Page 37 of Of Brides Of Queens

The war in him was evident by the tension in his shoulders. “It would not do for us to enter friendship territory, no. I will be your lover. That is what I have sworn. Your lover and more. Your friend, never.”

And more… He wished me for more than a concubine?

That was not possible. He had a princess.

I did not like the contemplativeness in his tone. Though, thanks to his princess, I already knew this king’s reasoning. Bring was worried that growing friendship between his princess and I would drive me from him out of a feeling of friendly duty to her.

I could reassure him—genuinely—that the more time I spent with his princess, the more I became convinced they were at an end. I would not confess that my wariness of entering lovership with him grew in tandem with this as I viewed the sorry state of esteem of his princess.

And I did not wish kings to be aware that I fathomed their reasonings.

“You may help me dismount,” I announced, for that had been his game in mentioning the visit all along.

Deliver exchanged a dark look with his brother pawns, but stepped away.

A slither of power wrapped around my waist, taking no liberties with my stockings or garters on the way. I was nevertheless reminded of Bring’s desire to feast upon me, and I did wonder how immortality might work on me again because the thought stirred me. My body might eventually feel lonely without the warmth of intimacy without transaction. What I could do to myself did not hold the same unpredictability and spontaneity of shared pleasure either.

King Bring lifted me from the wooden steed, then set me between rows of sowed seed. My shoes crunched upon the dried corn husks left there from the recent harvest, but I thought more of the way his touch lingered before releasing me.

King Bring moved to the edge of the street so that we could walk alongside one another.

“You would give humans quite a fright if they happened upon you,” I remarked. As it was, I had held my power at the ready to race to the shadows should any have happened upon me and my pawns.

He glanced at me. “Do you forget that humans cannot see us? Not without making themselves very insane. Their minds protect them by erasing kings, and assumedly a queen. Princes in daylight, they might manage, though not enough to look aprince directly in the eye. That is why humans are to be cared for, because they are weak and ill-equipped at much.”

I was reminded of how I had once struggled to look See’s princes in the eye. Bring’s explanation made perfect sense. The first part anyway. “I have not much to say on the weakness of humans, but if there is one thing I would change about them, it would be their tendency for convention.”

“Convention. Yes, this is detestable.”

I glanced at him. “Pitiful, I rather think. A sorrowful outcome. How they trap themselves in it, when they could be free. A pity indeed.” My thoughts turned to King Change, who suffered from the same poison.

“You are gracious and caring in ancientness, young Queen.”

I dipped my head.

Bring stopped then, and I walked on a few steps before doing the same.

“But look at what I find this dusk,” he whispered and stooped down. He held out the corn husk, and my first urge was to smile, for a child had bunched the husk and fastened twine here and there to make a doll.

I said, “I used to make these as a child.”

“As did I many centuries ago. Peer closer, Queen.”

I did so, and noticed the unusual patterns of the twine. The child who had made this doll had dyed some parts of the husk in different colors. These clues connected quickly in my mind. “A child has made a doll in my likeness.”

Bring stroked the doll. “They have, and no wonder, for you are wondrous, and human children feel such things the most.”

He put the doll in his pocket, and I could only imagine what his intentions were for it, but I said nothing as we walked on. Mostly because now that he had pointed out one of the corn husk dolls, I could see they wereeverywhere.The recent harvest hadleft a mess of husks, but the dolls jutted out and lay abandoned as far as I could see.

There was something about that—the abandonment—that struck at me. Though someone had taken care to make them, they had then discarded their art where anyone might tread on it. And the dolls themselves… did I look such a way? The dyes blotched in a way that was not magnificent. The stitches of twine caused bulges and trenches in the husks, a lumpiness I had never fathomed of my body.

Is this how children knew me? And how did they have this image of me when humans could not see me? “How came there to be dolls of me?”

I had quite forgotten he was there when King Bring answered, “The tampering of a king, young queen. Always the tampering of a king, though is this act to save or ruin you? We are only seeing the first of the tampering, and the nature of this will become clearer soon.”

I glanced at him. “You did not do this, then?”

“Not I, young queen. I regret that I did not think to glorify you in art form.”

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