Page 118 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

The princess rolled her top blob in a nod. “Yes, my king. For as long as I started to shed the cloak. But I am satiated now. I suppose any future lust must be dealt with, but for now?—”

“You will not satiate yourself with pawns,” the king snapped—or tried to in his weakness.

The princess stilled, finally seeming to realize that her king was not impervious to her lust-reducing affairs. “You. My king, can it be that you are jealous?”

“I am reddened and greened by it,” he snarled, coughing after. “You aremyprincess.”

“Sir,” she gasped. “You are jealous over me. ’Tis a great gift.”

His chest heaved, and his yellowed eyes were furious as they set on her. If not for shackles and plague, the king would be ravishing her certainly.

What a happy ending.

“A great gift,” she said sadly. “A great goodbye.”

“There need not be goodbyes between us, my princess,” Bring said. “Perhaps we are done with those.”

The princess took a damp breath. “Some good came of your attempt to kill me. We must have needed the shaking. We had drifted so. How foolish we were.”

“Iwas,” he answered. “You have never been a fool. I will never stop trying to make amends for my attempts to murder you.”

Princess Bring stretched out some of her blob to pat his cheek. “King Bring, you are forgiven already. You must not take any of this upon yourself. We were victims of ruin, after all.”

Goodness,she was far more forgiving than I would have been in her slime. That was her beauty, truly, and yet there was such leaping in her regard. The princess had moved from spending lust with pawns to feeling confused and then to complete forgiveness in the space of a week. What has spurred the change?

There was something.

“What ruin do you speak of, my princess?” Bring whispered so pitifully.

“Shackling has not altered your state,” the princess was saying, apparently not having heard his question. “I had guessed that shackles were not the answer, but I had hoped. Our queen does so many miraculous things.”

She glanced back to me. “You will save monsterdom. You savedme.” Princess Bring glanced at the other princesses. “What friendships have been enjoyed.”

Then, I knew.

I did not knowhowshe intended to do it. But I knewwhatthe princess would do.

“Princess Bring!” I strode forward.

A muffled shattering of glass stopped me. All monsters peered around for the source, while I only stared at the princess. I stared at her in horror as words spilled from her.

“You ail from the plague because you sampled a curse never consumed,” she blurted to her king. “Our queen did not wish to believe the truth, and so she created other solutions, but the matter was ever as simple as first thought. The curse had to be consumed by me, so that kings and their princes might be saved. Do not blame yourself for creating such a curse, my king. King Change set ruin upon us long ago, and if you think back as I did, then you shall see how our union then frayed. What we first shared was true. Who knows what delights we might have shared across centuries if not for the cruelty of a king. If only we could go back to that time again.”

King Bring stared at the princess in horror. “What are you saying, my princess? Ruin from Change? How could this be so?” He blanched. “Where is the curse? Tell me where the curse is!”

She pushed the vial out from her body, and the glass clinked against the stones, but did not shatter.

No!“That cannot be,” I blurted. “My mother hid it within my queendom.”

King Change started to laugh again, and while he would find the death of a princess very amusing, his timing implied something different.

“Princess Change was never looking for her bouquet,” I said, my mouth dry.

“If not a queen’s death, then a princess’s death will do nicely,” King Change sneered, then returned to his laughter.

The door opened to admit his princess.

I blurred to her and pushed her to the wall, my hand gripping her throat. “Where did you find it?”

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