Page 33 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

33

LARK

F al relocated me to a bathroom, presumably in his suites. He gave me a glass vial full of murky, greenish-gray liquid rather than some water. “This’ll fix you right up,” he promised.

I trusted him and drank it, then re-regretted all of my decisions last night as the potion hit my stomach, churned it, and turned it inside out. I threw up into his toilet—another wonderful human invention—while he held my hair back. Shockingly, I did feel a lot better once I was done, though I yearned for the ground to swallow me whole as this morning focused into better clarity in my mind.

“I take it you had a fantastic nixie night,” Fal said once it was done, not even teasing.

I was studying the white tiles in his bathroom. “Yes, it was great. This wasn’t,” I mumbled, my voice little more than a dry croak.

He knelt next to me. “You have to be careful with fae fruit wine. Those hallucinations hit before you realize you’ve drank too much, and you start wondering how you never noticed you have twelve fingers.” He turned his hands over, pretending to admire them. I watched him out of the corner of my eye and cracked a shy smile.

“The walls were breathing,” I ventured.

He chuckled. “Then you drank way too much wine. Were you trying to keep up with Siora?”

“She was pouring.”

“Of course she was.” He shook his head with a playful tisk. “This isn’t how I thought you’d first arrive in my bed, but I’m going to put you there to rest for a while. Thalas can train your magic once that hangover fades.”

“Thank you,” I sighed.

He had a sizable bed, too. It had a dark canopy supported by four posts, the fabric already drawn to block out most of the sunlight from a nearby window. He helped me rehydrate first from a couple glasses of water left on his bedside while I sat on the edge of his comforter. I glanced over my shoulder and then gave him a curious look. Kauz was asleep on the other side of the bed.

“I ordered him to go back to sleep. It’s a pack lead thing,” Fal explained quietly.

My eyes widened. “You can do that?”

“I only use it if it’s necessary. He dragged himself in here behind you but was in no shape to be awake. He’ll either wake up spitting mad and give me nightmares for a week or forget his anger in about five minutes.” He shrugged, unconcerned either way.

“That sounds like him,” I mused. I was reminded again of why I was glad to have Fal as my future pack lead if he wielded that kind of influence over his brothers with care.

“Well, that’s my thing.” He circled his hand vaguely. “Figuring out others and their secrets.” He tilted his head, considering me. I saw the hesitation before he added, “Perhaps it’s not the time, but I want to ask you a question.”

I fidgeted with my fingertips until I accidentally poked the edge of a cuticle with one of my sharp new nixie nails. “Um, okay,” I said.

“Do you understand me?” he asked in Serian.

Icy surprise chilled my belly. Had he overhead the house moths talking about this too? Or maybe I’d given myself away while blinded by my hangover.

“I understand you better than I used to,” I answered, also switching languages.

His brows rose. “Listen to you. Not even a Theli burr. Restoring your memories gave you Serian, then?”

“Please don’t be angry,” I added with a hunch of my shoulders.

He corrected my word choice, since I’d said hot rather than angry . “I’m not. How could I be? You know I love to be tricked,” he added, though his lips downturned. “I’m wondering why you kept this a secret. In a void, I would assume you don’t trust us.”

“It hasn’t come up,” I said apologetically.

He tilted his head back and forth. “So, you trust my brothers and me? Your pack?” he pressed.

“Aye.” Though that wasn’t the whole truth, so I added on, “Mostly.”

“Mostly,” he repeated, chewing the word like a tough piece of gristle.

I needed to explain before guilt ate me alive or he came to the wrong conclusions. “You all somehow planned the removal of my silencing band and, um, the thing with my stepmother without me knowing, and we were stuck in a train together while you did. I just…wondered what you all talk about while I’m right there in the room with you.”

His gaze softened with understanding. “Ah. In our defense, it was an unusual circumstance. If your full name was enough to knock you unconscious, imagine what hearing us discover the olcanus and your stepmother’s part in it would’ve done to your health.”

“I know,” I murmured.

“We’re not plotting against you,” he continued. “You came to us with a head full of nonsense about how Unseelie act, but your pack has always had your best interests at heart.”

Tears pricked my eyes, and I drew in a little sob. He was right, of course. The princes, and now our family, had been nothing but kind to me. “Hey, don’t cry. You’re barely hydrated,” he said in his usual teasing tone. “You eavesdropped on us for a couple days, and what did you really learn?”

I considered and shrugged. Not too much, actually. “You and Marius don’t get along.”

That just seemed to amuse him. “And you didn’t need to know Serian to realize that. Or to know that we’re siblings and insulting each other is what we do best.”

“I’m sorry.” I was still in a heavy mood while he was trying to make light of the moment. My head hurt, and I worried this would come back to haunt me more than waking up with my magic sticking me to a ceiling, however that had happened. “I didn’t really think you were plotting anything or that it was really about you being Unseelie while I’m not. I was mostly curious and?—”

His weight on the bed beside me dipped the mattress, and I slid into his side. He took my fidgeting hands in his, separating them. “It’s all right, my treasure. Look at me,” he coaxed. I met his gaze, those blue cat’s eyes still full of the same kind of affection I’d admired last night. “You’re Unseelie too.”

“Half,” I said.

He shook his head. “There’s no such thing. Your mates are Unseelie, your new family is Unseelie, and if any of your mother’s birth family are still alive, they’re Unseelie too. Aspects of your magic—the illusions, at least—are designed to trick and disorient. Which is…” He gasped dramatically.

“Unseelie,” I supplied, feeling a crisis coming on internally. How was that possible? I’d been Seelie since…

Well, since Cymora had hidden away any attributes to the contrary. She’d been the main voice in my head to suggest Unseelie weren’t to be trusted. They were vile and cruel…

And yet, the princes weren’t that way. I wasn’t that way.

“And Serian is beautiful on your tongue. Tormund is going to be so happy when he hears the news,” he said before switching languages back to a Theli purr. “But I think I’ll continue on with this a while more. Until my accent doesn’t make you blush.”

I reddened on cue. “What gave me away?” I asked.

“The way you light up every time I speak?” he teased, making an offhand gesture after releasing one of my hands. With the other, he twined his fingers with mine. “Or the faces you’ve started making when you’re eavesdropping? Hmm, or perhaps it was Kauz sweet-talking you in Serian while you were on a ceiling and you not misunderstanding a word.”

“I guess I wasn’t subtle.” And I also didn’t realize he watched me this closely.

What was it Marius had said when his feral side had seemed to read my mind? Oh, yeah.

“I know my mate better than she thinks.”

It seemed all of my males were way ahead of me in that regard, but I was going to do better. In more ways than one.

“Subtle,” Fal scoffed. “Also, after all this, I doubt you’ll be able to rest. Why don’t I send a message to Thalas and we get your training sorted? I want you free by this afternoon for your reward—I mean, punishment for being a tricksy li’l thing.” He gave an obvious wink.

Once I shook off the queasy, headachy feeling still clinging to my body, I thought I might like the kind of punishment he was suggesting. I started to nod, then winced. “Okay,” I said aloud instead.

By the time I’d had a light, bland breakfast and was crutching to Thalas’s workshop, I had all the evidence I needed that I wasn’t in for fun punishment after all. All three of my alphas walked with me in a protective triangle and three different moods. Tormund walked ahead of me, not looking back once. His expression had been one of betrayal, not excitement, when Fal told him about my newfound abilities in their language. I didn’t blame him. He did struggle with Theli more than his brothers.

I had also noticed the moment Marius learned the same thing, as his growl was low and a little dangerous behind me. I didn’t look back, afraid what kind of anger I’d see pointed at me. Hopefully the hushed conversation they were having was Fal talking him down rather than them exchanging another volley of insults.

Suffice it to say, today was terrible, and it was my own fault. I had two more apologies to make and some unknown magic in me to master before it activated outside and I floated away without a ceiling to save me.

To my relief, Thalas was as calm and friendly a presence as ever, barely batting a lash when I spoke in sluggish Serian throughout our visit. He slowed the cadence of his words for me too as we discussed this morning’s event.

“You even used wind magic when we released you from that olcanus . I thought it was a backlash effect,” the king mused. “Kellam was a wind sprite. It seems you took after him a bit.”

I melted a bit at the thought. Maybe I was more Unseelie than I’d ever thought, but I still had something from my father other than my pixie wings.

However, I did end up apologizing to Thalas quite a bit when he revealed that my unleashed wind magic had resulted in a tipped-over table and the shattering of dozens of his various knickknacks. He’d waved me off quickly and whispered, “Want to know a secret?”

I nodded and leaned in. “I don’t know what most of those things even do,” he said. “They came with the workshop. I think they’ve been hanging out for generations for exactly that reason.”

I laughed in disbelief. “What?”

“They might be priceless, but I don’t know what they’re for,” he said, shrugging. “So, they’re actually useless.”

“You could put them in a box or something?” I suggested.

“Then I’ll definitely never find them again!”

From there, he’d disappeared to one of the upper-level balconies and returned with a thesaurus of magic abilities. He started at the back to look up wind sprites, and we spent a couple hours seeing what kind of wind I could, and couldn’t, summon in a flash of essence. I forgot about making the princes upset with me, filled with chagrin when I failed back-to-back spells.

I started thinking of this morning’s magic as a fluke, or even some kind of freak accident. That was before Thalas announced that we were going to try the last spell in the wind sprite repertoire, called vortex. He eased backward and nudged a few things out of the way before teaching me the hand motion and twist I needed to give my essence.

I mimicked him and muttered under my breath. A sudden force of air shoved under my feet, sending me up twelve feet in the air before I could draw breath to scream. My crutches clattered to the ground, dropped halfway. This time, though, I was aware enough to flap my wings, loosing an alarming amount of pixie dust as I floated in place.

Thalas looked up at me, adjusting his glasses as he did. “Interesting,” he mused. “You definitely have access to one wind sprite spell.”

“Little bird? Come down,” Tormund said nervously. In Serian, he didn’t struggle to say little , and I already missed the quirk. He was directly under me with his arms out and getting covered in purple sparkles for his trouble.

Well, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I hadn’t grown back enough scales to reliably fly and was worried I’d just shed most of my progress catching myself from crashing. I floated downward with all the grace I could muster until Tormund pulled me from the air by catching my hips.

“Don’t scare me like that,” the big male mumbled.

I was of a completely different mind about what’d happened. “Did you see that?” I practically squealed. “I have wind magic!”

“Oh, I saw it, all right,” he sighed. He made a brief attempt to remove the tousle the wind had left my hair in. Our eyes met for a moment and I smiled at him shyly. He petted my hair one last time and said with affection, in Theli, “Li’l bird.” My heart leapt with hope.

“It’ll take some practice, but you may be quite happy to have the vortex spell for emergencies,” Thalas put in, interrupting our moment. He handed me my crutches. “We’ll work on control today and practice some other time, when you’re not in danger of breaking your cast.”

“Couldn’t that come off now?” I asked as innocently as I could.

“Nay.”

Well, it was worth asking. He had me sit, and we worked on control while the three princes chatted just out of earshot. I caught a glimpse of them at one point. Fal was trying to convince his brothers of something. Whatever it was, Marius looked interested and Tormund beside himself with excitement.

That was terribly distracting. I shifted my shoulders so I didn’t notice them again and focused on figuring out how not to summon another accidental vortex. It was like learning how to retract the membranes between my fingers but involved a mental muscle rather than a physical one. Even though it was a difficult concept to grasp and made my head hurt anew, I followed Thalas’s directions and promised to follow the series of meditation-like mental stretches that would keep my magic under my control.

This way, I also wouldn’t accidentally end up in someone else’s dream. Too-crisp memories of entering Cymora’s dreams haunted me as I practiced. She’d always been furious if my powers catapulted me into her mind at night. I’d had no idea why it happened so often, since I’d only been a kid hoping each time that it was my dream and that I’d conjured a kinder version of her. No matter the punishments she delivered by day, before the silencing band, my sleeping mind had sought scraps of kindness where there were none.

She’s in a jail cell. I won’t ever see her again, I reminded myself, shaking off the chill bumps crawling down my neck. Another kindness from my Unseelie family that I’d never forget.

I eventually said goodbye to Thalas with a hug and made my slow way out of the workshop, trailed by the princes. I’d assumed at least one of them would get bored and leave, but no. The heat of their attention was more noticeable than usual on my back, too, and I itched from it.

“Nay, I’m going to tell her,” Marius growled when we were close to the royal wing.

“It would be more fun if I did,” Fal said.

The kelpie snorted. “Your relationship with the truth is why we’re in this situation in the first place. How many secrets are you keeping from all of us right now?”

“You’re blaming me for her actions?”

“When you immediately started scheming with us on what we were going to do about it, aye.”

“He has a point,” Tormund put in.

“No one asked, baby brother.” Fal’s tone implied a roll of his eyes.

“Orphan.”

“Oaf.”

I halted my momentum and turned with a little hop, causing them to come to a stop in the middle of the hall. “Stop fighting,” I whined.

Marius raised his brows and slanted a look Fal’s way. The dark elf put up his palms. “Fine. The one of us with the least manners will tell you what we were talking about,” he said.

I tapped my left crutch on the ground in annoyance. “Sometimes straightforward is best,” I said and went back into motion. “Are you really adopted?”

Fal walked ahead of his brothers, pacing slowly by my side. “Stars, no. It’s my father’s dumb joke that’s taken on a life of its own,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “Mother is half dark elf, and I took after her side of the family rather than his. So clearly, when I’m at my most annoying, I must be an orphan the family took in.”

“Oh.” As the actual orphan recently re-welcomed as part of the family, I didn’t know if I liked this, but it’d be rude to make the moment about me.

“Another common insult is that Mother’s making my replacement. We’re soon welcoming our first baby brother since Tormund.” Fal called over his shoulder, “Maybe he won’t be the favorite son anymore!”

“That’s okay. I don’t compete with babies,” the giant replied.

Fal tilted his head in acknowledgment. “To your suite, then, mo stór . As long as you don’t mind us all hanging around.”

“Oh, it’s fine. You’re not getting bored of me?” I asked with a little nervous giggle.

“Please. I’m going to need at least two centuries before you ask that question again,” he said, winking. As we entered my rooms, he called to Jani, soon getting both my handmaidens’ attention. Tormund paused to talk with them as well, while Marius walked past the group, motioning for me to come with him.