Page 104 of Of Brides Of Queens

And I rolled.

I rolled toward black hellebores because my new ancientness had just studied a memory that had never meant much to me. In the memory, King See whispered that hellebores were the cure of ancient insanity.

I was ancient and growing more insane by the second.

So I rolled toward black hellebores and into Mother’s grave.

Of course, she promptly yawned me away.

Chapter Twenty-One

A patch for loneliness

“Perantiqua,” the woman hushed.

She did not purr my name as a king did. The woman cooed in a way that sang of her adoration, yet a surety filled her tone too. She believed in me.

She did not address me as queen.

The woman was my mother.

I peered up at my mother from the ground, and she was as I recalled her in withering—gaunt and twisted. I had hoped her death would prove plump and vibrant. “Mother, thank you for curing me with your hellebores.”

“I would not do otherwise, my patch, and the hellebores are born of your brilliance. Better to thank yourself.”

Tears stung my eyes.

Monsterdom had given me much, and now here was my mother in death, able to converse with me. “This conversation exists in my mind, I imagine.”

She nodded. “That does not mean a conversation is not real.”

Mother extended her hand that was skin over fragile bones and nothing more. I took her hand and stood, then looked around the empty grave.

My head felt much better, but my heart did not like my mother’s surroundings. “This is your home in death.”

Her lips curved. “This empty grave? No, Daughter. This is merely the passage between us. When you buried me, you dug exactly deep enough so that I might help you in your living from this side of life.”

She climbed out of her grave, and her movements were jerky with death, the sight of a static radio.

I leaped out of the grave after her, and the lack of color hit me first. Gray scale. I scanned the expanse and recognized my queendom. Some of it. Very little, really. My copper conservatory was here but set atop a large tower. The rest of the hotel was gone. As far as my immortal eyes could see, nothing but the tower existed in this place. The soil underfoot was lifeless and rocky, and this stretched endlessly in all directions.

My mother had waited for me to take this all in.

Then she said, “Until now, you have been the pain of fifty women. Are you content to remain their pain?”

I did not understand her question, and I knew the answer. “I am not.”

She cracked a smile, then stretched out her withered arms. “I expected not, my daughter.”

Mother fell backward into her empty grave, and my heart pounded as I waited for the thump of her fragile body against dirt. It never came.

A crunching step did instead.

I scanned the barren land, and though the crunching steps continued, hours and nights seemed to pass before a form took shape in the haze of the horizon. She walked to my tower through the hostile and barren place, and I did not hurry heralong for fear the woman might lose her focus. Fear would not let me walk out to help her either.

She arrived, though, and after the great wait for her, I could not locate any words of greeting.

“Daughter,” she rasped, wavering on bare and bloodied feet.

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