Page 31 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

The princess screamed and thrashed her upper body. “What are you doing? Where is your queendom taking me?”

“Not my queendom,” I said. “My mother. And to where you will go, I cannot say. She has never swallowed a person into her walls forevermore in answer to my displeasure. Perhaps she will deposit you in stone for a century or two. Think how wild your haunting forest will become, princess.”

Horror struck the princess’s features. “But wild?”

Ah,here was the way to go about this.

“Wild,” I purred with relish. “Wild as the world reborn.Saved,in fact.”

Her breath quickened. “No. I will answer your question. I will answer!”

I crossed my arms. “Mother, what do you say?”

There was a whisper from the walls. A whisper, no less. “Mother? Are you talking now?”

The pictures on the walls rattled in response.

So the whispering was not her. Or she would have simply whispered again. The noise that had originated as hum was now whisper, and what might a whisper become in time? I had an inkling about what queendom noises may prove to be.

“You talk to her. You surely control her,” the princess shrieked.

I laughed. “Control my mother? Of course not. She is her own person, Princess, or have you not seen her grave in the courtyard? Start talking, and we shall see if Mother can be convinced to release you.”

The princess was undone. The promise of ruin had not lured her, though, nor even Mother trapping her in a stone prison, but a threat to her haunted forest had worked magnificently.

“My king is all the things I have said.” She hung her head. “He has dared to do what no other king considered.”

“You bore me, Princess. Speak plainly or be yawned away.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and muttered, “I am but a woeful creature filled with everything monstrous. I cannot resist the evilness that I am, and so I betray my king this night.”

Revolt rose in me. Woeful? Evil? How could she see herself thus?

Her exhale shook. “My king does not battle with humans; that is the answer to your question. He ensures to use them from time to time to play his part.”

Whatever could she mean? I had never seen King Change battle himself, but that was not unusual among kings. They only stepped from here to there with an occasional blur or stalking gait. “With what does he battle?”

“With himself.”

I had no time for riddles. “Mother, you might have her?—”

“No! I mean what I say! My king battles himself, and he…” No matter that her beloved haunted forest was under threat, the princess really did appear to be incapable of uttering the truth, married to ruin as she was.

A nudge was necessary after all. “Speak in fullness,” I thundered, pulsing my power forward at her.

The princess jerked straight, eyes widening as she shouted, “My king exacts his ruin onkings. Sometimes princess and pawn. This is what makes him a pioneer and risk-taker, for to ruin a king demands a toll on his very flesh.

I stilled in mind and body and released my power.

Princess Change sagged forward, still trapped in the floor.

I kept my tone neutral. “You say that he sacrifices his flesh so that he can deal out ruin on other monsters instead of humans.”

“Yes,” the princess whispered.

I considered that. “King See would glimpse it.”

“Not if a second sacrifice is made to blind him for the space of a blink while the ruin takes hold. King See’s power is not infallible.”

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