream warden set down two glasses, one filled with pink juice and the other with chilled water. He also set out his box of ink, which he’d secured under one arm.

“Oh, hi,” I said.

Kauz flashed a knowing smile. Our dream, the kiss—it all flashed before my mind’s eye. I wondered if he was thinking about it too.

I was certainly reliving his confident declaration right before he kissed me. “We are fated to be.” My belly warmed.

I took the muffin and eased a little closer to Fal while I ate it, and he flipped through the first couple pages in the Serian primer I’d been poring over. The alphabet practically sounded like music when he said it, before he repeated it back with the clunky pronunciations given in the primer. His shoulders shook with laughter all the while. “Is this what the Seelie think we sound like?”

“A good thing Lark has four dedicated tutors,” Kauz said, chuckling.

“Three at best. One of us has to make sure she has fun.” The dark elf glanced my way and patted his thigh. He coaxed me into his lap and nuzzled my neck, just to sigh. “Your soap idea is going to be the death of me, Kauzden.”

He seemed to roll those starry eyes. “It’s to help keep us honorable, Falindel.”

Strong arms banded around my middle, just brushing the sensitive edge of my top wings. He tucked me into the line of his body. “Not an inch to the north or south. Our etiquette tutor will be so proud.”

“It’s only day one. And how are you going to ensure she ‘has fun’?”

Fal smacked his lips. “Such doubt on my honor. From the same male who suggested our omega might be a little touch starved?” He nuzzled my cheek, and my wings fluttered in his hold. My sudden, thrilled purr was all the answer he needed.

My next reaction was embarrassment, but then I wondered if Kauz hadn’t done me a favor. I just wanted to be touched and held without it being treated as an oddity or a chore. Before Cymora had ordered me to stop, I’d been the type of child who sought out any positive touch. Hugs, cuddles, companionable leans, squeezes…my omega instincts craved it all. Even unreciprocated hugs with the prickly mermaid were better than the nothing I’d gotten resigned to as an adult.

So, having Fal hold me tight and rest his chin atop my head was bliss. The vibrations of his voice sent a pleasurable shiver up my spine. “We’re going to fix that.”

“I’m watching you,” Kauz remarked before his expression softened. “Would you like a memory charm for your studies, sweetheart?”

“Say yes. They’re very helpful,” Fal whispered.

“Yes,” I said. Anything that’d help me learn their complicated language, I’d take.

I went back to work, jotting down information with my right hand while Kauz kept the left occupied. He pinched away the illusion I’d set on my wrist and dismissed it with a flick of his fingers. He promised he’d give me ink I wouldn’t have to hide.

“How’d you do that?” I asked in surprise.

“I can also make illusions.”

“As an essence spinner?”

“No, it’s part of my natural magic as a dream warden. What are illusions but dreams given form in our waking hours?” he said with a shrug. “You’ll also be able to save your magic without having to hide your suppressant tattoo. Your essence levels seem awfully low,” he remarked, looking at me curiously for an explanation I didn’t give. Fulfilling Cymora’s wishes had depleted my essence to a dangerous degree, and it never seemed to recover.

Kauz painted the memory charm on my wrist, and I felt a surge of his magic when it was completed. My scalp tingled, and I felt smarter in a way I couldn’t describe. Especially because I went back to stumbling over their language, earning a few laughs and corrections along the way.

The afternoon passed pleasantly and thus quickly. Kauz didn’t let me have my arm back for hours. He stopped spinning essence but continued painting, his brushes tickling my hand, wrist, and upper arm. When I stole glances toward him, all I saw was a shimmer like a heat mirage as some spell of his kept me from seeing what he was doing.

Fal held me the whole time, and while his hands didn’t drift, as promised, his mouth did. As his brother and I were distracted by our own pursuits, he would steal a nip on my ear or a kiss on my neck. He took every opportunity to whisper Serian in my ear with his talent in making it sound a little naughty.

When it was dinnertime, Kauz stole my workbook and journal. “You’ll get them back tomorrow,” he said in response to my protesting mewl.

“Tonight, you’re doing something else,” Fal said, nuzzling me one last time before we headed to the dining car. I sat between Kauz and Tormund, starting to catch on that the princes were arranging some kind of rotation. Marius sat with Cymora, trying not to look bored as she spoke to him at length about Osme Fen and Laurel’s pedigree.

I took a moment to rest my left elbow on the table and look at what Kauz had inked on my skin. My eyes watered, and I covered my wobbly lips with my other hand. The only way to describe it was art . He’d obscured the heat suppressant tattoo with a bracelet of vines, leaves, and flowers that spilled out from my wrist. A hummingbird had its long beak up the bell of a flower, while mini butterflies and bees were caught mid-flight around the scene.

I turned my hand over and traced the open wings of an unusually colored lark poised to fly further down my inner arm. The brown in its feathers was indigo, with starry pinpricks scattered across them. The little spots under its chin were lavender, but it had a white belly and beady little eyes of any other lark. He’d captured the details down to the grains of its feathers. Its little talons were curled around a ribbon with a single sentence in Serian written upon it.

“Do you like it?” Kauz asked, holding himself quite still as I took in his work. I nodded, still teary. “If you don’t, it’s temporary. I can remove it if?—”

I forgot Cymora and Laurel were at the table with us, flinging my arms around him for a tight hug. “I love it,” I enthused. “You’re so talented.”

His murmur was in Serian as he hugged me back.

“He said—” Tormund began. Kauz interrupted with something else in Serian. “He said to tell you in private.”

“Not that there is much privacy to be had around here,” Cymora stated.

I caught the hint of her acidic tone bubbling to the surface and focused on Kauz. A doormat would notice her displeasure and let go of the male who’d painted her with art. I didn’t want to send that kind of message to him, so I let him hold me through dinner instead.

Once we ate, I spent the evening with Kauz, Tormund, and Laurel. They taught us a Serian card game, and we played a few rounds. Laurel leaned on Kauz while giving him moon eyes. “Could you tattoo something on me, too?” she asked. Even from the comfort of Tormund now holding me, I felt a territorial growl rising in my chest.

“No. Not unless you’re willing to pay for the ink. It is rather expensive,” he answered while withdrawing the wing she was leaning on.

My stepsister glanced at me, shock rounding her lips. He’d told her no , denied her something I’d already received. I saw the thoughts rolling around in her head before one clearly came to the fore.

Did he make me pay for my tattoo?

She eyed me and the colorful ink on my arm petulantly. The question was poised on her tongue. Laurel always got to be the brat in our family, poking and prodding in ways that’d get me lashed. But she had some self-awareness, apparently, as she let it go and focused on her hand of cards in an attempt to win the complicated game we were trying to play.

She lost again. So did I, even more spectacularly, but it was a fun distraction. Kauz eventually left to trade places with Marius so they could rest in their own cots.

I fell asleep eagerly, but as pleasant as my dreams were, I didn’t think the dream warden visited them.

The next three days passed in much the same way. I studied and spent time with one or two of the princes on a rotation. I endured two afternoons with Cymora, who gave me no direct orders in the presence of the princes, though I could tell she was chafing more and more at their constant presence.

She also wasn’t sleeping well. By day four, purplish bruises were appearing in the hollows under her unhappy eyes. They grew more displeased each time she saw me having fun with the Unseelie males. We saw each other in the baths, and while she was short with me and had me arrange her hair, groom her nails, and apply her makeup, her only direct orders were to hear how “wooing” the princes was going.

I enjoyed the time I had while it was good and pleasant. Even Marius was starting to thaw and pass the occasional strict smile and praise my way when I did a particularly good job in my Serian studies. There’d been a subtle change in him since I’d put on the hoop earrings.

Thing was, I sympathized with him as the trip went on. The hours grew longer for no particular reason. I was rarely alone in any space, including the baths. What I wouldn’t give for the privacy to read a book in peace, too.

He thumbed through his while I studied in the afternoon, making the occasional reaction. Usually an amused little laugh. Laurel asked the question I was tempted to air. “What are you reading?”

“A war memoir,” he answered.

“Oh.” She considered for a few moments. “What’s a memoir?”

He ignored her. This, apparently, opened the door for more conversation. “Hey, Marius,” she would begin. The kelpie’s snorts of annoyance were only getting louder with each question.

Tormund, who had me in a warm cuddle, snuggled me tighter to his chest and blew a curl of smoke from his mouth. “Better him than me,” he muttered.

Marius eventually left the room, and Laurel made up an excuse to follow him about five minutes later. I watched and shook my head, hoping my first thought was just a wild guess. Laurel wasn’t developing a crush on a fellow water fae, was she?

She came back with a pout a little later. “He’s reading in the hall and wants to be alone. Can you believe it?”

Oh, stars. She does have a crush.

Nothing about this was going to end well.