Page 32 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

“And this is my value for King Change,” I murmured. “To be kept in a cage so that he need not sacrifice more of himself to blind See to his ruin.”

My instincts had warned that King Change had a hidden game. He had orchestrated the humans’ obsession with crafting terrible corn husk versions of me in a bid to tear at my self-esteem. He had commented strangely on how a little more ruin would have seen him succeed. And now I understood why. I had his reason—King Change believed he could end the world by attacking monsters instead of humans.

But I did not have his rhyme. For instance, if a little more ruin would have ensured his success in tearing down my self-esteem, then why did he not do it? “What are the limits of his ruin on monsters?”

She answered without help, “He is greatly weakened after doing so. For two nights and two days.”

Two nights and two days.If I had possessed fangs, they might have descended at the promise of a meal. “How does he pick and choose his targets?”

The princess trembled. “I cannot?—”

“Worry not, my power shall help you along.”

She blurted, “He watches the human matters of this city closely. He pays King Take for information on other monsters too.”

“What is the nature of his transactions with King Take?”

“My king gives him beastly humans totakefrom, so that the fanged king might pretend he is not wholly a monster.”

Hmm. King Change relied on King Take’s information, and King Take relied on Change’s beastly humans.

I could use that to my advantage. Now that I had the rhyme and reason of four kings, I could start to feel how they could be undone—how I could play on their dependance on each other.

“You will recite King Change’s ruining actions from the most recent to the oldest,” I told the princess, taking the armchair opposite the bed. “You will tell me all.”

Maybe in that time my shock at Change’s brilliance would lessen its hold on me. He was all the exemplary things his princess had said, and more.

No king had guessed at the layers of his plans.

Not even a queen.

“Most recently there was the matter of how he pushed ruin on King See during your shared intimacies in the conservatory of your queendom.”

I blinked. “You refer to the way See wrote upon my body and displayed me.”

“I do. Though my king never really knows how the ruin will manifest. He just set the intention of his ruin to come between the two of you.”

I blinked. “He was watching? How did he know King See would be there.”

She rolled her eyes, and I caught up. There were not many connections that passed me by these days, so I felt mildly ashamed not to have connected that King Change’s ruin had been the catalyst for King See’s sudden dusk visit in the name of ruin.

Goodness, that interaction with See, when he wrote upon my body, had nearly fractured our relationship entirely, as well as thrown King See into a violent spin. “Continue.”

“My king gifted the ignorant King Bring with a boost of power, which allowed Bring to craft a curse that would claim an immortal life.”

My heart thudded.

The princess continued, detailing acts of ruin upon unions, and acts of ruin upon kings. She spoke of the deepening divide between various monsters, from princes to princesses to kings, as though the orchestration of the divide were a priceless work of art.

And it was. A horrible, priceless, and terribly brilliant work of art. King Change was entirely to blame and congratulate for the sorry state of affairs between monsters. The divide was a work of centuries. A subtle and undetected ruin.

To add to his brilliance, Change’s sacrifices showed in every scar and piece of mange that covered him and, to a lesser extent, his princess. Yet no one had asked why Change’s appearance was altering so drastically. I, myself, had assumed that his appearance was a result of self-punishment.

Which was correct in a sense, but all punishment was toward a plan.

The princess fell into a chanting state as she recited her king’s ruin, and I could feel that this was in response to my queenly power over her.

There was no need for more threats, and I was largely speechless from what I had learned anyway.

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