Page 128 of Of Brides Of Queens

That we held over each other. Wonder filled me too. And shock, and soul-deep certainty. I had deeply missed feeling certainty of destiny with this king. I felt it now. I felt it morestrongly than an urge to tumble through hellebores with a bouquet.

I held my breath as I ran a hand through his dark hair. Coarse. Thick. Hanging to brush his shoulders. “I can touch you.”

A tear squeezed from my eye, but it felt to have arisen in my heart. “We can touch in the flesh.”

The tear dropped and King See caught it in his palm, staring down at the glistening evidence of my feelings. He rasped, “I have attacked you in your own queendom this night. I have whispered my intention to be your captor for all time. I let you exist in pain instead of helping you to hellebores. You called your pawns against me in fright of me, yet now you part your lips to touch them to mine. Could it be that you intend to kiss the king that has treated you so instead of worshiping and adoring you?” He looked up at me. “The king who will not love you.”

“Yes,” I said hoarsely.

His shoulders relaxed. “Then perhaps there is hope for us.”

I had not kissed another, not human nor monster.

I set my lips to King See’s. His lips were thin and cruel and designed for the torsion and stitch of mine. Such warmth and ice. Such threat and vow.

The world shook with our kiss, and why would it not when ancient clamor had quieted with our simple touch? Everything must move and react to the movement of his lips on mine. Something had to dance with this.This.A rumble grew in See. I felt it in me too. The earthquake—the desperation and relief. The fear and surety.

The completion.

My hands were dragged from his face and down to his lapels as See rose from his knees. My face tilted with him, and our kiss remained intact as he circled an arm around my copper bodice to drag me close. I lifted on tiptoes to move my mouth against hisstill. Wants filled me so, and I would not deny the urge to explore his mouth and tongue.

He groaned low, and I traced along his upper lip some more in response.

The beating of our hearts boomed in my head. See’s breath was as ragged as mine. But while the touch of him had reduced the pain in my head, ancients were resuming their boom in my skull.

They would not be denied for long. But I did try.

Until I could no longer.

My knees buckled, and I would have toppled but for a king. This king who could inspire any number of things in me—and I to him.

We were destined, yes, and as likely for doom as anything. Yet we existed in this tangle and so must see how it might unravel.

I moaned and clutched my head as King See lifted me in his arms. The thudding sway of his footsteps was felt in every part of me as my mind shimmered and squeezed. The bouquet was clutched but weakly in my grip.

He had me. I was but a vulnerable queen.

King See took my hand holding the bouquet. And so perhaps See was the villain after all. I cracked open my blue eyes to peer up at him. See’s milky gaze bored into mine as he placed the hand holding my bouquet against my chest, and then rested my other hand on top. Much as one might arrange a corpse before burial.

There was a rustle of hellebores. The bouquet in my hand rustled back in greeting.

“I cannot fathom what a fool I am,” King See whispered in despair as he lowered me into Mother’s grave.

Not a fool, I wanted to say.Not a fool.But I could not.

Hellebores closed in on me from all sides.

Bouquet in hand, and a kiss in soul, I knew no more.

Chapter Twenty-Six

And finally,

The right question.

“They come for you,” said King See.

He sat on the bench beside me in my new rooftop garden. The sweeping garden extended the entire length of the third floor and surrounded my copper conservatory. Since hellebores returned me yesternight, I had formed a fondness for this bench that gazed over the thatched housing of my sixth.

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