Page 100 of Of Brides Of Queens

The feeling was larger than the feeling of a garter, and so I glanced back, and the sight tripped me soundly.

I slid along the stone floor and my crown clanged down the hall.

Rolling, I propped up and stared back at King See. I stared at his bared teeth and chalky white skin. At his milky eyes, blinded with all he saw. At his thin, cruel lips that wished to do any number of things.

I stared at his face as his palace squeezed and warped, I stared at hisfacein the throes of towering, vice-filled fury that he could barely resist. There was nothing mild about the rage that contorted him, and why would he mask such a shameful expression around a queen who could not see him?

“Flee.” His roar shook the very stones beneath me. “My madness is no less.”

The words jolted my heart to beat again.

Will Be, Is, and Has Been appeared between me and their king. Their eyes shimmered with malice, and there was no doubt they were there to protect me against their liege.

“My queen, he means what he says,” shouted Is. “Run!”

See laughed cruelly, a mad king truly.

I had yearned for the sight of See’s face for so long, and how cruel that I must snap a panicked memory for now and barely that.

But there could be nouswithout my immortal freedom, and there could be no me without it either. I would protect us from his madness tonight.

Garter in hand, a king’s face swimming in mind and heart, I fled.

Chapter Twenty

The moon must witness boons

And wearing a crown

Not seeing them for the gifts they were.

Huckery, Loup, and Unguis prowled outside See’s portcullis, snapping at the barricade. They could sense the menace in the buckling and swaying of the palace I had fled.

I ignored the wooden steed to leap onto Huckery’s back.

My werebeast pawns blurred me from See’s buckling palace and buckling resolve.

“The seeing pawns will remain to contain him,” Loup barked from my left.

How could they contain their king when he had not drifted from his purpose?

Unguis answered my thought, “The power of the queen fills them.”

My power? Goodness. They had stood between me and their liege, but I could not discount that part of King See might havewished them to succeed in stopping his madness. I was not sure that other pawns would be so successful against theirkings.

But that was not very important to contemplate, not when I could feel the garter shoved down the front of my leotard.

I had to hide the bridal gift, and the others. But where? The walls of my queendom no longer seemed safe enough. See could tear them apart to find what he wanted, and that might be the first place he would look.

“I am shaken,” I whispered.

Something wordless passed between the three werebeasts then, and they altered course, running with impossible speed until stopping amid the ruins of a collapsed apartment building.

Moss concealed rubble, but rubble concealed ragged breaths and tossing moans. Humans slept within the ruins, shackled in nightmare.

Huckery extended a foreleg, so I could easily dismount.

“You have led me to your king’s kingdom,” I remarked, looking at the horrible corn husk dolls of me with their heads torn out and needles shoved in every place of them.

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