Page 77 of Fated or Knot

Liar! Make her suffer.

I bared my fangs. “Go on. Say it.”

“Say it, Cymora. Set yourself free,” Fal pressed too.

I mimed a jab at her neck, and she yelped, trying to scrabble away from me even with her limbs bound to the chair. Fal braced the back of it with both hands so she couldn’t go anywhere.

“Saysomething,” I growled in her face.

“I…I cannot,” she said softly.

Fal made a patronizing hum. “What a surprise. Put you under a little pressure, and you forget that you have to look after Lark’s welfare too. Was itsohard to admit? Maybe a moment of dissonance? You must not have thought your actions were wrong until you had to justify them to us.”

“I’m notjustifyinganything,” she said out of gritted teeth. “If you want me to talk, I need a vow from you both first. And that sword away from my neck. I am alady,and I deserve to be treated as such.”

“Marius, does a lady put a silencing band on anyone, let alone her stepdaughter?” Fal asked.

I made a show of thinking about it. My response took longer to piece together, as I had to swallow down a snarl. The silencing band…the reason I hadn’t recognized my p’nixie on first glance. It was Cymora’s worst crime to my feral instincts, who wanted my mate to have her fins and gills so we could swim together.

But there was one other thing she’d done, that I knew about, that was nearly as bad. “I don’t know. Does a lady force her stepdaughter into a vow of obedience?” My aggression rose further, emerging as a dangerous rumble from deep in my chest.

Much of that anger was self-directed. I’d thought Lark was spineless upon seeing how she acted when seated next to her stepmother. I hadn’t stopped to consider whether her spine had already been snapped and crushed under a caregiver’s heel. What kind of female forced a vow of obedience on her kin?

Fal smirked. He was enjoying this game of words, while I very much wanted to move on to the part where the fish felt real pain. “Ooh, that’s a hard one. How about this? Does a lady make her stepdaughter dump out her entire nest off the side of a?—”

“Stop. Stop. I get it,” Cymora blurted. Thank fuck.

Fal made a motion between his fists like he was snapping a branch. He’d been sure this would be easy. Kauz had already softened her up for us.

“I will make amends with Lark. Just…just take the weapon away,” she continued.

“Oh, you’re never speaking to her again. We don’t want amends from you, Cymora.” He walked two fingers up the side of her head, letting her feel the points of his claws. Shetwitched, but there wasn’t anywhere to go between the two of us. Fal plucked out a pearl-studded hairpin that’d survived her trip here. He left a lengthy pause for her to endure as he turned it over, tossed it aside, and repeated the motions until he’d found and discarded all four decorations left in her hair. “Just a confession. And I hope you know you’re not leaving here until you end every vow Lark’s ever made to you.”

“I want a vow from you both that you won’t harm me and that Iwillbe leaving here when we’re done. Then you can have your precious omega,” she said.

“She is quite precious,” Fal said more pleasantly. He nodded at me, and I lowered the sword away from her, angling it toward the ground. She let out a sigh of relief.

Only a short reprieve.It was getting harder to focus on our end goal here.Torture?No. This was about breaking the vow of obedience and uncovering any other nasty surprises we could’ve missed. Having Mother listening in was unexpected, but she would see firsthand why we’d immediately imprisoned and intimidated a Seelie fae upon arriving here.

Fal had already devised the wording for our vows to put Cymora at ease while leaving gigantic loopholes for any other fae to manipulate. Considering the fish didn’t know the queen and two of her kings were listening in, we were fairly sure she wouldn’t try to amend them.

“In exchange for breaking every one of Lark’s vows, I vow to you, Cymora of Osme Fen, that I will do you no physical harm, from this moment into my last moment. When we are satisfied, you will walk out of this room,” Fal said without a hint of concern.

I was more loathed to make my practiced oath. “In exchange for cooperating and answering our questions with the whole truth, I vow to you, Cymora of Osme Fen, that I will do you no physical harm, from this moment into my last moment,” I saidgrudgingly, though I kept a hold of the sword anyway. Its heft felt right in my hand.

“Do these terms satisfy you?” Fal asked.

She considered for only a few moments. “They do,” she answered.

Magic tingled through my body as the vow was officially struck between us. It wasn’t essence, but something older, woven into the very fabric of the fae race. Seelie, Unseelie, we were all held to our word, or else we owed grievances. And the aggrieved or their family, in the case of their death, could ask for almost anything. The fae who’d broken their word would be compelled to do it.

One side of her mouth lifted, like she thought she’d won. She had no idea that she was trapped with the Blood King on the other side of the door out of this room. My feral side hummed with a sense of satisfaction.

“We’ll start with the vows. End every vow you have over Lark,” Fal said.

“Ah, there’s only the one. I never did need any others where she was concerned,” she said, a hint of her usual bluster returning now that she thought she wouldn’t come to harm. “I’ve never released a vow before.”

“It starts, ‘I hereby revoke,’” Fal prompted.

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