Page 38 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

“I am intrigued by your offer, King See,” I said at last. “But that is not what I seek from you. These lessons are to be in war, not in management of queendom. While I appreciate what you say about the crucial relationship between management of my sixth and victory in war, I must consider that we only have three lessons and also that my instincts in managing my queendom come naturally.”

King See had become occupied with the cleavage I had exposed. He said low, “You can always pay for more.”

I walked to him. “The transactional possibilities of our relationship are done, sir. We are rather more than a transaction. You do not need to render us to such coldness out of fear of love.”

“I fear love and I ridicule it. We are not rendered to nothing by transaction, wearea transaction. A series of them. We exist from one to the next, and this is how we must always be. Will we remain together and strong through the next transaction by utilizing the right tools? If so, then we might earn the right to navigate our next transaction and on and on and forevermore. If we are wise, cold, and strong.”

I detested his ability to give warmth to cold feelings. I did not want to usetoolsto navigatetransactionswith King See. I wanted us to depend on each other undoubtedly—to love one another through eons and ages or to the end of the world. “You speak with an ancient air to cover the utter foolishness of your ideas.”

King See hummed, and I could detect amusement in the sudden brightness of his milky gaze. “You hope they are foolish ideas, Perantiqua. You also know that they are not. Soon you will grow more ancient than us all, and you will see all I do, and more.”

I sighed. “That sounds lonely.”

“Yes,” said the king who had seen all for twelve hundred years. “So, my darkness, do not hurry time along to get there sooner.”

I should not, or I might run straight back to a conventional, human life out of sheer terror. As if that were an option. “Speak to me of how you go about war, See. Talk to me of your small habits that tally up to win you victory. That shall form the basis of this first lesson in war.”

“I see much,” he corrected. “I do not see what a queen does—or I am left to guess why she ventures outside the walls of Vitale, for instance. Did you find anything at the olden rock?” His voice weaved from linen to silk. “Or do you require five sets of keys.”

He laughed at my silence after. “Soon you will be more ancient than I, maiden, so do not begrudge me these last toying moments.”

“They come at the expense of closed buckles, sir,” I shot back.

King See sobered. “Then I shall desist.”

Yet there was a teasing tone in him. Still, King See saw less than he knew, what with the sacrifices of King Change to blind him.

I strode to the mantel above the fireplace and rested my hand upon it.

King See walked up behind me and lingered close, his chest nearly against my back. The fronts of his legs almost touched the backs of mine. “The tutorage you ask for is more personal in nature than simple tutorage in war, Queen.”

He hovered his hands over my skin, moving them over my stomach and sides without actually touching me. I could feel the charge in the sliver of air he left, a tension and a buzz in my body wherever he moved his hands. Not a heat, just a soul-robbing intensity.

King See whispered in my ear, “Am I the only king left whose war you cannot fathom, Perantiqua?”

My jaw tightened. “You are.”

He chuckled darkly. “I do not have a princess to interrogate, and you did not agree to be mine when you might have, so you cannot witness my war either.”

“Will you gloat?”

“I will not. I will thank you because you were wise, cold, and strong when I was none of those things. My foolishness might have seen us restricted to far less than we were destined for.”

I exhaled. “Sometimes I yearn to have made a different choice. A simpler existence.”But you still would not have loved me.

“That is because you are wise,” said See, and then, “So you are to conquer kings, I fathom.”

I sucked in a breath as he hovered his hand over the side of my throat. I arched my neck sideways to grant him access.

“You will be queen of us all.” He spoke the words in wonder. In acceptance. See had suspected the truth long ago, though perhaps not exactly like this. He had viewed me as the missing piece, as a monster designed to be his princess to finally shift the fate of the world one way or another.

I had been what he suspected. That, and more.

So here was the question. I had intended to trick rhyme and reason from him as I had with princesses, and how did I ever believe that would work? I would only learn his rhyme and reason if he chose to give me such a thing.

I asked him plainly, “Do you believe in what I am created for?”

I listened to his unsteady breaths. I sensed the tremble in the charge between his hand and my throat. “I do. And I fear in the next breath that you will shatter everything I am.”

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