Page 75 of Of Monsters Of Kings

Hear! Rule until the bloody finish.

For the mighty never stirred at dawn,

They burst forth at dusk,

Into toothed beast’s yawn.

“Awaken.”

The cold voice sent chills through me, and no wonder when the voice was ice itself.

My eyes opened to notice a roof that wasn’t crumbling or made of dirt. They saw cobwebs and a chandelier, while my skin noticed the soft, night breeze, and my body recognized that this bed was more like a cloud than anything I’d experienced excluding one other time.

“I am in your palace then,” I stated.

A small exhale. “You are sound. You haven’t spoken in a lucid manner the other times.”

“What times were these?” I croaked. “For how long have I slept, King See?”

“For two months and one week. You have woken with more frequency this last month, and so I wondered if you would wake soon for good, whether ruined or whole.”

My heart sank at all the time I’d missed, but speaking this disappointment to a king who’d slumbered for one thousand years seemed tactless. For the first time I appreciated how lost and bitter the kings might have felt after their slumber. Everyone they’d known would have passed except for the five of them, and the world had become so foreign also. “Have I been in your palace the whole time? I apologize yet again for your blindness if so.”

“There is a freshness to blindness, I am learning, and I have found myself often out of the palace where my sight was sound while you slumbered.”

He was quiet as I gathered enough scraps to stitch together what had happened.

“He designed to anger you,” I told him, worrying at the stitch along my bottom lip. “Change said as much before charging my person.”

“He succeeded in angering me.” King See paused. “Mistress, give me leave to say that the thought you just spoke was most ancient indeed.”

“Whatever can you mean, sir?”

“But that you have always possessed a delightful manner of speaking in monsterdom, and that your arrangement of words has grown to be most intriguing. I was struck in this particular moment by the towering heights of your articulation and well-rounded phrase.”

I couldn’t hear these things myself, but I still wondered at the delightful and intriguing parts, let alone recent additions—though I garnered that, as usual, recent slumber was behind any change. Would my power have grown again too?

“Thank you kindly, sir. Could you please tell me what transpired?”

“I arrived with King Bring to find you harmed and unresponsive. I did not like that only my princes could carry you, and yet I felt grateful they could because leaving you in Change’s kingdom was insupportable. You were dead for a long time after that, and I became worried you weren’t monster enough after a week, but then you rallied beautifully, drawing threads of forbidden hours to bandage yourself. I fear that King Bring glimpsed you in the process of saving you, and no manner of dirt could disguise your magnificence from him. He has sent many envoys to request I release you into his care, and they had begun to irk me greatly for I knew he meant to work on you during slumber to open your mind to the idea of concubine. He now wishes for you for reasons other than blinding me, and I am driven to rage over his lust for your body.”

That was a lot to take in.

I wasn’t sure I could entirely.

My thoughts centered instead on whether King Change had returned his snuffing share to Hotel Vitale, and so odd was that thought against the landscape of being dead for a week and of bandaging myself in threads of forbidden hours that I had to take note of my obsession with the snuffing shares again.

I’d had the thought several times, but why was I so obsessed with the notion? I’d rejected a king’s claim to get one, which could’ve killed me if See had taken offense. For another share, I’d walked into the ballroom of a king who operated on whim and drained life for a purpose. Then to gain a third, I’d made a vague deal with a very dangerous third king who made no secret of his plan to wreak havoc. Why was I so driven to see them all returned?

“I am obsessed.”

“What?”

I blinked at the roll of his power. “Why do you fury?”

“Because you dare to utter your obsession with Bring in my presence with no care for my sentiment. Did I so destroy things between us at our last meeting?”

Our last meeting floated to the top of the pond that was my mind. “I speak not of obsession with Bring, sir. And I had not recalled our… rendezvous until this moment.” How far away that felt. How could a monster feel weary after slumber? I felt so very ancient, more ancient than when I was last awake. And there was my answer. I was more ancient than before. That spoke for the emotional distance I felt from the memory served up by See.

---