Page 99 of Of Brides Of Queens

Guilt pressed at the creature in me. Shame cloyed.

“She isperantiqua,” he hushed. “She is layers of dusk and stardust and midnight and immortal flame. The expression as you tore a garter from a princess, who was tamed by the deliciousness of you—she who would sooner love to hate you. The princess will agonize over the desire she displayed, the unrequited desire, no less. And me as pathetic as she, for I exist only to be crooned and claimed over as you did this garter. Though I am not your obsession, so if I cannot inspire such crooning naturally, then it occurs to me that I could control such croonings and claimings from you. Then I would not need to break your heart and you would not steal all I am to build your tower. Yes,” he whispered. “With a garter, I could do that to a queen.”

I could not look away from the crimson silk and black lace garter he dangled out of my reach.

I could not rip the bridal gift from him. Not physically. Not with power. “Madness claws at us both in this moment.Our obsessions clash. You could do all the things you have mentioned.”And more.

He already knew the truth of this.

“Remove your jacket,” See ordered.

I did so, letting the oversized jacket fall.

“Your pants.”

My fingers worked at the buckle, and soon I was left in a black leotard embroidered with silver that laced over my breasts, barely containing them.

“You are far smaller than I,” he hushed. “I could wrap my hands about your middle and my fingers would overlap again. Have you wondered how we might fit together?”

I could not speak for fear he would withhold the garter. Lust was never less present.

“Remove your shoes,” he ordered next.

Once I had done so, I was smaller again before him. He towered so. “Is your obsession satisfied in the way it needs?”

That was my only hope—that his obsession would demand he walk the path of heartbreak instead of this all-encompassing and easy control. I would laugh at wishing for heartbreak if desperate madness did not claw at me.

See curled the garter into a tight fist. “Does it? In this manner you could exist in my palace. Scantily clad and ready. I would be blind, but there is always a price for such things. The bridal gift of Princess Take could keep you in my power. You would be mine in complete utterness, though not in the way I had envisioned.”

I would.

I was a vulnerable queen indeed. I would ask him for the price of possessing the garter, but there was no price higher than the potential of power over me. I knew, because there was no price I could think of higher than the potential of power overhim.A heady and tantalizing prospect. “Consider that yourmadness will lessen when you give me the garter. You need only battle obsession to do that.”

Yet what I asked would demand everything of him, because if he failed to give me the garter, I would never stop trying to get it back. I was incapable of the very thing I asked of King See.

“I seek more from the moon than the sight of her,” he said in a ragged voice as if alone amongst cobwebs and shadows. “I seek her soft light in the night and anticipate her dusk appearance and basking company. Who could pull and push at me with such strength, ever-changing?” King See shook his head. “To keep her as a plaything tempts like nothing born, and yet the moon could be mine in entirety—in company and delight and thought—not as a mere plaything where authenticity of every act and word must be suspected. Naturally do I yearn for her to join me in all authentic ways, and so I resist this dawn.”

King See did not believe in love, I reminded myself. He sought to destroy my ideals of love too.

I would remind him, but doing so would bring a swift halt to his lover’s speech. I was deeply enamored by the difference he posed to Bring. Bring, who could not see anything past my power and body. Bring, who would have already trapped the moon for a plaything in possession of this garter.

See lifted his head, and his despair pressed me back three feet.

“Hide this garter, maiden,” he said hoarsely. “Hide your black pearls and lace gloves. Never tell me where they are kept. I cannot be trusted with knowledge of them.Hear me well, for I have resisted this dawn but might not any other. I am maddened, you see, and while you exist, I will be as this always. Do not reveal their whereabouts now, nor in ten thousand years. Swear it.”

I would say nearly anything to have the garter in my grasp. “I swear it.”

King See drifted the bridal gift to me. “Take it.”

Chest heaving, I watched its floating approach and licked my lips. “Thank you.”

When I did not move quickly enough, he roared, “Take it!”

I stumbled back, though he had turned to direct his rage the other way. His palace warped and swayed and buckled with his upset and fury. A scream lodged in my throat, but obsession lunged me forward to snatch the garter from the air.

“Leave.”

I gripped the third bridal gift and blinked for the door. But something like the feeling of a looming storm made me pause. There was a drawing in of the sky and everything in the world.

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