Page 87 of Of Brides Of Queens

This meadow made me think of my mother, and how my human time with her could have been otherwise. Instead, The End had trapped in the relentless cycle of survival, living always based on what we needed for food, water, shelter, and medicine. The only option to live was to obey the rules of walledcities because outside those walls existed nothing but sand and whipping sandstorm, deadly heat and icy midnights.

This meadow was a sample of potential joy.

Yes, I felt that pull and urge. I felt how a life here could be and how the world might be too.

King Bring should abandon his seductions and focus efforts on selling me to his saving purpose, but I would not inform him so because there was a danger of him succeeding.

“Queen Perantiqua.” His warm voice arose from the door of the thatched kingdom. “You arrive.”

As always, his crimson torso was bare while black leather clad his legs, and a black coat covered his shoulders and back, hanging to brush the ground. He was barefoot, and I would be too if fangs jutted out from my feet.

For the first time, I garnered that this king might have white hair, shaved very short against his head. “I arrive, King Bring. ’Tis midnight.”

The king descended the steps to walk amongst the grass and wildflowers, and I walked forward to meet him.

He stopped. “But are you injured?”

I swallowed a groan. He had noticed my limping stride. “I am well, sir.”

No lie. I had slept like the dead and awoken more relaxed in queendom than ever.

“You usually glide as a terrible fairy granting impossible wish or delivering wicked curse. Now you hobble more like a…”

I could only imagine what comparisons he had allowed to trail to nothing. “Wishes and curses are more your purpose, King Bring. Where shall we picnic?”

He swept a small bow. “You do not like my line of questions. Let us picnic.”

We maintained a distance of twenty feet between us as we strode through swaying grass. If Bring did not realize how closewe could really be, that would be better. I should not like to order his own princes to attack him.

“Here, and does a midnight picnic in the bringing kingdom meet the approval of a queen?” As he gestured, the ends of his coat gaped, and I saw a flash of his second mouth.

The sight did not stir me as it had recently done, and See would have felt happy about that.

I looked at Bring’s picnic and did smile.

An enormous blanket stretched over a cushion of grass. Plump cushions were ready to be perched upon. Twinkling glasses and platters of small foods waited nestled in wildflowers. Moonlight streamed upon the midnight display as if in approval. “A beautiful arrangement, sir.”

“I thank you. Beauty herself inspired it, and I feared failing her.” He sat on the furthest cushion, then gestured to the very far corner. Twenty feet between us, and that was no bad thing.

I lowered myself onto the cushion and grimaced as my thighs pressed together with the act. A night of pleasurable transaction had left me tender indeed.

Valetise had dressed me in somewhat of a sack that bulged and folded over a narrow-corseted belt around my middle, and I was grateful that it did not squeeze at my raw body, but the thick fabric still whispered over my nipples, and I sucked in a pained breath as they did so now.

King Bring opened his mouth, and I waited for his questions on my wellness again. But quite suddenly, the king snapped his mouth shut.

He inhaled.

He grew very still.

I almost felt him shackle connections together as he considered the hobbling queen who would not admit to injury.

His thatched kingdom was shaking on its foundations. Drying herbs swung wildly. The rocking chair teetered precariously. Windows shattered.

I sat, ready to summon pawns.

“King Bring,” I said. “You invited me here to discuss alliance, did you not?”

He simmered. He seethed. Signs of these grated in his voice where I often struggled to detect rage in See.

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