Page 55 of Fated or Knot

Lark was also sure that Cymora was seeking an opportunity to trick us into taking Laurel as our mate. Trickus, 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 wewould 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. Ihadbeentaking 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, Iwasholding 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 thatface. 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 thenewUnseelie 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?

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