Page 23 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

Princess Bring squelched to my side. “I will help you, Your Majesty. What else is a lady’s maid for?”

“Many wonderful things, and I would be grateful for your assistance.”

Princess Raise chuckled under her breath as she helped to stick me to the slime covering Princess Bring’s back. I got the sense that my taking pawns were also vastly amused by my helplessness, but thirteen mothers had recently humbled me, so I did not feel above being a queenly source of amusement this dawn.

I was blinked to my chambers this way, then deposited on my bed. Bring called her slime away, but an unpleasant tackiness remained. I could do naught about it.

Princess Bring removed my copper crown and set it on the small bedside dresser. I barely felt the crown these days and had forgotten it was on.

“What of obsession, Your Majesty?” she asked as Princess Raise entered. No pawn and no other princess lurked nearby.

I allowed my body to relax into the pillows and mattress. “My obsession is of kings, as I had assumed.”

“Of kings,” they both exclaimed.

One was fearful for me, and the other fearful of me—of what I might do to her king.

Princesses were in my power, and the champions of my queendom and obsession. I would not contain everything within this time. I explained, “Starlight will steal all they are to build her tower.”

“The verse,” Raise gasped. “What was five shall become six. We have witnessed the expansion of your queendom, and soon your power will rival that of a king.”

Yes, that is how she had interpreted the verse, and I had allowed her to believe this. Otherwise the princess would not have agreed to help me secure the bridal gifts and to aid me in reaching the fullness of my queendom.

“Soon my power will rival that of a king, you are correct,” I said. “But that is not all. Princess Raise, I do not seek to hurt your husband, not his kingdom, nor yourself, and indeed not any monster. That remains as true as it ever was.”

Her reply was wooden. “What are you saying?”

“You know what I say.”

The female was a near king among princesses. She had absorbed more than her ancient share of connection while playing king and covering the warping of their union. She used that connection now. “You will be the only queen.”

“Yes.”

“Kings will cease to exist.”

“Yes, in the way they do now. What they will become, I cannot yet connect.”

Princess Bring’s nerves arose in damp jiggles.

Raise sat heavily on the end of my bed. “You always knew this.”

“I suspected. A chant in a grave confirmed my suspicions.”

Princess Bring said, “But how will you bring five kings to heal, my queen? However can such power be netted? Your obsessions are so uniquely defined, and kings must know how ancients drive you. They must have gleaned what you have gleaned.”

I had turned prince to pawn, and princesses to servants of my queendom.

Kings—at least three of them—might have guessed they were next. I had relied on their assumption that I would merely grow equal in power.

Of them, perhaps only King See had guessed the truth from the start, well before I had, in fact.

Regardless, as soon as I gave rein to obsession and struck the first king, the other kings would know what I was about. “I must overcome kings, yet how to go about it? How and how and how?”

Raise’s face turned stony. I could not say how I knew this, really, other than there was a sudden stoniness to her always blank face.

Princess Bring gargled an exhale. “I am certain time shall reveal the ins and outs, my queen.”

“There is no time,” I answered, still staring at the ceiling as a chant swam in mind.

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