Page 86 of Of Brides Of Queens

I swung my legs off the table and my skirt whispered into place. I was bare foot and had been for some time. My corset had landed in the fire, but my ripped blouse was intact enough to cover my breasts for a dawn stroll to my chambers.

I wrapped myself in the blouse, then padded closer to King See. He had not moved from the archway, though his trousers were undone. I could see the splashes of his fulfillment on the copper floor. If only I could capture this image of him to hang on my personal walls, for I warmed all over again.

Yet if I did not stop our exchange now, then See would do his best to make me miss the picnic with King Bring.

I did not wish to tarnish what we had shared with agenda. I could not be sure that we would ever share such a thing again, not given the state of us.

I caressed my power down his tense back and nearly sighed at the monstrous strength in his shoulders. Would I live to touch him with my hands? Would I live to see his face?

Ancients could not be so ruthless as to deny me. “I have upheld my side of the detail, sir. You will uphold yours.”

A fresh tremor worked through him, and the king must be beyond words still for he did not reply.

“I must rest now.” I added, “Good morning to you.”

The air changed, and that was enough to warn me.

See’s voice was milder than I had ever heard, and mildness from this king should not be trusted. “Touch him, Perantiqua, and I cannot be sure of what I will do. I swear the direness of this to you as dusk becomes dawn.”

A warning.

One I believed.

One I would heed, but he did not need to know that. Because his warning disrupted the trust I had sensed between us after our night. He had taken a hammer to our new alignment with his warning. I had not intended to touch Bring at all, but now See had reminded me that what we shared last night was a transaction.

This was a monstrous game we played, a game that ancients started, but that we were left to figure out and finish.

Whatever other one thousand conflicts existed between us, there was some surety to—that I was a queen and he was a king. Sometimes I would need to act as a queen without fear of his madness. So I would not start this dawn. “As to that, King See, I can only say that you are king of your actions. And I am queen of mine.”

Chapter Eighteen

Consequences.

Consequences.

Islid off the wooden mount and hobbled to the base of King Bring’s pedestal kingdom. Mother’s steed could move each of its legs independently now, but its gait remained rigid and, well,wooden.

I had experienced the ride in every tender part of me.

“You would like us to remain here, my queen?” said Toil.

My bringing pawns had been ecstatic when I singled them out for a task. Not so much when I divulged the details. I would enter King Bring’s meadow alone for our midnight picnic. My pawns—his princes—would be close to intervene should Bring entertain any petty envies. The king would swallow intervention from his princes easier than intervention from others.

I withheld a grimace at the swollen feeling between my legs. “Yes, Toil. Remain here.”

I nodded at Sigil and Hex, then leaped rather high.

The pedestal cliffs of this kingdom were strong in my memory; the small ledges where a person might cling to lifeand attempt to gather their remaining strength for the next jump, along with the swimming and shrinking bird’s-eye view of Vitale’s housing blocks and the crops growing between them.

As a queen with a very capable body, the ascent was enjoyable but for my tenderness, and not at all as hope-draining as memory recalled.

I leaped to the very top, and the view of Bring’s meadow stole my breath away anew.

The woeful rawness of my body was interrupted by wonder of lush grass painted in fifty wondrous hues of green. Splashes of wildflowers lent spring warmth to the oasis of his kingdom, and rabbits dashed between cover. Deer who had paused at my arrival, dismissed me as a threat to return to their browsing meals.

A thatched house happily occupied the center of the meadow, wrapped by a porch that served as a drying space for any number of herbs and plants and harvest. The rocking chair that rocked itself occupied the far corner, just as I remembered.

The thing was, out of all the kingdoms, I wished myself here the most. In many ways, this was the kingdom closest to what I had yearned for as a human. I had lived with the cycle of the seasons, and the flow of harvest and preserving efforts—the use and need for medicinal herbs and tinctures and balms. This kingdom called to me as an example of how the world might be without inhospitable conditions and ever-present consideration of survival. This was how the world might have been when myth was not myth and romance was commonplace.

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