Page 23 of Of Brides Of Queens

“I will better tend to your needs,” he said hoarsely, then as if to himself, “She will make an addict of me.”

He wouldn’t be the only one.

I opened my eyes, then froze when I found myself on top of a glass panel. A shriek lodged in my throat, and I blinked away from the entrance to Raise’s kingdom.

Six feet away, I stood on shaking legs and stared at the glass panel in the middle of my conservatory. “What?—"

“I would not have let you fall,” he said. “Tell me, maiden. For how long have you possessed the ability to blink?”

I’d shown my hand in more ways than one. He’d witnessed my fright of Raise, and also my ability to blink. Of all the kings, I would have worried least about See knowing the truth. Before this dusk’s conversation.

Before…

A chill entered my heart as I stared at the glass panel. See had known I was fucking his power where a king, three princes, and even a princess might have seen. My tongue was dry, and I could not find the right words for what he had done. “You displayed me.”

“I did, yes.”

I did, yes.He had no trouble admitting the truth. “You showed me to Raise. Your ambition overran your senses.” I was more shocked by that than anything, and he had warned me clearly of the ambition. But King See had never been a creature of ambition, so I had not believed him.

Now I did.

I faced the mirror, sweeping my gaze over all that Raise might have seen. I twisted to see my back, then froze at the word written across the globes of my ass.

SEE

The series of pinches I’d felt. He’d jotted his claim. “And did you plan this from the start?”

“Close to it,” he answered.

And then I’d sat up on the glass panel to ride See’s power. I’d pressed that word against the entrance to Raise’s kingdom along with my most intimate parts.

The chill spread in me, and yet my thighs still pressed together from the remnants of what See had delivered. I felt a languid delight and a shocked numbness at the same time.

I had thought that our intimacy might provide us with a rock to cling to, but See had used our pleasure for his own end. I highly doubted that Raise had seen what just transpired, but that wasn’t the point. “How would you wish me to interpret what you have done?”

“Is it not clear?”

“You wish other kings to know what we do. There was to be no promise or concession or answer in our intimacy.”

“And there was none of those.”

My chest rose sharply. “Not in the sense of the words, but I do not feel we can be intimate again, and I will likely yearn for the mindlessness of your touch in not many nights. You have complicated this possibility with your mad agenda.”

“I have.” King See glanced out the window to his palace. “I have been surprised by my actions this evening too. I had wondered if I could control the spin in me, but this confirms that it controls me. Guilt grips my ankles for displaying you such, and yet there is a deep satisfaction of doing so that stops me feeling truly sorry for the act. Perantiqua, I am not as I was.”

On that we could agree. “What is left between us if not intimacy, sir? We cannot even agree on the topic of pleasure.”

“It appears not,” he mused. “Yet my ambition is unchanged. My madness reigns still. So there will be agreement to be had, unless that is not our way forward.”

One week as a queen had seen me pestered and annoyed and drowning, and yet I had always been sure of this king. I had woken each dusk with his calm presence and stability in my heart and mind. Perhaps we had been at an impasse, but there had existed a trust in our destiny.

That trust felt trodden upon. “See, you have done us no favors this night. If Take were here, he might smell the heartbreak in me.”

My words pulled him from the deepness of reflection, and where he had started to walk away, he snapped his head to look back. “Indeed…”

I narrowed my gaze. “Indeed what?”

He shook himself, saying, “Expect that I might do such things again in the future, maiden.”

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