Page 58 of Fated or Knot

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 sheknewher 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.

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