Page 4 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

The ink was blotchy and jagged, as if this king had both cried and tried to murder the paper while penning his message.

Traitorous Queen

You are served with your last chance. What we share might never be as it could have.

You might have saved beside me, as my swinging princess, but you have turned to ruin in the matter of us.

There is still somewhat to salvage if you can cease in foolishness.

Come to my kingdom a prisoness. Come to me in shackles. Exist this way, a maiden of my whims and pleasures, until I am convinced of your regrets and sorrows.

Only in this way, might we go forth in peace.

Otherwise… otherwise…

Words and Actions Mighty,

King Bring

Goodness, from concubine to prisoness.A maiden of my whims and pleasures.In shackles, no less. Gone was his fantasies that I might swing in his kitchen in a pretty dress. How this king bounced around, but he was a large problem, one of my largest. He fervently believed, even more than King Change, that I must be extinguished or controlled and used. Things with King Bring were sour enough to make one pucker.

“Is there anything else to report?” I scanned the pawns.

My seeing pawns appeared contemplative, but they did not present a letter. Which did irk, as the only kingly letter I wished for was from their liege.

My stairway pawns had nothing to report as their king and princess had just been yawned away by Mother.

But my werebeasts were too silent for my liking.

I tilted my head. “There was an assassination attempt from King Change last night.”

Unguis and Loup whined, hanging their heads to the ground. Huckery returned my stare, and that was a feat in itself, for I was an ancient queen, and he was but a pawn.

“But you knew this.” My voice had gained somewhat of a depth and menace. I felt no true ire, really, or my voice would be rather different.

“We knew,” Huckery answered. While no other pawns could understand the werebeasts in their true forms, they must have gauged Huckery’s answered from his tone.

Toil gasped soggily.

Defiance.And yet not all pawnly matters were simple. “You did not seek to warn me of impending doom.”

“A monster who has a gateman need not worry about assassins” was Huckery’s answer.

I considered that.

My werebeasts agreed with their liege’s ideals of ruin. King Change upheld the beliefs of convention—where a monster was indeed a monster and an evil and wicked thing. King Change would like nothing more than to drill into the world and fill the hole with explosives to rid the world of monsters at the cost of all living creatures, monsters included.

He had carved that ruining ideal into his princes, and as my pawns, they still clung to the teachings drummed into their beings.

Yet Huckery had not warned me because I required no warning, being in possession of a gateman. Such defiant, dismissive utterings from other pawns might have filled me with a small fury, but emotional and turmoiled complexities must be given space in my werebeasts.

“I do have a gateman,” I answered.

“What is the price of our silence?” he demanded.

And I heard the yearning in his voice that could only revolt a person who loved themselves. This pawn yearned for punishment. He had been taught to expect hurt as a natural, routine event. He felt some relief in maltreatment because abuse made his outsides feel like his insides. There was a balancing sense in that state that he chased, along with his brother werebeasts. While they were the fastest of all my pawns, they would never catch what they did not realize that they hunted.Inner peace.

Only through changing the alignment of their insides could I alter their yearnings for punishment.

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