Fate's Fools Box Set

by Bell, Ophelia

  “You do not yet possess the power needed to overcome a god,” she said. “But you are very close. Complete your sssoul, and you will have the potential for godhood yourself.”

  “I’d like to do that,” I said. “But we need to reclaim Ozzie’s memories. Can you help him?”

  Before she could answer, Ozzie slipped up beside me, his aura a wild cloud. “Why the fuck is it on her to deal with Ouranos? The gods have turned their backs on his—and apparently Fate’s—manipulations of the turul for eons. It’s high time you put him in his place for once.”

  “We all have our limits,” Chaos said. “And Fate’s influence indirectly affects us all. There is a structure even I must abide by, particularly where Fate is concerned. It drives me crazy, have no doubt, but it is out of my hands.

  “You made a deal with Fate, Deva. Not me, nor my beloved. It is you who must follow through. We will help, but beyond the guidance we offer, it is up to you to carry this out.”

  “What do I need to do?” I asked.

  “Retrace your stepsss,” the Diviner said. “If you have any shared memories with Oszkar that are particularly potent, revisit the locations where those memories were created. Any of you who have such memoriesss may contribute.”

  She glanced around at each of the men, then paused when her eyes landed on Ozzie. “You mussst try to open your mind. If the memories are hidden within you, holding them up to a mirror will help you recognize what is true.”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” Ozzie said.

  “Where should we begin?” I asked. “I have no idea how to even find Fate.”

  “Begin with the most recent shared event you recall,” she said. “Time mussst be unraveled like a skein, a little at a time. If you follow it back far enough, you will reach a point where the trapped memoriesss no longer have a net to hold them.”

  “The theater downstairs is not in use,” Chaos offered. “I presume he had his memories the night of your concert and lost them soon after, correct?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think so. We lost him when Fate returned his soul fragment to him.” I glanced at Ozzie. “I assume that’s when your memories disappeared too—when it sent you wherever it did. We were in a building in the city after the show that night—the place Fate had taken Sandor to torture him.”

  “Then you have your answer. Start there and work backwardsss,” the Diviner said.

  12

  Deva

  We drifted to the construction site where we’d discovered Sandor the night of the concert. The place hadn’t changed a bit; the chair he’d been tied to still lurked in shadows and his bindings were still scattered on the floor. A hot desert breeze blew through, fluttering sheets of plastic glinting in the midday sun.

  “Do you feel anything here? Recognize anything?” I asked Ozzie, trying to temper my hope. I didn’t expect him to remember instantly, but any recognition would have been an improvement.

  “Nothing,” he answered. “What happened here?”

  “Our friend Sandor was captured by Fate, held hostage as a test of my skills.” I let out a rueful chuckle. “Fate wanted to find out if I was capable of commanding the hounds well enough to find his One.”

  “He’s turul?” Ozzie asked. When I nodded, he added, “Have you tried to contact him?”

  “I’ve tried every turul I know,” Llyr said. “The only ones who respond are the ones who were in the Haven or Sanctuary on Beltane.”

  Ozzie braced his hands on his hips and looked around. “I’ve got nothing. Was this an emotional moment for me?”

  “Not for you so much as for Mom and Sandor and Willem,” Bodhi said. “But this was where we were just before Sophia showed up with a pack of hounds and carted us off to Fate.”

  “Is the Sophia in this world a matchmaker too? Or something else? My grandmother’s always loved meddling in people’s love lives, but isn’t exactly great at it.”

  “She’s an immortal agent of Fate in this world,” I said. “Or she was. I think now she’s free to do her own thing.”

  “Sophia North has always had a reputation as a skilled matchmaker,” Rohan said. “All the higher races know her name and frequently visit her to seek their mates. She was who Belah sought out to find your cousins.”

  “I knew the Blue B—Belah visited my grandmother, but it didn’t exactly work out in my timeline. Nanyo set Belah up on a date with me, and just when things were going well, her crazy ex showed up and that was that. She left with Nikhil, leaving me with a head wound in fucking Central Park. Lukas and Iszak never hooked up with her.”

  “Your cousins did, though,” I said. “They’ve told me the story. They each saw her and knew she was their One. She knew them from the dreams Fate sent her.”

  Ozzie shook his head, chuckling. “Except in my world, Fate didn’t exist, so the turul have no Ones and the dragons would never have been sent those dreams. I’m starting to see the pattern. If, like you say, Fate wanted to punish me when we broke that curse, then sending me to a world where I’d be forced to suffer from a lack of Fate’s influence makes sense. It would have been a lot more effective if I’d known what I lost, though, don’t you think?”

  “That’s what’s bothering me,” I said. “Your memory loss doesn’t make sense if Fate truly intended to torture you.”

  He came toward me with a serious look and touched my cheek, then gave me a small smile. “I want to remember. So tell me where we need to go next. Or rather, where were we before we came here?”

  “On stage at Pandemonium,” I said, taking his hand. When Llyr stretched out a hand to me, I shook my head. “Let me have a moment alone with him.”

  Llyr arched an eyebrow. “You comfortable drifting on your own?”

  “I need to learn how to do it sometime,” I said.

  Ozzie gave me a dubious look. “Exactly how many times have you done this?”

  “Just once,” I said. Before he could voice his objection, I closed my eyes and envisioned the location where I wanted to go.

  The sudden, powerful rush of the River surged against me, flowing simultaneously around and through me, as if it had opened a channel straight through my navel. It had never been this strong before, neither on the day I’d fled the Haven nor any other time when Llyr or anyone else had controlled it.

  When we landed, the world around me swam and tilted, and I gasped for breath. Beside me, Ozzie retched between foul curses.

  “Fucking hell. Warn me next time, all right?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think it would be like that. I haven’t attempted it since gaining a nymphaea soul.”

  He stood up and cleared his throat. “That was some serious power you pulled. Maybe just try to tone it down next time.”

  I let out a shaky sigh through an apologetic smile. “I’ll try.”

  An empty stage had been set up for a concert with a piano, drums, and a handful of other instruments. It wasn’t precisely how it had been when we’d played here, but it was close.

  Ozzie gravitated toward the drums. “I was back here during the concert, I take it?”

  “Yeah, and I was in front for most of it.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled, transforming my outfit into the slinky, sequined dress I’d worn that night. The sound system wasn’t live, as I discovered after testing a microphone, but when Ozzie settled behind the drum kit and picked up the sticks, I started to sing the song that held the most potent emotional memories for me from that night. Closing my eyes, I envisioned how the concert had gone, and behind me, Ozzie picked up the beat with ease.

  It felt good knowing he was there again, backing me up with the steady rhythm—the heartbeat that had infused the band with life we’d barely been able to hang onto while he was gone. Life we’d used sex to sustain, lacking the rhythmic pulse of his magic to keep us going.

  But the night I’d first sang this song, I’d been reeling after being told that Ozzie would never give me a piece of his soul. I just hadn’t realized he already had. Llyr h
ad accompanied me in the duet, his allure too strong for me to resist. I’d shifted all my attention to him, our shared need for each other carrying me through the song, until at the end Llyr and I had come together in a kiss that was entirely unplanned, but had been the highlight of the show.

  The drumming behind me faltered and abruptly stopped. I stopped singing and turned. “What is it?” I asked.

  Ozzie was staring at me, eyes dark like a coming storm. “I don’t know. I just had the strangest urge to punch Llyr in his pretty mouth.”

  I grinned. “That’s wonderful! I mean, not good that you want to hit him, but I’m hoping it means somewhere inside you, the memories exist. Llyr and I sang that song together. At the end of it, we kissed.”

  “And I got a front-row seat. Yeah, not surprised I’d be pissed, if I supposedly had feelings for you.”

  He set the drumsticks back down and rose, coming toward me. His shoulders were set, his steps determined and swift as he closed the distance between us. When he stopped, he was standing in the exact spot Llyr had been that night, so close his body heat soaked into my skin.

  I blinked up at him, uncertain. He still carried that fierce expression, his aura a mess of competing emotions.

  “I hate feeling this way,” he huffed.

  “What way?” I breathed, then swallowed. His closeness stole the air from my lungs, and that storm in his eyes gathered strength.

  “Lost. Replaced. Fuck.” He grabbed the back of my head and slanted his mouth over mine. Our bodies collided and he wrapped his other arm around my waist, pulling me flush.

  I groaned into his mouth, opening to deepen the kiss. He was hungrier, angrier than Llyr had been that night, but the kiss was just as needy and filled with uncertainty. I splayed my fingers against his chest, marveling at the slow thud of his heartbeat. My own pulse was erratic. Did he remember?

  He pulled back, releasing my mouth and resting his forehead against mine. I exhaled shakily.

  “You were never replaced,” I whispered. “And we found you.” I clung to him, fingers clenched in his shirt.

  He lifted his other hand to my cheek and pulled back to look into my eyes. “I needed to erase that feeling. I don’t understand it a bit, but the only way to get rid of it was to kiss you. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. So does that mean you don’t feel like punching Llyr anymore?”

  The air pressure shifted and my ears popped. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I sensed my four mates behind me. Ozzie lifted his gaze and scowled.

  “Nope. I still feel like punching that pretty-boy son of a bitch.”

  13

  Ozzie

  I had no idea how to process this new emotion.

  Holding Deva felt right. Perfect, in fact. And our kiss had been far more intense than I was prepared for. It had washed away most of the weird sense of . . . something . . . I’d experienced while playing the drums along with her song.

  Fear.

  Yeah, fuck that. I wasn’t afraid. Was I?

  But it made sense. Jealousy spawned from fear, after all, and if I had to put a name to that sick sensation inside me—the need to lay claim to this woman before I lost her—it was jealousy.

  Yet here she was clinging to me, desperate to bring me into her circle, if only I could remember the key to loving her. Jealousy was not about love, I knew that much. It was about possession. And I had to assume that the old me understood the difference, or else he would’ve punched that satyr’s perfect face already.

  Llyr’s mouth split into a shit-eating grin, and I realized I’d forgotten to erect a barrier to keep him out of my head.

  “I’d call that a breakthrough,” he said, sauntering toward us, clad now in real clothes instead of a skimpy sarong. I reflexively tightened my hold on Deva, still not understanding exactly what compelled me to hold on.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

  “That emotion you’re stewing in right now. You’ve been there before. You fought so hard against it, but it still grabbed you by the balls and twisted. Trust me, this face and your fists are very well-acquainted, thanks to her.”

  Deva turned halfway to Llyr, but some instinct made me hold her tighter. She looked up at me with surprise and a little wonder. Something was changing inside me.

  “Do you remember that night?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, my gaze still fixed on Llyr as he came close enough for me to see the remnant of a small scar on his upper lip. I felt a twinge of recognition, satisfaction, when he lifted a hand and touched that spot. I couldn’t dredge up any memories at all of these people, yet something sure as fuck had happened between us. Every cell in my body said so.

  “Do you remember giving me this?” he asked, probing the mark with his tongue. My dick twitched and I swallowed, disconcerted by the fresh new emotion that had just presented itself at the sight of his tongue dancing across his lips. How the fuck was I turned on by him?

  “I don’t remember shit,” I snapped, shifting my focus back to Deva. “Where to next?”

  Her eyebrows shot up at my curt tone. “Ah . . . The night before the show, we split up. You were with Llyr all night, I think.” She glanced at him. “Did you guys do anything special?”

  The big satyr gave an insouciant shrug. “Got wasted and watched pretty girls take off their clothes. You took me to get this tattoo first.”

  He hoisted the hem of his T-shirt up, baring smooth, cut abs and well-formed pecs, and his tattoo that was a perfect replica of my own.

  I reflexively touched my chest through my shirt. He narrowed his eyes at me as if waiting for a reaction.

  “What?” I said. “There’s something you’re not telling me. You guys need to fucking clue me in on at least some details here. I hate feeling left in the dark.”

  Llyr chuckled and dropped his hand, letting his shirt fall back to his hips. He crossed his arms. “You practically begged me to mind-rape you to dig out your memories of your first night with Deva. Said you wanted me to see.”

  “And did you?” I asked.

  He offered a rueful smile and dropped his hands, hooking his thumbs in his jeans pockets. “No, Ozzie. I don’t force myself on people I love, even if they ask for it. For some reason, you’d buried that memory so deep it hurt you to dredge it up. I wasn’t willing to look at it if you weren’t ready to see it yourself.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to remember?” I asked, my misplaced irritation fading. I looked down at Deva. “Was our first night together painful for me?” Swallowing back dread, I added, “For you?”

  She shook her head, and I exhaled.

  “Our first night together was beautiful,” she said. “You were perfect.”

  “Then why would I bury the memory?” I asked.

  Llyr’s cocksure attitude had entirely disappeared. “You didn’t believe you could have her. You took it out on me with your fists, at first, but I think you took it out on yourself even worse. You didn’t think you deserved the one truly beautiful memory you had of her. I didn’t need to taste your essence by then to see how much it destroyed you to be around her and not have her.”

  My mouth had gone dry. “It was because of Fate, wasn’t it?” I wasn’t sure how I knew, but at this point, it was counterproductive to fight these strange sparks of insight.

  Deva’s hand was at my cheek, urging me to look at her. “You were willing to lose everything to keep me safe. What you didn’t realize was that I could have kept you safe, if you’d let me.”

  I gazed into her beautiful eyes—eyes I believed I could love, if I could figure out how. The old me had been a damn fool for not holding onto her, that was for sure.

  I chuckled. “I suppose my cousins and I chose the band name for a reason. Sounds pretty apropos now.”

  Keagan snorted. “You guys fucking nailed it, Maestro.”

  I let out a deep breath and looked around at their faces. “All right, I’m not sure I’m ready for more yet, but t
here’s no time to waste. Where to next? Where were we the night before that?”

  Keagan lifted a fist to his mouth and coughed, though I was pretty sure he had just muffled the word “fucking.” I narrowed my gaze at him.

  “Want to try that again?” I asked.

  Beside him, Rohan laughed. “We were fucking,” he said cheerfully.

  I darted a look at Deva. “I thought I stayed away from you.”

  She looked amused and lifted one bare shoulder, the sequins on her dress sparkling in the footlights. “Don’t look at me; I wasn’t even there.”

  Rohan shot me a bright smile. “I’d offer to recreate the scene, but the tour bus is in Texas and we were in California that night, so it might not work. But yeah, you, me, and Keagan were having a big old three-way that night. I’m pretty sure Deva was there in spirit, though.”

  “You fucked us, if it makes you feel any better,” Keagan added. “Not the other way around.”

  “Bullshit,” I blurted. “I don’t . . .”

  I’d started to say, “I don’t fuck men” but my gaze was drawn to Llyr and I shut my mouth, struggling to swallow.

  I didn’t even have to mentally form the question before the truth flashed through my mind: A vivid image of him naked on his back with me on top, too fucking angry and aroused to stop. The pain gave way to pleasure when he wound up on his stomach, penetrated from behind . . . presumably by me, though the visual was only a pillow spattered with blood.

  I was seeing myself through his eyes, and the memory was crystal-clear straight down to the pain lancing through his face and the need burning in his gut. The need for me to surrender to my own desire. Which I had apparently done. Twice.

  “You . . . ah . . .” I pointed between Keagan and Rohan, then cleared my throat. “Both of you? Was it . . .”

  Fucking hell. I needed to be rational about this, but my goddamn libido wasn’t having any of it. I was turned on, and it made no fucking sense. I wasn’t into men. I shook my head vigorously and rubbed the heels of my hands against my eyes.