Page 126 of Of Brides Of Queens

A creative strategy.

I was against my wall of bars. I must have scrambled back from his assault. “You attack me in my own queendom, sir.”

“Will you do something about it?” He sneered.

My armored corset had felt empowering before dinner. Now it felt like the confines on my skull too. I moaned low as thousands of layers of ancient whisper struck up in my mind. “I cannot, as you know. Now less than usual. If I do not get to Mother’s grave soon, I will lose my mind.”

He glanced behind. “The hellebores. I wondered such after the royal dinner affair.”

“You connect the whole.”

“You may go there,” King See informed me. “I shall keep the bouquet.”

“I must have the bouquet. You must let me have it, See.”

The world shook. The air charged and whined with the tension of his mad fury. Ever so mildly, a king said, “I must do nothing.”

I cried out at the tightening of his power on my stitches—he prepared to undo me. “You are not the villain.”

He smirked. Slowly. “But Iam.”

“Why now when you resisted the garter?” I stomped my foot. “I am the villain in this play!”

“Petulant queen,” he chided in cold menace. “There are six villains, and you are merely one of them, and an infant villain at that. Stomp your delightful foot all you like. I shall enjoy the sight and hope for a pout too.”

I would not do so, then, especially because pain felt more like agony. The whispers were more like mutters. The first rays of dawn strengthened in the sky.

“See,” I whispered. “Tell me true, what has raised your ire so? Mildness does not fool me. You are mad, and you have managed such madness with more care lately. The air is charged with everything you feel. What usurped your control?”

The world started to rumble again. “Tellmetrue, queen of private promises. King Bring climbed from the stairway kingdom not long ago and informed me that you had agreed to union with him in payment for the murder of his princess.”

I frowned. “He told you what?”

“He asked, and you said yes,” King See snarled in a terrible voice.

I… That was not what happened at all. “I did not speak this word in answer to his proposal. The rest of what I said was cut off when my mother dropped him into Raise’s kingdom.”

“He has declared it was so, and he raced off like a hound to inform other kings of such. Kings will soon believe that you are his. Promises uttered to kings have precedent.” King See turned to walk a short distance, though his power remained ready to pluck and slice me.

His voice was one of despair. “Perantiqua, an accepted proposal is especially what my control could not bear. I, who managed to allow you a private conversation with King Bring after your claiming of me at dinner. Only for this to occur. I should have relented to madness, for now you must join Bring in union. He will fight for this to be, and you might eventually say yes in truth if rendered vulnerable. But if I have that which you require, then you could not say yes, whether vulnerable or not. You and I would continue in destiny.”

He was a fearful king, a monster as panicked and in pain as I.

King See understood that if I kept this bouquet and entered the grave, that his chance to hold me close might disappear. This was the last bridal gift, and the last opportunity to control me. If he allowed this bouquet to slip through hellebores with me, then he would be at mercy to whatever decisions I made.

He had denied madness once before, but never with these stakes. If in his position, I could not have done so.

“You did warn me of your ambition, sir. But I have not agreed to union with King Bring this night. I cannot, in fact.”

“Because you are a queen?” He faced me again, halfway between me and Mother’s grave.

His milky gaze held anguish and torment. His oversized hands were clawed as if he might drop his head into them in self-loathing. As towering as See was, he seemed in danger of crumpling.

I gasped against the loud talking in my mind. So many conversations at once. “Because his princess is not dead, sir.”

A burst of hope before despair returned. “I watched her die as did everyone else.”

“She acted out her death so beautifully. Perhaps only my sliming pawns would have guessed the truth—had I not ordered them to silence. Blobbing monsters can give moisture to their surroundings, were you aware? King Bring was not, seeing as he does not share the same form as his princess.” I groaned low. My knees shook.

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