Page 54 of Fated or Knot

I saw how someone like Marius, with his usual stony countenance, could be a champion at this. But I also agreed with Fal. This game was designed to never end. The fewer cards one had, the more likely one would need to lie when putting a card down.

It was a nice way to pass a few hours, and with each male taking a turn holding me, I eventually relaxed into a point of almost purring contentment. My anxiety over fibbing did get me poked on the nose and called a liar pretty much every time I tried to pass off a few cards that didn’t match, but the brothers were all much more invested in this card game than I’d expected them to get. It would’ve been just as fun to sit back and watch them play without me. No one ended up winning, though Marius and Tormund got within a few cards of it.

They took turns getting dinner, while I chose to eat my sandwich and cookie to stay in the room. When it was time to sleep, though, my mood dipped as I remembered there would be no warm nest for me, just a decision to share a cot…though all four males seemed eager to have me.

I wished I didn’t have to choose, but I ended up in Kauz’s arms, trusting the dream warden above the rest to guard my sleeping body.

18

KAUZ

Contrary 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 withsimilar 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 forgottenmemories, 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.Myhead 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’dreceived 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, thisabuse, 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.

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