Page 65 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

I sifted back through my memories from the gate just now. Yes, there had been an unusual quiet and stench of suspense. “Who do they retaliate against?”

The princess smoothed her crisp suit as she rose, then adjusted her wide-brimmed fedora. “My husband’s part of the city. We have always respected one another’s intellect, Queen Perantiqua. You go to conquer my husband this night.”

I did feel sorry for her fear. I was but a queen in sorry love, too, and in lucid and cold moments such as this, I could feel extremely grateful that King See was strong enough not to love me back. What mess might monsterdom be in? “I do, Princess. You will come.”

“You will use me against him.”

“I had thought to, yes.”

“It will not work,” she cried, toppling into lovers’ tragedy. “You will not harm a monster. You did not harm King Change!”

I considered that. “I greatly enjoyed rendering King Change to a powerless state. It stroked my queenly ego.”

Her posture slackened. “But th-there is such goodness and kindness in you.”

“That too. Let us see what comes of things.”

“But that is no reassurance at all!”

Likely not.

I swept up to my conservatory with a cursory glance at King Change. His eyes were closed, and his princess tended to flowers close by, as if I would not guess she planned to free him if ever possible.

Princess Raise lamented behind me in hiccups and sobs as I jerked open the glass panel that had once filled me with so much fear. That was before I had stared at the end of the world with thirty-two mothers urging me to walk into a haze I might never return from. The stairway kingdom was nothing on that barren horror. “Kindly enter, Princess.”

She crossed her arms, probably glaring, and marched ahead. Princess Raise held her arms tight against her body and locked her legs straight, then executed a neat jump into thin air.

The princess plummeted into the stairway kingdom, and her fedora floated free to twist and twirl a slow descent behind her.

King Change rasped behind me, “Raise was a mere foot soldier.”

I glanced back. His eyes were open. His eyes were… yellowed. I focused and spotted faint black lines between the scars and mange on his face.Plague.A third.

“What meaning does that hold, sir?” I asked.

He laughed under his breath and said no more.

So helpful.I mimicked the princess and held my arms tight against my sides, then leaped into thin air.

Unlike my previous escape from this kingdom that had clawed at me to remain, everything about the kingdom welcomed my entry. I felt warmth and reassurance and hope. Because once a creature was in this kingdom, escape came with conditions. The trap was brilliant, really, now that I held no fear of the place.

The idea of being stuck here amused, in fact. My power was at least equal to Raise’s. My queendom had not found fullness, either, and obsession was on my side. No wise immortal would scoff at such ancient design.

As I fell, I could perceive no trace of the princess.

She had disappeared. Probably called her own stairway to cut out the fall.

“To warn her husband.” I groaned at her predictability.

I continued descending through the thousands of stairways, twisting and jumping as needed. Each stairway denoted a contract made with a human, past, present, and future. These stairways were the source of King Raise’s power, as beastliness was the source of Change’s, and regrets and ambitions and hopes were the source of King See’s.

Each stairway I landed upon dissolved, but I did not wish for kings to be weakened. This helped me in conquering, but not beyond.

The revelation came just in time, for as I took care not to land on the next staircase—instead using my power to push around it—I was struck in the stomach by a feeling from the staircase.

I held a tie to it. There was an importance.

The staircase was mine—that of my ancestors. Horror could still find me, then, for I had been seconds away from dissolving the staircase by stepping upon it, and where would my queendom and ancestral mothers be then?

---