Page 127 of Of Brides Of Queens

But King See was not shaken from his resolve to take the bouquet. He was listening, though.

“She is alive,” I said on a sigh. “And part of my ploy. Dinner tonight granted King Bring with the perfect opportunity to put his deadly charm to use. He did so when Princess Take distracted us with her undertable activities. But I had asked Mother to whisk away the poison already, if he should reveal it tonight. Mother refilled the goblet with delicious and undeadly contents, and then Princess Bring performed her part brilliantly. As expected, King Bring then tried to draw me into union. I had thought to delay him in war once he believed his princess dead, but his lack of care over her fake death annoyed me so. But no matter, I just needed him to believe his princess dead, so he would not attack until I had the bouquet.”

Dirt blew in a soft wave along the cobblestones between us. Princess Take’s shrieks were audible in the distance. Dawn was coming. How long before her king came?

I lifted fingertips to my temple. The shaking of my body intensified. Such clamor.

“None of your ploys convince me from taking the fourth bridal gift,” King See said. “Your ancientness of thought is greater than ever, and I feel less brave in our destiny by the night. I will take you to the hellebores, but the bridal gift willremain in my care forevermore. I am weak with madness and vice, and you hold such meaning to my existence that I cannot deny it as I have other times.”

“Do you believemebrave in our destiny?” I whispered harshly.

I could not bear it any longer. I dropped to one knee.

“You are brave in accepting fear of the unknown. You are a new creature, and most of your monsterdom has likely felt uncertain and new. I have not felt this way in a millennium. I do not handle this well.”

Clearly.“Pawns. Come to me.”

I had not wished to use them against King See, but I must. Our obsessions clashed yet again.

My werebeasts came first of all, stalking from their kennels with snarled lips curled back over yellowed fangs dripping with saliva. Twelve other pawns exited their chambers, and my seeing pawns drew closest of all. My taking pawns gripped their fierce spears, and my blobbing pawns gathered their slime in readiness. The ground-under-my-stairway pawns rippled in readiness of them disappearing to erupt elsewhere in my defense.

My pawns remained in vigil and readiness, not yet surrounding King See. I had not ordered so.

King See’s laughter filled the courtyard, so cruel in sound. “Do you think that fifteen princes, nothing more than pawns to you, will stop me?”

“I think that I am the villain in this story,” I said, and my voice was weaker than I would have liked.

I only needed enough time to enter the grave with the bouquet.

Bracing myself with a deep inhale first, I rose to my feet, then staggered toward the seeing king.

The blind king. Never blinder.

I staggered until I was an arm’s length from him. And then I craned my head to look at his face.

His breath halted.

I said, “You are by far the most wonderfully crafted monster I have and will ever see. I can think of no other who could better watch past, present, and future. Your eyes possess the milkiness of immortality, your joints are thickened to bear the weight of the futures you must consider, and your skin is as chalky as the past is dead.”

“You see me,”he said on an exhale. “Can it be that you see me in completeness?”

My inhale hitched. “I do, See.”

The king lowered to his knees. “Why do ancients grant me this mercy?”

The third bridal gift had granted me sight of him, and what had the fourth done? I had an inkling…

My flowing skirt whipped around my legs as I stepped forward and reached out a hand.

No balloon of power stopped me.

I cupped his jaw. His short, black beard caught at the stitch over my palm, and that sensation reduced the clamor in my skull to a pinprick. I sucked in a breath at the impossible relief. But the reduction in clamor had been necessary to hear the twin thuds in my mind instead. The thuds were his heartbeat and mine, and they thudded in different rhythms.

Two thumps.

Then, quite suddenly, they thumped as one.

King See’s milky eyes opened, and he stared up at me in wonder. “What power is this that holds me?”

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