Page 58 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

58

LARK

W e left the crowded ballroom and filtered past others leaving the revel early, all heading to their own carriages or inn rooms. Fal reached into his pocket and scratched his ear. He was quiet as we walked, gravely so, and had his arm around me protectively.

“Looks like your earring is loose. Let me fix that for you,” he said. We paused for a moment for him to sweep my hair away from the pointed shell and tug my earlobe long enough to sneak a plug inside my ear. It was made of essence and activated, creeping down my ear canal to expand and block out any sound. I twitched and whimpered. This was not a pleasant feeling. However, it would dissolve within an hour and give me my hearing back with no negative side effects.

There was one big unanswered question in the plan, and it concerned Cymora’s mental state. Rennyn had admitted to Fal that he’d tortured her to the brink of her sanity. She was a dangerous variable as long as she could command Laurel any way she liked. But we could reasonably assume she was weak, and afraid.

“When backed into a corner, all fae revert to their base instincts. They will either fight, flee, or freeze. Your stepsister’s job was to convince her mother not to run from Neslune until she used you for her benefit one last time,” Fal had explained to me earlier.

I had known, immediately, that Cymora would do it. She would hardly question how Laurel knew which carriage was ours: she would take the bait, and they would be waiting for us to finish our time at the revel to steal me away.

We stopped outside the carriage to signal to the chauffeur—one of Fal’s house moths, earning a generous bonus tonight—and to Kauz, who crouched on the rooftop of the nearest building. The winged fae saluted to show his readiness. Fal climbed the couple steps up the coach, deliberately rocking it, and opened the door.

A blast of wordless music escaped the threshold. It was beautiful, in a way that made my heart ache, but with one of my ears blocked I heard the melody and the mental command of the siren’s song as two separate things, rather than one ultra-compelling spell.

Put Lark in the carriage. Do not resist. The words filtered into my head, almost like my own thoughts, but they sounded like Laurel’s voice.

Fal pretended to be enthralled and backed away, lifting me gently by the hips. As he moved to place me down on the steps, a second set of hands seized my upper arms and pulled with desperate strength. I clamped down to suppress a whine when my heel banged on a step and my slipper slid off as I was dragged the rest of the way inside. Cymora slammed the door behind me, but not before I caught a glimpse of Fal’s face creasing with fury. He held my glittery bracelet of diamonds and amethysts hanging from his fist.

Drive now, go fast, Laurel prompted through the siren’s song. The carriage window was open, letting the order filter to the house moth chauffeur. Even though he had one of his ears blocked too, he pushed the horses into motion as swiftly as possible, pushing me back into the padded seat.

Hi Lark. Don’t talk. She’ll know I don’t have you under my control, Laurel sang. I didn’t know everything about how her magic worked, but my stepmother didn’t seem to notice what Laurel had said. My lips twitched, before I caught myself. I’d nearly smiled at her.

A dim essence lamp was activated over our heads, letting me take in the two mermaids sitting across from me. Laurel was propped against the side of the structure, her open lips close to the breeze from the window. She looked exhausted and pale, her teal and blue skin washed out with gray. Nearly depleted. Her clothes were matted with dirt, threads coming loose in some places. I never expected to feel this worried for her, but if she continued singing, she’d exhaust her essence and fall unconscious soon. My stepmother was pushing her too far.

Next to her, Cymora had never looked worse. Her joints were prominent and swollen, sticking out from her undernourished body. I suspected the smell of unwashed skin and filth was from her. It threatened to overpower my nostrils and gag me, ruining the ruse that I was enthralled and pliable before it even began.

She regarded me back with a clear gleam of something like madness in her eyes. “Hello, Dorei.” The laugh that escaped her rose and fell as discordantly as her new speech pattern. “He said you were dead. He said I needed punished for it. Yes. But here you are. Alive. Sweet Dorei. Everyone loves Dorei.”

I regarded her with clear horror. I couldn’t have controlled my face if I tried, even if it gave me away.

“Ha ha ha. But you’re mine now. Your mind belongs to the song. The song, from my beautiful daughter. Not a disappointment after all. You’re my ticket to safety, Dorei,” she continued. Laurel’s face screwed up in a wince.

“P’nixie. Tell me you’re still okay.” My bond with Marius was distant, but still present enough to hear him.

“I’m fine. Cymora’s completely cracked in the head.”

“Don’t underestimate her, mate. We’re catching up to you now. Kauz is still signaling that he has eyes on you.”

“We’re not going to hurt you. No. You will spend the night. Dirt and leaves. They make a fine nest,” Cymora was saying as my attention diverted to Marius for a moment. “We will give you back. And those alphas, too. Unwanted trash. We will give you all back. And I will walk free. No more…” She twitched and shuddered, hugging herself with her spindly limbs as she moaned. “No more. No more.”

Laurel’s singing face fell with misery, tears glimmering in her eyes. We exchanged a helpless glance as Cymora seemed to go straight back to the torture room in her head. She screamed, “No more! Please! I have her right here. She’s alive. Alive!”

Fal had shared that Rennyn suspected Laurel would move to betray her mother simply to put her out of her misery. Minutes into a carriage ride with her and I completely understood. The cold, scheming female who’d raised me into servanthood was already gone.

I watched her, oddly detached. Even without Fal’s influence, I wasn’t afraid of Cymora like I used to be. But I used to be terrified of her, knowing that she could command me to do anything, and I’d be forced to do it with a gritted, “yes, Stepmother.” She’d forced me to sign away my first heat and my father’s fortune. She’d made me forget my own name and the loving godfamily that would’ve adopted me in a heartbeat. And on and on.

Now, I simply pitied her. Ransoming me and Pack Ellisar back to the crown was a terrible plan, one she would’ve never made if she was in her right mind. Stealing me away from the revel was a knee-jerk decision at best.

As Fal explained it, “My father had Laurel do what she’s good at. He had her tattle different things to Cymora and the bark brothers to pit them against one another. Cymora expects them to flee to Thelis and steal away Laurel, and is acting to stop them. While they think she’s planning on murdering you tonight to prevent them from gaining their oh-so-coveted grievance. If you’re confused, don’t worry. They are too. But they’ll take the bait, because they’re already paranoid about being fucked over.”

Cymora seemed to return to what wits she had left. “In the morning, we give you back. We tell them where to find Pack Ellisar. They’ve found some distant cabin. They think I don’t know where. Meanwhile, we sleep in the dirt. But soon. Soon. We will be free.”

I shared what she was saying with Marius through our kelpie bond, clinging to it like a lifeline as each minute passed one eternity at a time. He supplied the occasional update to reassure me.

The carriage had transitioned to a road of hard-packed dirt, with the occasional hole causing the insides to jostle violently. We were heading deep into the woods. Where the mermaids had been sleeping, and the barkfolk thought I’d be murdered, so Cymora could stash my body in the middle of nowhere until it fully dissolved into stardust.

“No. I will show her. I will show all of them. She deserves recognition under the waves. She has the song. The song ,” Cymora muttered. “Which means I have the song. We will be great. Greater than them.”

Stars, what was she even talking about? I slowly snuck my hand up to press into my belly. The agony that hit me was like my guts had been twirled around a large fork like pasta. My stepmother’s discordant murmurings faded into the shrill tone in my ears.

I breathed shallowly through the pain as Marius called my name distantly at the back of my mind. “I’m okay,” I sent back, not that he seemed to believe that. “I just need ? —”

A horse screamed as something happened outside the carriage, marked by a great and terrible crack . Our momentum slowed significantly. “Oh no. Oh no! Stop, stop, stop!” the house moth pretending to be our chauffeur squeaked outside.

Wood groaned and snapped as something heavy bashed to the ground, shaking the whole carriage. It had to be a fallen tree. It sounded like the whole team of horses panicked, snorting and neighing as we jerked to a stumbling stop. In the full dark of night, it was impossible to know what flicked against the carriage, dropping something inside with us before sealing the window shut.

A bulbous glass bottle hit the floor and exploded, wreathing the air with greenish-gray gas that smelled of pepper and vinegar. It assaulted my senses immediately. My eyes watered and I choked on my next breath. Cymora hacked violently.

But Laurel…she stopped singing to cough, and then choked and gagged. She dropped to her knees in the broken glass, bent double and vomiting.

“Tell me what’s happening.” In the midst of everything, and the panic that’d seized my chest, Marius was an unusually calm presence.

Too bad there was no time. The carriage opened from the outside and through watering eyes, I saw something snakelike emerge from the darkness outside. Dirt clods rained from it and a second creeping form before they struck, wrapping around Cymora’s arms and throwing her outside.

So all Marius heard from me was a panicked, “We’re stopped. Smoke bomb. Tree roots!”

At least, I thought that was what they were. They made a sound like a rope pulled taut as they whipped around my arm and waist next, before I was flung out of the carriage and skidded in the dirt and grass for several feet. I laid there, keening from the scrape burning down my side.

The roots didn’t throw Laurel out. Blinding light erupted in the branches above, held by a winged figure flapping above the carriage. “Freeze!” Kauz boomed. “You are all wanted enemies of the crown. Surrender, or face your fate!”

Three male figures turned their heads away from the orb of over bright essence in my mate’s hands. I recognized Ellisar, who was surrounded by the tips of dozens of tree roots slithering around his feet like living creatures. More uprooted as the moments passed. Big, small, sharp, and splintered alike.

Standing close to him was Dalstin, similarly cowering. But the hunched, muttering figure of Floris was in motion, rocking the carriage as he entered it with a cloth over his mouth. “No,” I rasped, thinking I saw a glint of sharp metal in his hand.

“No chance of that, bat boy,” Ellisar said. His hand leaked green essence as he whipped it in a circle overhead and pointed. Three huge roots wrapped together and shot at Kauz. The reinforced tip of his living weapon pierced through my mate’s heart.

Tears leaked from my stinging eyes as I gaped in shock. No! But I should’ve suspected that it wasn’t really him. His wings weren’t designed to hover like that. The illusion shattered, throwing us all into suffocating darkness.

“Fuck! I can’t see,” Dalstin muttered.

I rolled onto my front, biting down on another keen as I moved my scraped arm. I gave my wings a testing flutter to be sure they hadn’t been damaged in my fall too. They felt fine, but they were the second brightest glow in the night, past the essence lamp from the carriage. As Floris pulled a still-retching Laurel out of the cloud of smoke, a knife held to her throat, a swarm of roots wrapped around my ankles and bare foot.

I flapped in a panic, but they held me to the ground. Dalstin produced a floating essence lamp to light our immediate area, and I blinked the spots from my eyes to see both intact alphas scenting the air and turning toward me.

“She’s finally in heat,” Dalstin remarked. I still wasn’t, too terrified to succumb to it, but they didn’t know the difference. With the bracelet that made me smell like lavender in Fal’s pocket, my chocolate and honey crackers scent ringed me in a halo of sweetness.

Ellisar nodded in agreement, licking his lips and fangs while he leered at me. “I didn’t expect to finally fulfill the contract tonight.”

“Wait. We could still have the princes fuck her for the grievance,” Dalstin whispered.

Ellisar opened his mouth to reply, before his attention shifted. “Don’t move, Cymora, or my brother slits her throat,” he said, gesturing to Floris and Laurel. My stepsister had a trail of blood leaking from the side of her mouth and down from her gills. The whites of her eyes were flashing with fear. The male behind her was still muttering something nearly inaudible. His fingers twitched occasionally, which was truly terrifying while he had a knife to her throat.

I didn’t know where Cymora was, but I should’ve guessed. She came up behind me, and the cool, sharp edge of another knife pressed to my throat. “Don’t hurt my daughter, or your precious omega dies.” She sounded more like herself. “You idiots. What do you think you’re doing?”

We were all very still with two hostages held at knife point.

“That was Prince Kauzden . And this is a trap!” my stepmother exclaimed.

Breathing shallowly, I focused my gaze on the knife Floris held. I wove an illusion over it, working my magic faster than I ever had in my life.

“Release Lark, and we release Laurel. No one has to get hurt,” Ellisar said slowly. “I’ll even forgive you for trying to pull this stunt, as it seems we’ll finally have?—”

He jerked back. An arrow of white essence quivered where he’d been standing. Another hit the ground, and another, the air suddenly whistling with arrows. Cymora jerked me back with her toward the tree line as the barkfolk took cover too. I held onto her arm, trying to wrestle her arm, and the knife, away from me. But she was a female possessed, holding onto me doggedly.

“Hey, Kauzden!” Cymora screamed into the night. “You terror ! I haven’t forgotten what you did to me!”

Glancing down after an arrow grazed his shoulder, Floris shrieked like a small child and flung his knife away. He’d finally noticed the creeping flame I’d illusioned on its blade, creeping into the bark over his fingers and hand. Laurel jerked away from him, groaning in pain as she slumped to the ground.

Dalstin sent his essence lamp upward and Ellisar pointed further into the trees. “There he is, so you stop shrieking, you backstabbing female,” Ellisar grumbled. I tilted my head until the knife dimpled my skin just to spot the real Kauz standing on a low branch, his gloves glowing as he directed a new hail of arrows to strike the two alphas. He jumped, narrowly dodging a whipping root, and he opened his wings as far as he could to navigate flying between the trees and their branches.

A second root strike shot a spike of bundled roots through one of those massive sails. Kauz, who’d been angled toward Cymora and me, immediately folded the damaged wing and pinwheeled into a crash landing.

Kauz rolled to a stop on the forest floor a few yards from my feet, limbs splayed. He’d landed on his side, momentarily stunned. Several roots rose around his prone form. Their sharp tips moved independently to aim for fatal strikes while he laid there. I keened in denial. This couldn’t be happening…

I had to do something. Anything ! They couldn’t just kill my Always right in front of me.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Cymora said with a discordant laugh. “I haven’t. No. You started all of this. All for your precious Metalark. Now you get to watch her die.”

Kauz turned his head. His lips framed his usual knowing smile, though his face was marked with dirt and a few trickles of blood. “I do get to watch,” he whispered.

That starry gaze was on my right hand, which had fallen from Cymora’s wrist. I reached under my left sleeve and unlocked the knife from its sheath, drawing it in a bitter, wafting trail of faebane.

I could’ve struck two different targets. The female gloating behind me and shifting her hold on her own knife, preparing to draw it over my throat while she thought Kauz was watching. Or the male who directed countless sharp roots, which were drawing upward to plunge into his unprotected back.

The idea of using this poisoned knife had been unbearable, before I’d entered a situation where it could save one of my mates. Now, I didn’t hesitate.

I tweezed the knife between my fingers and aimed, firing it with a forceful vortex spell. I hadn’t practiced this skill much and I halfway expected the weapon to go wildly off course as it flew in a straight line from where I’d aimed it. But by some force of fate, it embedded itself in the thick bark scales that covered Ellisar’s chest with a dull thunk .

The roots halted midair as the barkfolk pulled the knife out. He turned it over with a hum. The blade had bent, ruined from its forceful introduction to his wooden armor. “Did you think to stop me with this little bee sting?” he chortled, discarding it with a careless toss.

He twisted his hand in a circle, taking control of the tree roots again. Sharp metal bit into my skin. I despaired that I hadn’t changed a thing, nor had I even caused enough of a pause for the rest of my mates to arrive and save us. Though I swore I heard the thud of hoof beats in the dirt. A wishful echo, perhaps.

Laurel groaned and her form started to change. She’d been lying unnoticed, but as she grew a mermaid tail under her skirt, the iridescence from its silvery teal scales caught my eye. She opened her mouth and sucked in a huge breath.

Rennyn had taught Laurel something about her siren’s song, but Fal hadn’t known what it was. We all learned it firsthand as her siren’s song emerged in a forceful shockwave.

Stop!

Cymora and the barkfolk, whom she had accidentally rendered immune to her song, all froze. The tree roots collapsed to the ground. A trickle of blood flowed down my neck from the tiny cut my stepmother had inflicted.

A redcap’s crackling roar split the air. Tormund!

He wasn’t the one who snatched the knife from Cymora’s hand and pulled her away from me. I turned just in time to see Fal plunge the blade through her eye, killing her instantly. Her body slumped to the ground without fanfare. Magic wrapped around both of them, ancient and humming and terrible .

I gaped. The weight of a grievance—as I instinctively felt down to my cowering soul—settled on Fal’s shoulders for just a moment, before it spun away and into the darkness behind him.

A few moments later, Laurel started screaming rather than singing, scrabbling at her matted hair. Her memories must’ve been returning all at once, and without Kauz on standby to help her, they had to be assaulting her mind. The barkfolk woke from the spell of her song just to shout in alarm and, in Floris’s case, abject terror.

“T-Thank you,” I managed to say to Fal, wide-eyed and terrified from the sudden chaos. It was one thing to wish for my stepmother’s death, but another to see her slumped corpse at my mate’s feet.

I turned away from the sight. “Get to safety,” Fal murmured. He rested his hand on my shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze, before he rushed to help his brothers with the barkfolk. Kauz had gotten up at some point and dragged himself into the forest’s darkness. There was no sign of him except where his crash landing had left a trail of uprooted grass and dirt. Dalstin’s essence lamp still floated nearby, illuminating the scene before me.

Floris’s screams were already dying and his body slumping to the ground. A dark smear coated one of Marius’s axes, barely a blur as he lunged at the other two barkfolk with a bloodthirsty roar. They both flinched and turned to run, straight into the raging Tormund, who emerged from the trees behind them. He breathed a gout of fire from between his sharp teeth, bathing a wailing Dalstin in flames. He ignited head to toe like dry tinder.

Oh, stars. My heart threatened to burst from the terror at all this violence playing out in front of me. I agreed with my inner omega, crouching down to cower with a whimper.

Ellisar lunged for the nearest tree and melted into it. “I can smell you. Coward!” Marius shouted. The barkfolk leapt from tree to tree trying to escape, with my alpha mates in hot pursuit.

That was about enough for me. My breathing was shallowing out as I considered the fire spreading from Dalstin’s corpse to the undergrowth and trees nearby, then Laurel laying a few yards from me. She’d saved Kauz and me by shifting and screaming her song, and I couldn’t just leave her here. If the fire grew much more, she’d be straight in the path of it.

I knelt by her and checked her pulse. She was alive, just unconscious, as I’d expected. She hadn’t had the presence of mind to shift her mermaid tail back into legs.

I tried to lift and drag her with a hold under her armpits, but didn’t get far with that. “Why are you still so starsdamned heavy?” I griped. Unfortunately, with my mates chasing down Ellisar, I was on my own with saving her in return for what she’d done for us.

“Princess! Let me help!”

I startled in surprise from hearing the squeaking voice, though I shouldn’t have. It was from our chauffeur, the house moth who was cowering from his spot in front of the carriage. He’d calmed the yoked horses for now. That was impressive, actually, as the little beta was one of Fal’s longtime mothkin servants, and not here because he knew anything of animal husbandry.

Speaking of horses, I’d heard the three alphas arrive with hoof beats. “Yes, I need your help. Give me a second,” I called, looking around for any sign of those three horses.

To my relief, I spotted Rory nearby by the outline of her light-colored coat. She and the other two horses were keeping a wary eye on the spreading fire. She allowed me to approach her, wicking hot air over my hand when I held it out to her. “I need your help too, girl,” I murmured, taking hold of her reins.

I positioned her close to Laurel’s head and had the house moth, whose name was Villi, stand by her tail. If this didn’t work, we’d just haul her the old fashioned way, but I wanted to try using my vortex spell to buoy her onto the horse’s back for a brief ride. I cast a vortex underneath her and she began to rise and float in the air. With more essence poured into the spell, she lifted further, until I started to guide her head over Rory’s saddle.

Vortex was a stationary spell, and her unconscious form started to slump and slide once her head and shoulders were past the spinning air current. Rory nickered as, together, Villi and I got the mermaid into an awkward slump sideways across her back. Her silvery teal caudal fin swayed close to the ground as I encouraged Rory to walk forward, toward the carriage, and supported Laurel under her shoulders and neck.

I glanced inside and—eugh. There was a massive, bloody spot. Glass littered the floor, and the whole thing still stunk of the potion one of the bark brothers had tossed inside. I had Villi support Laurel in my place and climbed inside. I carefully avoided the glass since I’d lost a slipper, and the other probably wasn’t thick enough to protect my soles anyway.

With another vortex, I blew the clutter of glass out, along with the worst of the lingering odor. I was feeling lightheaded from all this magic use, but I was hopefully done expending essence tonight. Villi and I slid Laurel down from Rory’s saddle and into the carriage by taking her weight on either side of her. Her long fin stuck out the door until I bent it at the knee joint, and carefully closed the door without pinching the end.

“Okay Villi, we need to turn this thing around,” I said. I was sweating quite a bit, and it wasn’t just from my incoming heat anymore. The fire Tormund had started was only mounting, spreading and threatening us with sweltering air.

He wrung his hands, his antennae flattening to either side of his head in embarrassment. “I don’t know how to do that,” he admitted. “I’m only here because I hoped I could tell co-head moths Jani and Lon about how brave I was. But I didn’t really do anything.”

I patted his shoulder and the soft fur sticking out from his collar. “Don’t worry. I do. And also, I’ll tell them when I get the chance.” He gasped and perked up, doing everything I said with new enthusiasm.

Together we got the carriage turned around and away from the worst of the heat.