Page 78 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

See smirked. “Shall I have you against the wall, Perantiqua?”

I arched a brow. My body felt his idea held merit. My mind said a chamber was best. Which would I listen to? I could ask Take to wait. My body ached painfully for See’s touch. So painfully.

“I will not wait while you go at each other against the wall,”snapped King Take.“Stomp all you like. I will be listened to.”

A waspish and petulant king indeed. I could relate to him on the petulance part. Perhaps I should wait for a chamber. Now that I had considered how perfect this interaction with See must go, I felt the wisdom of ensuring such perfection.

I peered across the courtyard and through my wall of bars. A small carriage sat beyond, driven by a minion I did not recognize. Princess Take sat beside the driver. She had led the carriage here, but then she was my marshal, and transportation of goods fell into her jurisdiction.

She climbed down and approached the gate. “I bring my husband to you… my queen.”

Goodness, of all the things she had swallowed, that had been largest of all.My queen.What did she want then? “Your husband is sick.”

She jerked. “H-how… yes. He is. He ails and grows weaker by the hour.”

“So you are here.”

“I can only think that you might save him.”

I believed that I could save kings. I believed that ancients sent the plague to issue me a deadline and to alert me to the dire need for me to conquer kings with haste. Once I had done so, then kings would be saved. “I can.”

Her lower lip wobbled. His sickness had undone her.

“But what of a king? King Take,” I called. “Do you hide in the carriage? What has a king to say of dropping to his knees before a queen?”

The carriage door was pushed open, and as King Take appeared, I did my best to conceal shock.

Black veined over visible skin, similar to how I had last seen King Bring.Worse.The king was hunched and hobbling. His boyishness had disappeared. Weary and haggard, he was a drained king and a dying king. The thick, black nails that had always curled under his feet and over his palms had snapped off at the tips, and what remained of them was a jagged and sorry sight. He wore the same outfit of black with the high collar of feathers, but tonight this seemed… an outfit. A costume—not quite him.

King Take was sick indeed. Sicker than I had anticipated.

Picket swung back the gate to admit the king.

Take hobbled across the courtyard. “A king says that sickness will never force his hand. A king says that he has already made up his mind.” He crossed his arms and pouted.

Princess Take hurried after her husband. “My king, we spoke of this?—”

He held up a hand. “I heard all you had to say at that time, my flesh. This is a matter between a queen and a king.” His annoyance faded, as did his slight pout. “A king who touched left hand to olden rock, and then awoke an age later as an immortal king who musttakelife forevermore. Over and over, draining the souls from human beings to leave them empty. Their happiness, their memories, their hopes and dreams, the knowledge of their childrens’ names. Their fears and pains and regrets. I drink them all and carry them thereafter, for once I take, I am doomed to keep. Their screams and horror and wide eyes press and squeeze at my mind each dusk and each dawn. My immortality has ever been a curse, and I have ever hated it, and I have ever hated myself so much so that Ibecamewhat I hated to bear this curse. I turn to ruin because I deserve to feel ruin. So I believe.”

Kings and monsters carried all kinds of hurts and burdens. I was discovering my purpose at last, but there did not seem any set way tohowI must grow my power other than chasing obsession. Some vice had appeared in the pursuit of my power, I granted, yet I had not done anything that I could not bear. King Take had taken lives for twelve hundred years. Ancients had forced him to, and him the most moral and just of soldiers in his human life.

“What you do is not who you are,” murmured King See from behind me.

King Take stomped his foot and shouted, “What you do is exactly who you are! Would that I had been a seeing king instead. Or a bringing king or a raising king. Even a changing king. Any of you might have worn the purpose of taking better than I.”

Did he feel towering delight when he stomped too?

“I agree,” I said, as the kings seemed likely to descend into argument. “I agree that what you do is who you are.”

King Take, already frail and sickly, appeared to crumble within. “You fathom.”

“I fathom that a king who did not care as much as you would not have respected everything he took. That king would not respect your purpose as you have respected it. You have despaired of taking, and that is why you were chosen. You resist taking and forge deals to only take those humans who might better deserve such a fate. What other king would have gone to such trouble?”

Certainly not a king set to ruin, nor a king who loved his princess more than anything else. Certainly not a seeing or bringing king, who might have refused to take until ancients used princes to break them.

I said with absolute certainty, “You were chosen by ancients because no other king could uphold your purpose.”

Princess Take’s magnificent eyes shone with her gratitude. “This is what I tell him, my queen.”

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