Page 125 of Of Brides Of Queens

Her words were left in my wake as I took up a pace no less bounding and blurring and blinking than that I had taken to retrieve my dried bouquet. How I wished to croon over them and explore their fragile petals.

How I wished to keep my sanity.

I raced through Vitale, and dirt kicked in all directions. Would humans speak on their radio of the tornados that attacked the city and left destruction in their wakes?

“Hurry,” I bid myself.

The low walls of my queendom came into sight, and the thatched houses beyond them. Picket was dutifully bricking the walls higher, and I almost sobbed my relief.

A pain had sparked in my skull.

More would come, and quickly.

I slowed to run through my own queendom, apparently caring more for these buildings and plants than those in the wider city. My bare feet sunk into soft ground basked with the first of dawn’s rays.

The first signs of day filled me with fear, and the fear was sinister and warning. I had until dawn to enter a grave.

A shrill scream split through the air, and my blurring run was slow enough to see that Princess Take was stuck to the outside of my queendom with slime.Goodness.I did not have time to stop and talk.

Mother’s grave was so close.

My panic of reaching her in time had loosened its grip. Too soon. For I had noticed See’s earlier shattering roar and even wondered at the agony and fury and whether I was the cause.

I had also observed many times that See grew quieter in rage, not louder.

In short, panic had made a fool of me.

I burst through the wall of bars, and stopped short at the sight of King See in the courtyard.

He lurked between me and mother’s grave with his booted feet planted wider than usual.

The dried bouquet was in my hand. The power of the fourth bridal gift had not settled fully in me, and any sudden use of it seemed more likely to send me into insanity than anything.

I was vulnerable.

And here was a king who saw far too much.

“Was this your plan?” I whispered.

He smiled, and the smile was ice-cold. A rage indeed. “It had occurred to me to let you do the work. You returned to your queendom after securing the third bridal gift and disappeared here for a time. I guessed that you would return here with the fourth.”

The air was charged. His tone was mild, never milder. This king’s rage was deadly and mad. I sensed the savage in him because I had just been one.

And he stood between me and Mother’s grave with dawn rising steadily to battle night away.

The pain in my head swelled, and I withheld a wince. “What has angered you so?”

“I am not angry.”

I disagreed, but not aloud. “Are you decided on whether you will steal the bouquet away to control me forevermore?”

“Yes,” he answered.

King See attacked.

I might have wished to blame a painful head and desperate panic on how little I saw of his attack, but in truth, his speed was humbling to a rising queen.

King See arrested his attack an arm’s length from me, and then I felt his power at every one of my stitches. His power was slicing in nature, and pulling. The intent clear. He would rip apart the patches of me.

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