Page 124 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

See chuckled darkly. “A brilliant mind does not equate to great leadership. Much better that you were a simple strategist in our human wars. The men never liked you. They did notloveyou. They followed you because you had the right uniform and the right title, nothing more.”

“You always did wish for my job, See.” He returned to hands and knees.

King See aimed a kick under his ribs, and the king rolled across cobblestones a way. I glanced between them, stepping closer but not intervening. This grudge ran ancient and cold in See, I could tell. I barely recognized his face.

“The mendidlove me,” said See. “My brother kings still do love and respect me. All monsters do, even a queen. But I was too smart to covet your job, Change. Not when I stood no chance at seizing it.”

King See crouched in front of his general from a time millennia ago. “But now I stand a chance.”

Change laughed, then gripped his ribs. “You want my job? Have it. A shackled king is a shackled king, and as she has removed all traces of skulls, she has shackled all kings too. You are just the same.”

“Your job?” King See lifted the other king. “No, not your job, brother.”

I frowned as King See threw his brother. “Go do what you do best.”

King Change disappeared through a hellebore grave. Pawns shouted and cried out their horror. I shrieked as every stitch in my body tightened at once, stretching at my patches until I thought they might tear.

My stitches did not loosen. My mothers were screaming a warning at me that another intruded in my deathly domain.

Such tightness, such warning, and yet my eyes dragged from the grave to King See. I was immobilized by the whirling of my many minds. They were trying to provide a logical answer for See’s action. A logical answer that did not point to betrayal.

For the first time since See’s arrival, I pulsed my power. The towering feeling of him was palpable. He was stronger than when I had left him in bed.Slumber.

Ancients had granted See more power and connection after our lovemaking.

Ancients were unsure of my success. Had the death of a princess, a stitch, and the mother it denoted removed me from the saving of monsters entirely?

Howstrong was he? For I was a queen who had recently absorbed some curse, and my full strength had not returned.

My knees shook under the sudden weight of crushing doom. “What was the other matter that kept you from coming when I was poisoned and betrayed?”

King See faced me. “I did not wish to come.”

I sucked in a breath. “I do not believe you. You seek to break my heart. The moment has come.” I stumbled back a step.

“You are weak from a few drops of deadly curse. Good. This will go well.” He inspected me as I stood staring.

I shook my head as if detached from my body in a nightmare. “You have not always plotted so. Ancients whispered this into you during slumber. This new ambition arises from new connection and power.”

“Maybe so.” King See lifted a shoulder. “Yet these next thoughts offered are not new. You possess so much potential, Perantiqua, both in power and connection, and yet you do not spend time with yourself to ever fulfil that potential. Since slumber, I can admit my true thoughts at last. Here is the summary: Queendom is wasted on you.”

I could not fully block the sting of his comment. I wished to believe he lied in the pursuit of my heartbreak, but the ring in his words… so resounding and sure. Yes, I felt some slapping sting. “I do not have time for your heartbreak tonight.”

My body was tired indeed, and my patches were pulled so close to ripping. Mothers needed me.

See chuckled again. So darkly. “Heartbreak. You accepted that lie so easily. I needed a cover for the sudden ambition that sparked in me when you rose to queendom. The instant you wore a crown was the instant ancients made me your adversary. I could not see the fullness of how I was meant to rise against you at first, and so I bargained for time. I had become a claiming king with an obsession to break your heart, I said to you, and howeasilyyou reasoned away my every action against you after that. How easily you accepted my lack of guidance in queendom. You hardly questioned my avoidance of offering any help. In the end, in the matter of conquering kings, you even seemed to interpret my lack of help as a compliment—as if my absence during conquering was my show of belief in your power and connection. That was when I realized the truth of you… Perantiqua, you are so ready to be convinced of heartbreak because you are unfinished and unrealized. There is a girl in you who sees the world with such naivety that you cannot face the magnitude of cold futures and bitter pasts. You cannot face the magnitude of what ancients need from you, and so you rarely look past the words and ideas offered because the deepest parts of you wish for an excuse to fail. The girl in you, and the woman, are terrified and trembling. You resist success in yourself, and in the possible fate that might be yours. All because you are broken by your past.”

Pain slashed through me. This monster was not King See. I could feel the difference. I did not know this monster.

Perhaps he had always carried a smaller version of these harsh thoughts of me, but slumber had altered him and drawn those small thoughts in larger proportions. He believed what he said—whether his words were the actual truth.

This changed everything between us.

Because this was notthe king who had confessed love to me. This was not the king who refused to love me so that we might transcend love together.

He was not that monster any longer.

So perhaps the words See utteredweretruth. Perhaps I had been fooled as to the obsessions of a “claiming” king. I had voiced my disappointments to other monsters when See did not guide me in early queendom. Ihadtaken his lack of offer to help conquer King Raise as a compliment. I had thought See held great confidence in my abilities.

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