Page 14 of Of Brides Of Queens

Raise stopped in the center of the room, having pushed me over near the entrance, then turned his back on me. He faced the other kings.

Insult and injury.

My fingers clawed with the urge to answer his offense.

King Bring called, “Wondrous queen, please take my chair.”

He left his chair and ventured closer to Take’s throne.

Gratitude swept through me. “Thank you, sir.”

I glided over, tuned in to the more forcefultap, tapof See’s finger. He might have offered his seat, too, so he could tap all that he liked.

I sat, surprised by the almost-painful heat on the chair.

“I run hot,” Bring purred my way.

I could tell. On both counts.

Raise didn’t show signs of annoyance at being thwarted. He flipped his palm up. I had time to see that his hands dripped oil before an enormous, rolled parchment appeared in his hand.

A contract?

I wishedverymuch to read that contract. I had been pestered and drowning and annoyed many times in the last week, but I had also felt increasing awe of my monstrous form and curiosity of my stitches and the mothers who created them.

I longed for any contact with my ancestors, even in this potentially disastrous form. Any question I might ask would be dissected by kings, though. I must tread carefully.

King Raise’s hands continued to drip oil as he held the rolled parchment higher. “I hold a contract forged with the human ancestor of Queen Perantiqua some twelve hundred years ago.”

“In the infancy of your immortality, you say?” interrupted King Take. “And here you had told us that such dealings did not come easy to you for many centuries.”

Raise stiffened. “This human sought out one of my princes.”

See asked, “How so when Vitale was not yet formed, and fire and ice and sand and storm wrought despair and death across the world?”

“How did any human survive? She did, then found my prince. Her proposition was unusual, yet so was much at that time. I had woken an immortal king, for example.”

Change asked, “What did this human propose?”

Raise shifted to face the beastly king. “That she might wither away far before her time and in doing so leave one precious and powerful body part to her infant daughter, and that her infant daughter be given the choice to do the same, and so forth until a daughter in her line might choose not to. She offered half of her life in exchange. I could not believe how little she wanted.”

She had bested him. I could not stay silent any longer. “How do you believe I am involved in this deal made with my ancestors, King Raise?”

What I truly wished to know was how the first mother knew to find a prince.

How she knew to forge a deal to wither with an immortal monster king.

How she knew that one daughter would eventually refuse to wither?

She had forged a deal twelve hundred years ago that would eventually create a queen.

How?

Raise released one end of the rolled parchment. I could see no sign of his oil on the contract as it unraveled and unrolled, spilling across the channels of blood but never became soaked or weakened by that substance either.

The contract kept rolling, revealing its enormous, dooming length until bumping to a stop against the toes of my heeled shoes.

I didn’t need to see Raise’s smile to hear the triumph encased therein. “How glad I am that you asked.”

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