Page 18 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

18

KAUZ

C ontrary to what Lark realized, I spent time with her every night, drawn to her sleeping mind with magnetic intensity. I was more powerful than I’d let on and lingered in the complicated paths of her psyche instead of manifesting in her dreams.

Most dream wardens worked in the fourth stage of rest, when dreams formed, manipulating dreams by night and illusions by day. My line was a rarer, stronger version that could start poking around others’ heads at the second stage of rest, when another’s mind abandoned idle thoughts and descended toward a maintenance-and-repair stage for the brain. Sleep was vitally important, and to interfere with the delicate process could cause irreparable memory damage, or worse.

I’d spent many long hours with my father, snooping around in various volunteers’ minds, learning how the process worked so I could be the strongest possible defender of the future queen’s psyche. I had to understand her at a level deeper than my brothers—to better protect her at night from others with similar powers to mine and know her needs practically before she did during the day.

As a boy, I’d thought my parents were just being gushy when they hinted they spent most nights joint dreaming. Who’d want such a lack of privacy? Especially after they’d been mated for decades. I couldn’t imagine desiring such a constant and intimate connection with anyone when I could simply pass the nighttime in blissful unconsciousness.

But after smelling the promise of Always wafting from Lark and ending our first dream together on my knees, I could say I was rapidly understanding the appeal. I thought I had an advantage as a beta, not smelling the same sweetness off her that my brothers did, but instead, I ended up drawn to her light, melodic voice and smart conversations. And stars, how sweet she was. She captured my heart almost immediately and made it look effortless. I’d gone to sleep tonight painfully hard for her, my pelvis shifted away so she wouldn’t notice.

Any night, I could’ve entered her dreams and seduced her. She’d be presented to Mother untouched, yet on the inside, she would already intimately know me. I yearned for time with her, to master her body and show her pleasure. But she needed my help far more than nocturnal lessons in making love.

The amount of pain and disorientation deep in the recesses of her psyche was staggering. It was cluttered with memories. Forcefully forgotten memories, shorn raggedly and scattered before they could enter a space of long-term storage. They knotted and tugged at one another, sure to cause her pain if anything jogged her waking mind to call upon one of these forgotten moments.

It was difficult to linger with her outside of a dream. My head hurt before I even began to pick up lost memories, taking a peek inside of them for a hint as to what had happened to her. All I’d received for nights’ full of work were bits and snatches of her past, mere slivers of understanding.

One day, I would heal these ragged edges, and we could visit her memories together. I just had to figure out the root cause of her forced forgetfulness…and I had a good hunch for where it was coming from.

I waited for Lark to enter the third stage of rest and reached out to halt her short-term memory. My magic sorted through the individual strands, nudging along some things until I had one specific event wrapped around my fingers.

I squeezed just right to relive it, plunging into a vivid replay of the moments my brothers and I missed earlier: Cymora tormenting our mate. Though I didn’t truly want to see it all, I owed it to Lark to bear witness to what had happened.

During my training, I’d relived memories of the worst of faekind and the traumas that could happen to the mind. Torture, intrusive thoughts, severe depression, the murderous rage of redcaps, and more… The empathy it instilled in me had others calling me “calm” and “wise beyond my years.”

That was before I found the one bound to me Always and heard her hopeless thoughts while she was forced to throw away items she loved.

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten attached.

The best thing I can do is hunker down and take it. Fighting only makes it worse.

Death might be a mercy compared to what my stepfamily has planned for me.

She won’t push me off the train. She can’t have what she wants if I die now.

I gritted my teeth through the whole thing. One intrusive thought lingered past the recollection as I returned to myself.

Better the princes not know I’d been punished at all.

I was furious. This memory, this abuse , had happened while I assumed Lark was safe. She hadn’t even locked the door… She was so used to us coming and going with no efforts for privacy.

We had been far too kind to Cymora. I’d suspected something was off, but the sheer cruelty I’d just witnessed in her was breathtaking. Worse still, the way Lark had immediately folded in despair. This had been their dynamic for a long time. Too long.

Since Lark could not fight back, I would get revenge in her name. Cymora would understand firsthand why Unseelie had a healthy fear of dream wardens at their most vengeful. I would snap her sanity with the ease of breaking a twig.

Breathe , I reminded myself, slowly letting my fingers uncurl. I’d almost destroyed the memory just by holding it too tightly. I let go of it, and the strand whipped out of my grip, joining the rest of Lark’s memories of her day. It wasn’t my place to snip it loose, no matter how much I wished it’d never happened.

Besides, if I pushed my emotions out of coloring what I’d just seen…there was a lot of valuable information there. Cymora had ultimate power over Lark, able to command her. Now that I had that confirmed, it seemed my theory that Cymora had commanded Lark to forget an egregious number of events was true. After viewing the mess of her memories, it was the only thing that made sense.

Lark was also sure that Cymora was seeking an opportunity to trick us into taking Laurel as our mate. Trick us , a whole pack of Unseelie. Fal was going to laugh his ass off when he heard this one. We practically smelled untruths and deflections. Any loophole we could carelessly leave open for the fish, we would now slam closed.

And in the tiniest chance one of us did accidentally lay a claiming bite on the fishling… well, we weren’t above carrying a damaged pack bond if Laurel then died, not if it meant we would have our correct mate. I’d eventually be able to repair the fractures to our psyches. Laurel was doomed by her own mother’s ambitions.

Now to get Lark to understand that. She wasn’t alone anymore. We would fight her battles and respond to her whims until she found her strength. She would be magnificent in her own right once we removed her stepfamily from her life and coaxed her to fly free of the cage they’d shoved her in. It would be the honor of my life to pry open the cage door personally.

Just like it’d been my pleasure to dispatch a spy I knew I could trust—a winged dreamlander like myself, skilled in stealth and speed—to Osme Fen to investigate this Pack Ellisar that Lark feared from her first dream. She wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore.

Light and color formed around me, the first hints that Lark was entering the fourth stage of rest. I wanted to stay and comfort her in her upcoming dream, tempted, as always, to see if she’d let me pleasure her. But it was time to go. I whispered to her psyche the promise of Always, “Fate has bound us, forever in the depths of time.” By the time her dream took shape, it would be soaked in my starlit magic, invoking true rest in pleasant nonsense.

I stepped out of her mind from there, waking in the cot I shared with her. It was the dark of night, and her slight form rested in the crook of my arm. She still hugged me tight around my chest as her substitute pillow. Her slightly glowing gray wings fluttered open and shut slowly, like a butterfly’s might, a sign of content rest that I watched for a few minutes.

Stars, she was so cute. Those wings always gave away what she was feeling, more so than her expressive blue eyes. If the touch wouldn’t potentially wake her, I’d trace the faded patterns in her wings and idly paint over my tattoos with her pixie dust.

If she had pixie dust. Another odd little fact about her that worried me. No dust meant no extra essence to shed, and her essence level always seemed concerningly low. I sighed, acknowledging I had more work to do tonight. Fal had wanted me in Cymora’s dreams since we met her, sure she would incriminate herself in a space free of consequences. It was the Unseelie way, to hang criminals with the rope they handed the law, woven of their guilt and regrets…or lack thereof.

I assumed the fish’s mind would give me the latter, especially once I cracked her psyche for fucking with my mate. I had been taking my time, as Cymora’s mind was more resilient than most, resisting my halfhearted attempts to pay her dreams a visit. I’d left her with unsettled sleep, the creeping onset of nightmares, weakening her defenses over several nights while I spent most of my time with Lark.

Closing my eyes, I cast out my senses. I usually needed to hold a possession from another person to locate their sleeping mind, especially in a crowded area. Little as I wanted to admit it, I was holding one of Cymora’s possessions. The train’s enclosed space helped me identify her in moments after sifting past minds in various sleep stages.

Cymora was already dreaming. What a terrible coincidence for her. I slipped through her mind’s awareness, no more than a mirage of shadows taking shape behind the dreaming manifestation of her body. She was with a male, a broad, gray-skinned alpha wind sprite with a tousle of white hair. He was seated in an armchair before a fire, and she was about to crawl into his lap.

This dream smelled of Ever. This was something she remembered happening long ago, but she probably didn’t expect her wind sprite to become me as I supplanted her memory of the male.

“Cymora,” I said, startling her before she could have a seat.

She jumped backward. “Prince Kauzden? This isn’t how…”

I made a chair appear behind her, and she tripped into it. In a blink, I had her seated across from me. Dreamers were often confused when I showed up, since they usually weren’t thinking about me at all. But the familiarity of us sitting across from one another had her mind relaxing. We’d done this enough when we were in the same room on the train.

It reset her expectations for her dream. Our surroundings bled from a nicely appointed sitting room into the more familiar atmosphere of the train.

“How are you this evening, Prince Kauzden?” she asked. Her resting smile rekindled the embers of my rage, as did the falsely sweet tone she took.

Soon. I couldn’t punish her before she told me some vital information.

“We’re going to talk about Lark tonight,” I said. My voice had an undertone of magic, seeping into her psyche. If I’d done my job correctly over the last few nights, she would simply take over from here and start talking.

Which she did. “Oh, that ungrateful whore’s daughter.” She scoffed. “Now one in her own right. I’m sure you all took turns with her tonight.”

My jaw tightened, but I remained quiet. I’d only speak to direct her if she drifted off to other topics.

“She should have died with her mother, but the illness curse wasn’t quite fast enough. I wanted Kellam without any baggage from his first mating. But no, the little half-breed was born, and with that face . Exactly like her mother’s,” Cymora seethed, balling fists in her lap. “She looks at me with that face, and I simply cannot stand her.”

“You hate Lark because she looks like her mother?” I asked to confirm.

Her face creased with bitterness. “That’s right. Just like that male-thieving whore, Dorei. He goes off to ‘see the world’ and doesn’t return for me. He only comes back with her on his arm and, a couple years later, his baby in her belly. While I suffered through an arranged mating of my own. At least I got my darling Laurel from it.”

“All right,” I sighed. I didn’t want to hear another word about Laurel. She’d tried pitching the fishling to me more than once, and I couldn’t see the appeal. “We’re talking about Lark. Who looks just like Dorei.”

“That’s right.”

“And Kellam was an alpha wind sprite?” I guessed. She nodded in agreement. He must’ve been the male she’d just been about to seduce when I arrived. “How did he die?”

“I poisoned him,” she said with her usual false sweetness.

Though my expression didn’t change, my heart leapt, throbbing in my chest. Here was her confession, a dusty crime that we could still use to imprison her. It was the new Unseelie way to confirm wrongdoing before going straight to capricious punishment. Mother would be so proud.

“Why?” I asked, genuinely curious. Such intense hatred of Lark’s mother, just for the slight of mating with Kellam. All to murder him later?

There was only a fleeting hint of regret suspended around Cymora as she answered with a dreamer’s lack of guile. “He never let Dorei’s death rest. He questioned it and revisited it until, one day, he was too close to the truth. To protect my name and my daughter’s future, he had to go.”

Ice cold. Exactly what one could expect from a fish, but the lack of remorse just showed me that this mermaid needed to be far, far away from my mate. Lark likely didn’t even realize the great injustice Cymora had committed upon her family.

“Killing them both wasn’t enough for you,” I stated slowly. “You set out to torture Lark next.”

“Oh, don’t make it sound so dramatic. I took her in with good intentions.” She waved dismissively. “Secured her loyalty.”

“How?”

“A vow, of course. But even with her doing everything I told her to, every time I looked at her, I couldn’t stop seeing Dorei staring back at me.” She shuddered violently. “So, I did what I had to.”

Cymora’s dreaming mind resisted. “What?” I pressed, scattering starry essence to keep her in the dream with me. Whatever it was, she knew it was bad. Worse than admitting to decades-old murders.

“I had to,” she echoed.

I stood, leaking shadows and starlight as I loomed over her. With my magic coating my features, I took on the visage of a night terror. “What did you do to my mate, Cymora?” I asked in a dangerous hush.

For the first time, her eyes focused. She saw me, realized it was me, and pursed her mouth with disapproval. “Are you making demands of me in my own dream, Prince Kauzden? My family’s matters are none of your business. You won’t get another word out of me.”

“Is that so?” I snapped my fingers. As if her stubborn chin lift was enough to defeat me in my own realm, dreams.

She flapped her hand dismissively. “Begone. Leave me to my privacy.”

I chuckled. Our surroundings were already changing around us. “To think you have any power here. How rich,” I mocked.

Cymora startled when she turned her head and watched a younger-looking version of herself walk by, hissing at a beta dryad who couldn’t have been older than a teenager, “I’m not paying you to run your mouth.”

The manifestation of her dreaming mind turned back to me, mouth agape. “That’s right. If you won’t tell me, your memories will.” I lifted my hand, directing starry essence to spin into chains of rope. I bound her hands behind her and stuffed her mouth with the magical equivalent of a gag. She made muffled sounds of protest as her dream officially became a nightmare, with her helplessly tethered to me while I followed the path of her memory.

It was early evening inside of an old but well-maintained manor. Cymora’s memory wore a floaty dress which rasped against the mermaid scales patterning her thighs from a recent swim. She looked the part as the lady of this house, with her blue hair filled with pearls and ears lined with spiky abalone.

The dryad boy sweating beside her was an essence spinner. If I was meeting him face to face, I’d know because I could sense the excess magic in him and the telltale way it spun through his body. It was just an educated guess from this memory, as his arms were covered in shaky tattoos of leafy vines.

I’d covered myself in poorly rendered art when I was just learning. It seemed this boy did the same thing. He was carrying a large briefcase and had a dodgy look about his glowing eyes.

“I’m just saying, missus,” he muttered.

“Relax. The device will be temporary . She just needs to be taught a lesson in discipline,” Cymora said breezily. “You were able to buy it, right? It’s not illegal.”

“Sure, but it was made for magic-wielding anim?—”

“Exactly,” she said over him. “And you reviewed the spell?”

He sighed as only a teen could. “Yes, missus.”

“A device and a spell,” I remarked, not that either person in this memory noticed me talking behind them. I turned to the dreaming Cymora and raised a brow. “Here’s your chance to confess before we see the truth.” She stared back at me, eyebrows slanted. With my starlight magic sealing her lips shut, all she could do was glare.

It didn’t matter anyway. I was going to witness her guilt firsthand, whether she admitted to it or not. “Suit yourself,” I said.

The memory of Cymora led the dryad teen to a door missing a handle. It gave way with a push of her palm, revealing a bedroom and a girl lying on a cot at the center of it. She was resting on her belly, wings halting their contented fluttering as she looked up from an open book.

“Oh, hello, Stepmother.” There were obvious nerves in the greeting, and her gaze darted toward the dryad.

I held up one finger. The memory froze in place. For a moment, the dreaming Cymora breathed a sigh of relief. That was before I flicked my hand and willed the ropes of essence binding her hands to multiply, some sticking to the floor to anchor her, others winding around her ankles so she’d remain in place.

“Hello, baby Lark,” I murmured, crossing the room to the girl. She couldn’t be more than ten or eleven, her body all sticks and elbows. Even now, she was dressed in drab colors, her only adornment a pair of tiny studs in her earlobes and the silver swirls glittering through her wings. They were stunning, indigo and oversized, looking like they’d carry her little form away with one flap.

Her cringing expression bared her teeth and a pair of tiny fangs. The longer I looked at her, the more details were different than the Lark I knew. Stars were frozen mid-wink in the whites of her eyes, and a purple sheen glittered over her blue eyes. Her hair was a washed-out purple, heading for the transition to stark white most of my people made as they came into their powers. Dreamlander, my instincts screamed.

Lark was in the process of tucking her hands, hiding the exaggerated membranes between her fingers and the needle-sharp claws most nixies kept refined to demure points. My gaze flicked to her neck and the suggestion of gills tucked under her ears. Most of the breath left my lungs.

Lark was half Unseelie.

Not only that, but she was a dreamlander like me. Our magics were one and the same. I should’ve felt joy to know I could teach her everything she didn’t know about our people, but all I could grasp was a growing sense of injustice at all she’d lost. All because of the hateful female who’d orphaned her.

“Dorei was a nixie,” I said. Cymora stared at me in defiance, still tugging fruitlessly at her bonds. “It’s all right. I don’t need another word out of you. I imagine this memory will show me everything else I want to know.”

I placed my hands behind my back, lacing them under the curve of my wings, and took a leisurely look at Lark’s bedroom. There wasn’t much to see, as it had been stripped of most things of value. The ghosts of larger furniture made bright spots against the wallpaper. She had a generous bookshelf, I supposed. Most of the volumes looked well-loved. I read the spines, wondering how many times she thumbed through each one by the time she was an adult.

What a tiny, miserable box for a young omega. She didn’t even have any special bedding, extra soft or colorful, to account for her budding nesting instincts. No stuffed toys, either. At this age, my sisters’ nests were mostly toys and blankets. Cymora’s earlier torment took on a new edge.

Lark had never had a true nest, going by what I saw here. It was a miracle she hadn’t gone completely feral before Fal found her.

A soft growl rose in my throat. I would soon set such terrors on Cymora’s mind that would have her groveling. There wouldn’t be any mercy, just like how she never listened when Lark begged.

With a gesture from me, the memory continued where it’d left off. I stood close to Lark, watching from her side and ignoring the dreaming Cymora, who struggled and stamped her feet.

“Sit at the edge of your bed, dear. I have something for you,” her memory said, pointing to a specific spot.

“Yes, Stepmother.”

I grated my teeth together. That obedient, forced response raised every hair on the back of my neck.

The dryad teen opened his briefcase, revealing a glint of gray and a dusty spell book. I looked over his shoulder as he flipped to a dog-eared page and read the title of the spell he was about to perform. Stars, I felt ill. Cymora couldn’t possibly expect such a green essence spinner to perform an olcanus correctly.

“What’s going on?” Lark asked nervously.

“I’ve had enough of your nighttime visits.” Cymora’s acidic tone drew a flinch from the girl. “Last night was the absolute last straw.”

“I’m sorry, Stepmother. I can’t help it,” Lark answered in a small voice. She fiddled with her fingertips, picking around the nail beds. The habit was even less endearing as I watched her claws draw blood immediately.

“That’s all right, dear. I’ve secured a device that will help you. This boy is only here to place it on you,” the mermaid said. She explained it was temporary to the young pixie while the dryad picked up a length of metal studded with spikes from his briefcase.

It was a silencing band, designed to suppress magic and, once activated, hide its existence at all costs. Serian had it listed near the top of a list of forbidden magical items by labeling it an olcanus , along with the other spells or devices designed to control the magic, will, or body of another fae. The teen had suggested this was made for magical animals, but it shouldn’t have existed at all.

I watched with rising dread as Cymora ordered Lark to keep still. The teen consulted his book again and threaded the metal links around her ankle. This idiot. He had to wrap it twice, as it was built to be a slave collar. Because that’s what our forefathers used silencing bands for—suppressing their enemies, turning them into weakened slaves. The band could only be removed with magical force, if uncovered, or by a key tuned to the band’s location.

“Please, Stepmother. I won’t enter your dreams anymore,” Lark begged, watching the teen pick up his book and start to spin glowing magic around the metal as he read off the page.

Cymora framed Lark’s face, watching the panic in the girl’s expression as the band tightened, its spikes sinking into her skin. She whimpered from the first hints of pain before yelping as beads of blood welled around the wounds encircling her ankle and calf.

The dryad slowed his spell work, looking at what he’d done. His eyes widened in alarm.

“Keep reading!” Cymora barked. “Don’t worry—this is part of the process. It’s temporary .”

“Stepmother, please don’t do this. Make him stop! Please!” Lark shouted, shaking from the pain of the band embedding and tightening further.

My hands balled into fists as Lark’s begging became screaming. I trembled violently, miserable knowing this was only a memory, a glimpse at the distant past. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

She seized and fell backward, thrashing on her cot as the silencing band activated. Cymora whispered instructions, which the teen added to the spell. She wanted Lark’s Unseelie side hidden and her magic bound. He had to be reassured again that it was only going to be in place temporarily before he unhooked the key from the device that would unlock and remove it. She traded him a jingling sack of coins, and soon he was on his way.

Lark lay sprawled on her side, keening a wounded omega’s call. The sounds of her distress dug at me to do something , to reach through time, strangle her stepmother, and set her free. Because this device was anything but temporary. It had to be the source of her limp and her “lame foot.”

Even as I watched, the color started raining from her wings in a shed of pixie dust, and her claws receded to the naked eye. The band would use her magic to hide itself, layering on an illusion so thick that it would continually require most of her essence.

Cymora wasted no time in brushing back Lark’s hair and meeting her gaze. “Forget receiving this device,” she ordered. “You were born this way. Damaged. You’ll think of some explanation.” She waved dismissively.

The stars in Lark’s eyes winked out, one by one, as the light behind them dimmed. “Y-yes, Stepmother,” she rasped.

I couldn’t watch another moment. I stopped the memory and skipped it back in time to the moment where the teen started placing the silencing band on Lark’s ankle. Then I raised my hand, and the dreaming Cymora was there in a blink, my fingers digging into her neck. “See how you like it,” I growled. In a blip of dream logic, it wasn’t Lark sitting there anymore. It was Cymora having the same band installed into her flesh.

Her sudden scream followed me into waking, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

My eyes opened to reality and the first dim rays of early morning. Lark had hardly twitched, still clinging to me, but now her washed-out wings practically vibrated from a pleasant dream.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I whispered, leaning over to kiss her pert little nose.

I didn’t deserve so much as a moment of her attention until I removed her silencing band, even if I had to somehow pry it off with my bare hands. It was my mistake to underestimate the depths of Cymora’s depravity. I should have inspected Lark’s foot and ankle more closely. She was too sweet to bend the truth too far, so I’d assumed she knew her truth when she told me she had a lame foot.

With a murmur of magic and a press of my index finger from her temple down to her lips, I left a glittering line of essence as a sign of a gentle sleeping spell. She’d be dead to the world for hours while I shared what I’d learned with my brothers.

Marius was already awake. I could sense Tormund’s troubled sleep and Fal’s wet dream from here and envied the latter. He’d be dreaming of Lark, of course. He was absolutely lovestruck by her, not that the rest of us were very far behind.

I climbed out of the bunk, dragging Lark’s limp form with me. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving her alone, even while she was out cold.

Marius cracked his eyes open. After all his military training, he never slept too deeply. “Hold her. I’ll be right back,” I said in a low voice.

He helped support her weight as I cradled her ankle on her way into his arms. It looked and felt normal, but that was the evil of a silencing band at work. Lark may even look down and see a twisted, misshapen lump instead of her foot, proving to herself that she was right to call it lame. Whatever we all had to believe to leave the band in place to guzzle on her essence.

Marius looked ready to ask a dozen questions, but I was already turning for the door and barely caught the latch before it slammed. This wouldn’t take long.

There was a single lock between me and Cymora. I flicked it open without trouble, using a magic trick on the other side of the door. She and Laurel were in the bottom bunks. While the fishling slept peacefully, Cymora’s sheets were in disarray. I hoped she’d tossed and turned while being forced to endure her own actions.

I laid a fingertip on her forehead while she muttered in her sleep, jerking, caught in the loop of feeling the pain of a silencing band closing around her ankle. This sleeping spell I placed on her was larger, meant to hold her in unconsciousness for a day, maybe longer. I planned on keeping it refreshed so she slept through the rest of the trip. Lark would not have to tiptoe around in fear of her stepmother a second longer.

The air around Cymora’s head darkened as I switched the type of magic I was wielding. It was a simple matter to spin essence and put her to sleep, but the terrors came from the depths of a dream warden’s skills. I suggested that her sleep be full of her worst nightmares, and her mind took it from there, supplying the fears and the shadows that darkened her psyche.

I pressed a little harder, and the darkness deepened. She grimaced and sweated as the magic took hold.

That would do for now. I’d visit her mind tomorrow night to make sure the nightmares were to my satisfaction. Maybe I’d have her replay every interaction she’d had with Lark from the other side to browbeat a shred of empathy into her.

I turned to Laurel, whose sleep patterns were petering toward waking. I cast the same sleeping spell on her before she could become aware of my presence, then considered if she deserved the full nightmare treatment her mother received.

Hmm. Maybe a taste. She wasn’t quite an innocent here. I gave her troubled rest and left them to it, making sure to relock the door behind me.

I returned to my brothers to find Tormund rousing, Fal still asleep, and Marius cuddling Lark, shamelessly breathing in her scent with his nose buried in her hair. Her white hair, which should sparkle with dreamlander stars just like mine.

She was like me. Eventually, it would sink in and I would celebrate her. But first, there had to be a reckoning on her behalf and an unleashing of her true form. Then we could embrace the next Queen of Serian for who and what she was.

“Wake up,” I announced, prodding Fal’s dream for good measure. It woke him abruptly.

He groaned from the other top bunk. “You better have a good fucking reason for waking me at this starsforsaken hour,” he growled.

“Only if you care about Lark,” I responded in a heated tone.

As an angry Kauz meant nightmares and disrupted sleep, all eyes were on me. Though I didn’t abuse my powers unnecessarily, my brothers had all suffered at some point from what I could do between pranks and childhood feuds.

“Of course I care,” Tormund said, sleepy but upright. He tidied up his cot and put the couch cushions back so a rumpled Fal could come down and sit next to him.

I took Lark from Marius so he could do the same with his cot. “Will you need restraints?” I asked Tormund. His side of the pack bond was still not quite right after his earlier rage, and he was venting more heat than usual. “Lark is spelled for a long nap. She won’t be able to calm you.”

He tensed. “That depends on what you have to say.”

“He could hold her,” Fal suggested.

“No,” Marius said flatly. “One of us is going to tuck her back in her cot, and then we’re going to talk Kauz’s news out.”

“You’re one to suggest that when you already got to hold her,” Tormund complained.

Fal elbowed him. “Greedy.”

“I’m still guilty of it,” the redcap agreed readily. “Give me the little bird.”

Though I felt Marius’s disapproving stare on my back, I carefully transferred her into Tormund’s arms. It’d help keep him calm, to see her safe and mostly whole. The last thing we needed was for him to erupt in a new rage and go kill Cymora before we had a chance to find the key to the silencing band.

Tormund cradled her tenderly, while Fal rested a hand on her calf. Both of them seemed to relax just from touching her. Time to ruin that. “I’ve had a fruitful night in Cymora’s psyche,” I began.

I told them everything I’d seen, inciting dangerous alpha growls and a unifying of murderous thoughts in our pack bond. We had a confirmed enemy and the enthusiastic desire to destroy her through our four unique methods.

There was a softer side to the conversation as our attention turned to our omega. She snoozed on, blissfully unaware of the unspoken tension draining from Marius as he murmured, “She has Unseelie blood.”

I knelt in front of Tormund, holding Lark’s damaged foot in my palms as I worked on finding the magic that rendered the silencing band invisible.

“Not quite the unlikely princess you assumed her to be,” I remarked.

“Unlikely mate ,” Marius said. “I thought I would drown her trying to bond with her.”

Fal smirked. “How romantic.”

“I’m still going to kick your ass once we’re off this train, Falindel,” he deadpanned.

The dark elf mimed rubbing a shiver from his arms. “I am absolutely shaken by your continued postponement of my ass-kicking.”

Marius gave an exasperated sigh. “So our mate doesn’t notice.”

“She’ll see the bruises when she strips me,” he said, propping a fist under his chin.

I rolled my eyes as Tormund exaggerated a groan. I’d found a thread of essence and was working with it. If they’d just quiet down, I could concentrate…

Lark’s magic felt like my own, like calling to like. I’d tried giving her some of my essence earlier to help her recover from her depleted state, but it’d been like pouring water into a cracked cup. If the band drew on much more of her magic, it would kill her, so I only sought to work with the illusion on her ankle to move it aside for a couple of minutes. Seeing was believing, and I wanted to know how this improperly placed device had shifted in a decade.

If it was as bad as I thought it was, I needed professional help. I had to get her to the only other essence spinner I trusted with such a delicate matter.

I worked my finger under the illusion woven as a solid mesh of essence strands, and tugged at it with a few bits of my own starry magic. It was as delicate as a negotiation, and I tuned out my brothers’ continued banter to focus on doing it correctly.

Success smelled like rotten essence. The alphas in the room gagged, as the smell was so much worse for their sensitive noses. Magic left to sit too long had a certain odor, like sulfur mixed with the vilest black mold. It came from the spell masking the silencing band, disturbed when I lifted it.

Either that or from the purplish fluid that oozed in goopy clots like sap from the wounds circling Lark’s ankle and lower calf. The bruise on her leg from Cymora’s kick matched a line of dried blood. She’d managed to hit Lark right over an embedded spike.

The silver metal was tarnished from long use and all the exposure to the sun and bathwater it’d received while Lark was none the wiser to its existence. She had to feel those points jabbing her with every step she took.

I burned with the desire to rip it free, but this was a deeply enmeshed olcanus . It had to remain on her for a few short days. But no longer than that. I couldn’t bear the thought of Lark suffering further.

Since the wounds it caused weren’t quite physical, other than where she’d been kicked, she’d never gotten an infection and lost this foot. Thank the stars for small concessions…I guessed. It also hadn’t shifted much as she grew older, only embedded in her flesh more tightly at the top.

“What the fuck ,” Fal said, holding his nose as he leaned over and inspected the band.

I smacked his hand away before he could touch it. “Pulling on it will only hurt her worse,” I warned.

“Why are we even looking at it?” Distress leaked from Tormund into our pack bond. “We have to get that thing off of her!”

“We will. I have a plan,” I said, beginning the process of settling the spell I’d lifted back into place. “For now, we keep Lark as comfortable as we can and steal the band’s key from Cymora while she’s incapacitated.”

“And we cannot discuss the band with Lark,” Marius said, more a statement than a question. He was in an odd mood, guilt weighing on him as he watched the silencing band vanish under a cloak of magic.

“Not if you don’t want to cause her more pain. And if you do…” I took a steadying breath and said succinctly, “Nightmares.”

Marius released a kelpie’s snort. “Noted.”

I peered up at her sleeping face, so peaceful and sweet. What I wouldn’t do for her to wake up right now so I could hold and kiss her. She needed pampering and that epic nest she’d dreamt of. More importantly, she had to know how we were coming together to defend her, our mate.

And she would have me Always. Fate has bound us, forever in the depths of time.