Page 53 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

Later.

For his snarls were of a monster nearly conquered. Irresistible to a queen.

Just a little more.

I stood immediately before him. His drilling tactic grew weaker and weaker. Feeble, really. King Change needed to believe in my victory and in his failure. This king must believe he had done everything possible to win.

As weak as he was, all of my power would be required to bring him to both knees.

Ah.Both knees. There was the missing symmetry and the loose stitch.

I lashed a stitch from my hand at his second leg. King Change was nearly driven face-first into the ground. He rested on closed fists,twoknees embedded in dirt.

Stillness.

Obscene and eerie, stillness filled the forest and me. Trees straightened and stopped the underground writhing of their roots at their king’s distress. The air cleared of Change’s fury and fear. All power dissipated, except mine.

Except mine.

The trees showered leaves over me in welcome of their new queen. I did not understand tree and root and kingdom, yet, but they were mine. I shuddered with awareness of their intricate webbing and beastly human occupants. Not for long. Soon, beastly humans would reflect my queendom.

I dragged in the fullest breath of my dusk existence, and my jaw cracked with the magnitude. “’Tis done.”

The world shook. Lightning struck.

King Change’s arm rose, seemingly of its own accord. He unfurled his fist and flipped his left palm up. There was a wooden puppetry to his actions that informed me King Change was not in control of his movements.

I smiled. “The same hand you set to olden rock.”

“You are not what you believe,” he said woodenly. “Kings shall ensure your demise. I wish them failure against you, for I see that I have ruined and ruined in vain. The world will crumble under your lack of control. Your inexperience and lack of direction will ruin more than I ever could have.”

“You can be assured, sir, that if I choose to ruin, I shall certainly do it better than you ever could have. Now, you have something that I need.”

There was an underfoot rumble that defied anything I had felt in a kingdom or even my own queendom. King Change roared in pain, and nearest trees toppled and crashed to the forest floor. Their tangle of roots ripped from the dirt to form tangled walls on all sides around me and the kneeling king.

With a cracking split from root to canopy, the tallest and thickest tree that had remained upright—divided cleanly in two. The two sides whined and groaned, then fell apart to crash into the ground.

My ears rang from the collision, but I pushed the noise out of mind to focus on the split tree.

A gnarled and twisted stick no longer or larger than my forearm floated to us.

A stick, or so I first thought.

The stick floated to land on King Change’s palm. His left palm, of course. The turmoil and madness in me honed to a pinprick.

“Key,” I hissed, and the forest took up the word, bouncing it between tree trunks. If princesses remained to tame me, then I had no awareness of them.

A twisted, knotted, and gnarled key stole all parts of me.

I took the key without touching the king. I did not wish to betray the tremble of my stitched-on fingers. Such importance in this key.

“Mine.” I gave full throat and full sigh to the word. I could not do otherwise.“Mine.”The second uttering of the word was crooned and upset. Upset and crazed. The unhinged reverence inspired by this key had revealed the enormity of my doubts and fears of my future. Four kings remained unconquered. Obsession was unsatisfied.Unsafedestiny. Unsafe and uncertain. Only when four more kingly keys belonged to me would I feel satiated and sure again. But I had felt such uncertainty over bridal gifts, too, and when negotiating the return of snuffing shares.

I must trust in the unfolding of my fate.

I had conquered aking.A king, no less. Weak, he might be this midnight, but not so long ago, this king had tipped me into slumber with no more than his proximity. I was assaulted by the largeness of what I now was.

As if following my thoughts, Change hissed, “I should have attacked in fullness that night.”

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