Page 16 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

16

LARK

W hen I was younger, I used to argue with Cymora’s statements. In my head, I wouldn’t need to be punished if I proved to her that I didn’t actually say or think the things she accused me of. But I’d learned since then. She was justifying her view of events out loud. Arguing only deemed me “combative” and made the pain to come that much worse. The best thing I could do was hunker down and take it.

So, I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t a whore and hadn’t disrespected Laurel. But I did hear Marius in the back of my head, his snort of derision and scoffed ridiculous since I still didn’t fight for myself. He would never understand.

“Laurel tells me you’re nesting,” Cymora stated. I tensed, waiting for the order to come. “Throw everything in your nest out.”

“Yes, Stepmother.” I climbed the rungs up to my bunk ever so slowly and tossed down my fur-lined cloak first. I’d started using it as an extra layer to ward off the early morning chill that seeped in from outside. Next went the fleece blanket and the fuzzy pillow I snuggled at night.

Marius’s kerchief fell next, then the bright streak of color from Tormund’s cloak piece, and finally a glitter of gems as Fal’s mask sailed after them. This was all Cymora wanted to see, my comfort items, but I fulfilled the whole order and tossed out the pillow and blanket that’d already been here.

“They bought some of this for you? Such comfort for the omega,” she cooed.

I climbed down the ladder and watched Cymora nudge items aside with the tip of her shoe. My palms were clammy already, nerves churning as she took her time looking at it all.

I’m going to lose these things. Telling myself what was to come sometimes helped. Back home, I wasn’t allowed to nest in more than a couple of blankets and a pillow, no more than any other fae. I’d trained myself to accept it, as nests led to the heat cycle and succumbing to it meant a trap with a trio of males who would then own me.

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten attached. I knew I couldn’t keep these things for very long. From the moment Kauz started buying, I’d thought about what my stepfamily would do with the gifts. My eyes still watered, traitorous things. In finding value in these things, I had given Cymora power.

“Fold it all up and stack it neatly,” she ordered.

“Yes, Stepmother,” I murmured. I knelt and started with the blankets. While I folded, Cymora folded the bunk back into its place against the wall.

Laurel stood over me, watching with her arms crossed. Our eyes met, and I pleaded with her silently, softening of my gaze. I’d ask the princes to be nicer, to include her more rather than treat her presence like a burden. I was sorry.

“Mother,” she said, glancing over at Cymora.

“What is it, dearest?”

I kept folding and stacking, ears perked with hope.

“I want her earrings. They’d compliment me quite nicely, don’t you think?”

For a moment, I shut my eyes and set my teeth. Maybe I deserved exactly this for stealing and selling her spare pair of amethysts.

Cymora barely missed a beat. “Give her your earrings, Lark.”

My fingers jolted toward my ears, quite literally jumping at her command while I murmured my agreement. I removed the little hoops with their tiny white gems and handed them to Laurel, who put them in the second section of her finned ears with a giddy giggle.

She pushed the fins forward with her fingertips for Cymora to admire. “You make them sparkle,” my stepmother said in approval.

Then her gaze landed on me kneeling by the neat stack of bedding I’d made. “Bring all that. Let’s go,” she stated.

“Yes, Stepmother.” I didn’t hold in my resigned sigh, and in response, she kicked out and tripped my bad foot, sending me in a sprawl with a choked scream as agony coursed up my leg.

“Smile,” she barked. “Be happy. You did this to yourself, so you have no reason to act moody.”

“Y-yes,” I managed through a grimace forced upon my face. She hadn’t quite realized that she couldn’t order me to feel differently about a situation than I already did, but I could be made to look happy through most pains. I gathered up the items that’d scattered when I fell and limped after her and Laurel.

They looked both ways up and down the hall before gesturing me onward. We went through the bathing car, and Cymora tried the door leading to the last car at the back of the train. It opened and a breeze blew in from outside, teasing the strands of my stepmother’s hair.

We stood on the last observation platform easily accessible without an attendant’s help. The door into the storage car was usually locked, requiring a staff member to be present to deter thievery. Wind shrieked beyond the platform, as we stood under an arc of metal that protected us from the worst of it.

I gulped a swallow even while wearing a forced smile. The sweat on my palms soaked into the fleece blanket at the bottom of the pile I held.

“Layer an illusion over the window to make it look like no one is out here,” Cymora ordered.

I turned toward the door leading back into the bathing car and considered the window. They were almost as tricky as mirrors, reflecting light at odd angles depending on the time of day and the cleanliness of the glass. To use the least amount of essence possible, I frosted the window with a layer of icy mist.

“Good enough. Now stand right here.” Cymora indicated the middle of the platform.

I went to where she’d pointed, looking out over the sea. It was a dizzying distance below, any waves or disturbances on its surface smoothed to a glasslike finish from up here. “Yes, Stepmother… please .” I felt like I was a teenager again, hopeful that she would simply stop if I was contrite enough. “Please, don’t do this. Let me show my regret. I can make things right.”

Ignoring me, Cymora lifted most of the stacked items from my hands, leaving the fleece blanket on the bottom resting on my palms. “Tell me what this means to you.”

“It was a gift from Prince Kauzden,” I answered. New tears sprung to my eyes. “He saw that I loved how it felt and bought it for me to nest with.”

“Oh, very sweet,” she said in a cloying tone.

I turned toward her, but the plea on my tongue shriveled to nothing at the malice I saw reflecting back at me. Nothing I could say would deter her from the next order. Like every other punishment, it was as inevitable as my next breath. I could either let it happen or have it shoved down my throat.

With a grin of pure glee, Cymora ordered, “Drop it into the sea.”

For a moment, my fingers tightened around the soft fabric. I wanted to scream, to wail. No, it’s mine! But all that’d accomplish would be her further satisfaction. I was always going to lose this blanket. If not now, then tomorrow or later, whenever Cymora decided I needed to be put in my place. Fighting only made it worse.

I lifted the blanket past the safety rail and let go of it, watching it unfurl like a multi-colored sail on its way down, pinwheeling to its inevitable saltwater demise. A single droplet fell from my cheek to join it down below.

The train-assigned blanket and pillow followed it. “Don’t need this or this…” Cymora muttered. She handed me the fuzzy pillow, and we restarted the process. I told her about the gift and where it came from and was forced to release it off the side of the railing.

“Prince Kauzden is going to be so disappointed you threw his gifts in the sea,” Laurel laughed as it became a speck behind us.

Cymora smirked as she said, “Like he’s even going to notice.”

My belly hollowed out. The princes had no reason to look at my nest, so it probably would go overlooked once she ordered me to keep this punishment a secret. All I had to look forward to for the next couple nights was a bare mattress.

“All right, what’s all this?” With my cloak thrown over one of her arms, she was inspecting the three tokens I’d collected.

“They have the alpha’s scents. A kerchief from Marius,” I began. She handed it to me and ordered me to throw it away. “Part of the cloak Tormund was wearing when we met.” It went flying next. “And…the mask Fal was wearing at the Omega Masquerade.”

Cymora tilted it, letting the light glitter off its encrusted gems. “No, I’m keeping this,” she muttered, pocketing it. “You know what’s been the most offensive thing to me, Lark?”

I held my tongue, sucking down heaving breaths. My nest was gone, the last of the alphas’ scents too until they stopped using the scent-blocking soap. Even with my stepfamily out here with me, I had never felt so alone.

She answered her own question with a sneer. “What you’ve been wearing, these clothes the princes bought for you. Like your old dresses weren’t enough. I’ve held my tongue while you’ve frolicked and pretended that you’re good enough to join their pack. Like you could ever be a princess.” She and Laurel’s melodious mermaid voices harmonized their mocking laughter.

She took the cloak and shook it out, admiring its snowy fur lining. “Someday, another will wear this, if I allow you to keep it,” she mused, mostly to herself. “On your knees, Lark.”

“Yes, Stepmother.” I held on to the railing as I went down, my whole body trembling with the usual vibrations of the train.

I shook with nerves too, knowing one nudge would send me sprawling over the edge of the platform and to my certain death. I didn’t have enough essence to fly back to the train or to the closest section of dry land. I’d either die upon impact with the water or drown shortly after from exhaustion. Such a death might be a mercy compared to what my stepfamily had planned for me.

Cymora stood over me, her eyes flashing. Scheming, always scheming. Her gaze was on me, kneeling on the platform, my whole body shaking and moving with each jostle that ran through the train. A flash of white teeth met her lip as her attention turned to the sea below us. She considered the deadly drop with a thoughtful tilt of her head before making the same hum she always did when she decided against something.

A little spark flared in my chest. The princes would miss me. If I only endured a little longer, I would see them again. Like Kauz kept telling me, I was not alone anymore.

She can’t have what she wants if I die now. I was sure that she’d seek to fool the princes later by ordering me to illusion Laurel as myself. If they bit her, that was it. She’d have a princess for a daughter and access to endless wealth, plus a royal pardon for her crimes, courtesy of Laurel. What else could she possibly want from them?

She stuck her leg out. “You know what to do,” she said.

Yes, I did. She wanted to know that her punishment worked, that I was hers forevermore. I lowered myself further, until my lips pressed to the top of her shoe. Then I said what I thought she wanted to hear. “I’m sorry, Stepmother. I have remembered my place as your servant and ever-dedicated stepchild. I won’t disrespect you or Laurel again.”

“Very good,” Cymora said. “You will not say a word of this to the princes.”

“Yes, Stepmother.”

“Hand me your necklace.”

My fingers flew to the little silver bird charm. Tormund’s gift. I wasn’t even shocked that she wanted it too and unlatched it to place it in her waiting palm. She gave it to Laurel. “It’s probably a gift. You should hide it, and the earrings too, until we deem it safe.”

“Okay,” Laurel answered.

“As I was saying…if the princes ask where any of the jewelry went, you tell them you took it off,” she instructed.

“Yes, Stepmother,” I mumbled, feeling numbness steal through my insides. At least, with her closing the loopholes that may reveal her power over me, the punishment was over.

“You may stand.”

She took hold of my face in firm grip, sinking her fingertips into my cheeks and forcing my gaze up to meet hers. We stared at one another, truth to truth. I hated her and her control over me with all that I was. And she liked that, relished in it, because she hated me too. She’d hated me since before I knew what hate was.

She glanced away, eyeing the platform under us. Before I realized what she had planned, she flattened my cloak over a piece of sharp metal sticking out of the walkway. I gasped and reached for the fabric, pulling it as her foot came down; between us, there was a rip that sent an unpleasant roll of static down my spine.

“Oops,” Cymora said, letting it go. “Tell the princes you tripped…if they even notice. Come now, Laurel, it’s lunchtime.”

They left me there with the finality of a closed door. I took in the damage, the hanging fibers of ruined cloth and the sullied print in the fur where she’d put her shoe. The rip couldn’t have been longer than a foot, but it was all I could see, bisecting the fur cloak. Pain seized me anew.

I bundled it to me and wailed, releasing a keen that was pure wounded omega. I made other sounds I didn’t realize I knew, half-feral and anguished. It’d been the gift I’d loved above the others, even the blanket. The one thing I would’ve dove off the train to save. And now it was ruined .

Still clutching it, I fumbled for the door, heading inside half-blinded by pain, both physical and otherwise. If I collapsed outside, there’d be nothing saving me from a plummet into the Doras Sea.

I just had to get back to my room. Tormund would come back with a sandwich and hold me, and everything would be okay. For now. But willing myself to rally wasn’t working like it usually did. I sobbed into the cloak’s soft lining all the way back. When Cymora kicked me, she’d aggravated my limp, so the trip was slow and agonizing.

Yet when I twisted the knob, my room was still empty. Not all that much time had passed at all, for the princes to still be at lunch. They might even be lingering over their plates, thinking they were giving me more private time. I released a bitter whine and lay across one of the couches, face down on top of my ruined cloak.

I could take a few minutes to pity myself before I had to stop crying. If they came back now and started asking questions, it’d only make everything worse when I was compelled to lie or sit in silence.

Better they not know I’d been punished at all.