Page 40 of Of Brides Of Queens

A cauldron of bats

An excess of humans

“Wonder has found me,” I exclaimed from amid a mess of aged paper and swirling ink.

Dawn neared, and after hours of tormenting the landlady, I had felt in a proper centered state to tackle a contract made between my ancestor and King Raise.

Self-care was a wondrous thing.

Valetise set out my nightgown on the only part of the bed not covered in a mountain of unfurled contract. “I am happy for you, my queen.”

“Here is the first mother’s name,” I gasped.

I traced over the signature. “Her name was Cassandra.”

I stared at her writing on the bottom of the contract. “I feel wonderful connection.”

Stretching back, I touched the great stitches either side of my spine. “How I wish that I knew more of you, for I feel how dedicated and faltering you were.” Yet twelve hundred years had passed, and I did not dare to hope that any traces of her would remain.

“Will you dress for daylight slumber, my queen?” Valetise murmured.

She wished to retire. “Yes, very soon.”

“As you wish, and what would you like me to do with this doll?” the haberdashery monster inquired.

Drat. The vibrancy of a good haunt had burned the corn husk dolls from my mind.

Valetise held up the doll that I had tossed on a chaise across the room. “I can easily understand how humans might grow obsessed with you, but I must say that nothing could ever capture the essence of you.”

I smiled and was relieved to feel the smile was genuine. In my queendom and having shared a great fright with pawns, this doll did not cause the same doubt in me. “A king is behind it, so says King Bring.”

I rose to take the doll from her, and then pressed it against the wall. “Mother, would you keep this for me?”

She sucked the doll inside, and then promptly spat it out. A candle was rattled off the wall and fell upon the doll, setting it ablaze.

We watched it burn.

“I fathom that the doll is a force of ruin,” I said when embers remained. “Thank you, Mother. I must expect more ruin from that direction.”

Was it Take? Was it Raise? Was it Change? I had asked Bring to his face, and I believed his answer. No matter the state of affairs with See, I could not believe him capable of this.

The candle and ashes were sucked into the ground, and Mother pushed the candle back into its wall sconce.

“I must say good morning to my princely pawns before I retire,” I said. “You may leave the nightgown there. I will dress myself.”

Valetise curtsied, and I walked outside. All fifteen of my pawns had gathered in the courtyard, cast in threes and standing as far from each other as possible. A matter for concern because while they belonged to five kings, they belonged to one queen too.

“My pawns,” I said, the victim of a sudden thought. “Kindly tell me of your princesses. Huckery, Loup, and Unguis, you first.”

The werebeasts were already in their conventional daylight forms, so everyone could understand them when Loup answered, “Lady Queen, tell you what?”

“What is she like?”

Huckery narrowed his eyes, but Unguis was less concerned with my motivation.

He said, “Lady Queen, she is a haunted soul who serves her king’s purpose faithfully. She spends her woeful existence tending to his forest and yearning properly and numbly for the night when the world is ruined and she might end her disgraceful and despondent life.”

We would need to disagree on much of that, but I could appreciate that the princess worked hard to tend to Change’s forest. I had appreciated the eerie uniformity of the forest while trapped in the haunted kingdom for a time. Tending the forest must be a large undertaking, even for a monster. “Thank you. And what of Princess Raise?”

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