Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

A mad monster

Might convince itself

Of almost anything.

I had not visited my own dining hall yet, so I turned a full circle after walking through one of the grand, gem-studded archways. The entire middle of the first floor where my chambers used to be had been scraped out to make space for the enormous hall. A fire crackled and flames licked the fireplace on the far wall. The ceilings were low.

A heavy wooden table stretched before the fire with room for all my friends and all my enemies.

And an immortal king sat at the table. He sat at the end placing, in the seat a lover might occupy. Or the monster joined to me in union.

His arrogance knew no bounds, and I desired him more for seeing it. I took the seat opposite him, leaving a large and empty expanse of table between us.

“King See,” I greeted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Your magnificence and brilliance, as always. They draw me to you, and so I submit to powerlessness after a brief struggle to resist.”

Lover’s words from a king who did not believe in love.

“As for why I am truly here, I cannot ever say,” he said. “Does desire, agenda, guilt, or fury move me to your queendom? What I feel for you is rarely simple.”

On that we could agree. Many feelings conflicted in me, too, and what we shared—whatever that was—had always bliss and bitterness.

“You have two princesses in your queendom,” he stated.

“Perhaps you come to spy on me, sir.”

“I became blind to them earlier.”

Ink stole across my cheeks. “Of course.”

“I enjoy your blush more for its humble origins. We undo each other with ease.”

When he looked at me like this across the table with the flame flickering behind him, breathing became difficult. “I find this to be true. Two princesses are here tonight, you are right. They came because they wanted to.”

“As many immortals have come to you. Most of us came to you during the battle against King Raise.”

“Curiosity has such an effect.”

He conceded this with a nod. “I arrived in haste when struck with blindness to Raise’s fifth. I watched as you defended your queendom.”

I rested my hands on the table. “You were content to watch.”

“Content.” He laughed under his breath. “I could not say what that might feel like. I was not content while wishing to carry you across rubble. Nor while wishing to obliterate those who dared come for your queendom. I wanted to lay you on ember and soot and shove into you like an animal. The sight of you inspired this. Did I feel content? Not once. Not even when you won.”

I blinked through the fever his words had inspired. That was the difference between Bring and See. Bring might have inspired a fantasy, but See flushed me with fever. “Not even when I won. Because your ambition to claim me reared its head. You hoped battle might weaken me too.”

He tilted his head. “Yes. I did.”

“I fathomed, and so we are to remain in a cold place where intimacy comes at the mercy of your obsession and madness, and so there will be no intimacy tonight.”

“In that matter, I have recently felt less mad.”

“I am glad for you, sir. How recently?”

“Last night.” The word held a slight purr.

Indeed.

King See leaned forward, and I listened to the creak of his chair in the silence where only flames crackled. “Tell me, Perantiqua. When did this dining hall appear?”

Yes, this was where my thoughts had arrived. The last time he became less mad, he had assumed a meeting with Princess Take was behind it. Now his lessening madness seemed more aligned to my growing queendom. Last night I had secured lace gloves. Last night my power and queendom had grown.

“When, Perantiqua?” he breathed.

I arched a brow. “Last night.”

He rested his hands on the table to mimic mine. “And so the path becomes clearer where my madness fades as her power grows.”

Apparently, and for the sake of his madness, I was glad. But other questions remained.

“The humans beyond your walls recite a poem as they clutch corn husk dolls,” he murmured. “Have you heard it?”

I was careful not to react. “Poem? I cannot say that I have.”

Humor filled his menacing voice, for he could tell I lied. “ She that inspires,

She they desire,

Should only shimmer

Like a star

Without its power,

Lest starlight steals

All they are,

To build her tower. ”

I adopted an expression of faint interest. “I like the rhythm of this verse. Humans are peculiar things.”

“I desire you. You inspire everything in me from fear to rage to hope to joy to ecstasy. Will you steal all I am to build your tower, maiden?” He rose from his seat and walked alongside the table. “Part of me hopes so. There is a monstrous thing that yearns to be stripped down to a state I have not before experienced. To have you do it to me.”

Cold intrigue filled me. I might like to do that to him too.

He stalked closer. Slowly and straight-backed. Powerfully and surely.

King See saw a great deal too much of my queendom.

As he walked to me, I held still when retreat may have been wiser. But he walked to me, and I did not retreat, and so we drew closer than ever before.

I looked up at King See and saw the definite hint of darkness over his jaw. I looked up at him from an arm’s length away, and my chest rose in shallow breaths. His exhales shook.

An arm’s length.

In all of monsterdom, I never expected this to happen. The confusion and hope were catastrophic.

Did I yearn and wish and hope? Absolutely. But to expect such mercies of ancients was a fool’s game. Even if mercy came, we were grossly out of alignment.

“Sir,” I breathed. But what else could I say? “When my queendom was not between us, this might have inspired fantasies of many possibilities. I am overjoyed for our nearness still, yet there is a bitterness to it that sours any happiness to something darker.”

“This is well,” he answered.

See enjoyed the hardening of my heart.

“I close on my prey as a hunter might,” See uttered. He was affected by our nearness. Greatly so. “Yet I have no control of my prey or the capture of her. I just understand as a hunter might that when my hands wrap around her, she will be mine.”

I shivered. “You will not love me, See, and I will not share emptiness with you. You are less mad tonight, and yet your ambition and obsession remain the same.”

He nodded. “They do. Have you considered the meaning of the connection between my madness and your queendom, maiden?”

I had not. “You mean that they are tied together at all?”

“Yes. Just that. If your power had never grown, I would have remained as mad as in the beginning.”

That warranted reflection. “There is something there.”

“There is. Therein lays the answer of what we will be to one another. I was destined to remain mad if you did not expand your queendom. What does it mean that I am more myself, and yet filled with new obsession, as you settle in queenliness?”

I could not say. Not yet. There was a dire importance to his ancient questions that told me they must be answered eventually. “King See, tell me true, do you remain a claiming king?”

His fingers twitched like he would like nothing more than to close the distance between us. An arm’s length was a victory, a bitter victory. Bliss and bitterness always.

“I do,” See replied.

I sighed, heaviness in mind. “Your pursuit of my heartbreak remains.”

“It does.”

“Did you feel the Raises’ heartbreak during the battle, sir?” I looked to where his eyes might be, and he must glimpse the challenge there. When he dipped his head, I said, “How could you want to do that to me?”

King See turned his head to watch the fire. It was not a flinch, per se, but I had felt fidgety in shame and guilt recently enough to sense the emotions in another.

I held my breath, then released it. “If you feel such guilt over breaking my heart, then why do you do it?”

“Why do you do the things that cause you shame and guilt?” he asked, glancing back.

For a moment, I was wide-eyed thinking that he had somehow seen me thieve and connive in the matter of bridal gifts. But he had not: That was shame and guilt making me fidgety again. The answer? “Because they feel so right that I cannot deny them. When I do such things, I feel it part of my path.”

The quiet between us buzzed. My answer had floated from my lips, and I got the sense that King See was entranced by my admission of vice.

His voice lowered. “And so I feel when I break your heart.”

There was such rightness and obsession when I held the bridal gifts in my hands. If breaking See’s heart inspired that feeling, could I say that I would resist or doubt that it must happen? “Yet I am the one who is being broken,” I eventually answered. “So what remains?”

He gazed at the fire again. “What remains is trust in that we do not understand. My madness is linked to your queendom. I am driven to break your heart. And so we are destined, and then we might choose to believe in that or not.”

“You would have me believe there is a good reason for what you do?”

“I would have you believe that we are ignorant in the matter, and so I would have you continue down this shrouded path with me for a time to see what might arise.”

“To fight for our destiny in other words,” I whispered.

See released a breath. “Just so. I know what I ask of you, Perantiqua.”

I watched him. His body mostly, though I could not help staring at his face, too, as if that may reveal his features. He asked heartbreak of me. More of it, as much as I could not protect myself from. “All this because you do not believe in love.”

He could see every part of my face, and I should be happy with this nearness. I should be happy to feel his breath on my face and to see the smaller details of his tunic—the cross stitches and lidless eye buttons. In the same breath, I wished to never notice any of these things again. I wished to be free of the hold this king had on me.

I understood the feeling of his obsession.

I just wished it was not so.

“Once I believed in love, but not for a long time. Obsession has only reinforced my beliefs on that front. I will harden your heart until you believe in love no more,” he said.

A crack in my heart at the words. King Take would have smelled the fresh heartbreak. “This path could lead to our demise and nothing more.”

“I think not. If we had done nothing, then I would still be as mad, and your queendom would be as it was. Those must be signs to walk in the other direction.” King See growled slightly. “If you had seen what I had, then you would know that love will ruin us more surely than anything else.”

I stared at him, cheeks and body flushed. I wished to storm out or fury at him or cry. I could not choose which.

“Yet the sight of your turmoil is unwelcome also,” he murmured. “You spoke of the Raises’ heartbreak, but you witnessed love between a king and princess, did you not? What did you see?”

“I saw love.”

“ You saw weakness .” He circled me and his whisper circled me too. “You will not admit it. You cling to love still. But you will not always.”

“Just because love weakens one king, does not mean it would weaken a king and queen. You cannot say how love between us would be.”

“I cannot, but I will avoid the mistakes of other kings. Why else was I given the power to see? Change’s union has no identity beyond ruin. Bring’s has no identity beyond saving. Raise tried his best but did worst of all by submitting to love. Take has done best of all but has not won by submitting only to infatuation and nothing more.”

I licked my lips. “More than love does not exist. We will not end up like others.”

“So they all assumed,” he snarled. “I will not leave it to chance, Perantiqua. Hate me for it, but we will never love. I have waited too long for you to give way to a path that does not lead us to immortal fulfillment, and it appears ancients agree with me.”

“A mad monster might convince himself of almost anything.”

See stroked his power down my cheek. “I hope for a dusk where you feel as I do. The sight of your distress pains me, even as it is necessary.”

I turned my cheek, and his power stroked the side of my neck next, then whispered across the thick stitch at the base of my neck. I bit back my gasp.

“I see what has been, new queen,” he said hoarsely. “I see what is, and I also see what will be. Sometimes what is and what will be happen close to one another, too close for me to intervene. Other times, when letters are received, and letters are replied to, there is opportunity. I grew blinded to King Bring’s movements around midnight tomorrow.” Menace curled around me.

I tipped my chin higher. “There are things I must do as queen.”

“What is your intention tomorrow? Speak it.”

“Will you write your name on my body if I do not?”

“Or worse, Perantiqua. Or worse. Believe that I am less mad, and I am relieved to have more control of my obsession, but that control is not endless.”

I believed him. I had felt how madness in obsession could claim a monster. Yet I felt bitter in our destiny and part of me wished to drive him wild… but whatever acts he was driven to would not be those of love but of claiming. The thought deflated the petulant mistress in me. I would try to empathize with his madness itself. “I do not intend to submit to physical desires with King Bring. I go to discuss alliance.”

“I thank you for the clarity despite our lack of alignment. Bring will try to bargain for the use of your body.”

“Then he is no different from you, sir!” I surged to my feet. “That is what you do right now.”

The air changed.

See’s rage. “I want more than your body. I want more than your love . I want your immortality. Never lessen my thoughts to those of Bring, not when I walk in madness for you.”

He walked in madness for himself, and I was weary of this disagreement of love. “I do not plan to partake in Bring’s seductions tomorrow night, sir. Is that all you wished to hear? I would return to my guests if so.”

“Yes, that is what I wished to hear.”

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “Goodnight.”

I turned on my heel.

“We are not done this evening.”

I did not stop at his words. We were done. And I was ever a bitter queen because I had hoped to be convinced to daylight activities all night long.

He said, “We must help each other in this, Perantiqua, or there will be nothing left.”

I did stop then, not deigning to speak.

King See walked closer. Slowly. “I had come tonight for a simple reason. To ask if you would try again for intimacy with me. You plan to visit a king, and to do so when your body burns with need. I have a strong urge to do violence by King Bring, but I could be satisfied by satiating you in completeness so that Bring senses you are covered in me. In short, Perantiqua, this is an occasion where intimacy between us might not come with claiming surprises. I would like to see how my madness could be controlled.”

“Mights and maybes, King See. You are saying that if I do not writhe with you, you will war against King Bring.”

He answered, “I expect there would be some act of claiming too. I am learning of madness, as I have said. You might see it that way, or you might see that I am attempting to navigate an unexpected madness and an ancient situation in a way that will not destroy your heart.”

“Just break it.” There was so much in my head and heart when it came to King See. He had taken the time to know himself better and had shared what he could with me. I felt a great weariness that was despair of our situation. I wished to fight for our destiny, and did feel some hope over the connections we had figured out, and yet how could any good come of heart break? Should I stop this madness before I went up in flames?

I struggled to find the words. “I hardly know the way forward, and yet I sense authenticity in your words. You seek a way through this ancient murkiness. This turn in our destiny was as much a shock for you as I, and perhaps a greater adjustment for a king who has not much changed in twelve hundred years at all. I can see that we both traded blows in the newness of madness and my queendom. But sir, my heart and body are linked. You would be unwise to sever one from the other, as that is exactly what keeps me distant from Bring’s seductions.” I took a breath, feeling the lurching in my stomach. “I cannot entertain intimacies between us as we used to enjoy. I sense that something colder is all we can manage for now.”

“You speak of transactions.”

Ink flushed in my cheeks as I faced him. “I do. You seek to learn of your madness this night by engaging in daylight activities all night long. You speak that the alternative is war with Bring. These are your problems, not mine. How will you make it worth my while?”

“You wish me to pay you for the boon of pleasuring you,” he said, and amusement warmed his menace.

I raked my gaze from his embroidered boots to belted waist to clinging black silk shirt. He was towering, larger than his princes. Chalky white. I desired him like no other. Now that pleasure was within reach, I could feel the quickening and tightening of my body. “You have connected the whole.”

He laughed under his breath. “You are worthy enough to demand this, of course. Here is what I propose. You have two princesses in your queendom, so I would assume that you might have need of two more princesses.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You would assume, would you?”

“Yes, my Perantiqua. Considering that you once collected fifteen pawns. How should I put this… your obsessions are uniquely defined.”

He had guessed and seen too much, and how could I be surprised when See had always seen too much of me. “What do you propose?”

“Allow me to pleasure you for the night, and I will arrange a meeting with Princess Take in my palace.”

I hardly knew what to feel. I did not like that he could summon her and that she would come. To be in the same room with her and him at the same time… I detested the idea, and I relished it too.

I relished the potential of triumph over her.

I also needed a meeting with Princess Take, and she was the most ancient of princesses and therefore most powerful and likely to harm me. If King See was there, I would have more protection. “I accept your proposal.”

“I am glad, for you have mostly rejected them in the past.”

A grin startled from me. I had not expected him to make light of my refusals to become his princess. “I would like you to answer one question also.”

“The question?”

“What did King Take give his princess at their union?”

How I wished to see his face. When he answered, I could tell that a wolfish, snapping smirk might be present.

My obsession was uniquely defined, as was his, and I was trying to resist madness just the same. We were surely doomed in destiny.

“That is an answer I am willing to give. I accept your terms. Do you accept mine?”

King See wished to pleasure me all night. The transactional nature of our pleasure granted my feelings the permission they needed to relent. No matter that he might lose control of his madness tonight, I had still won a meeting with Princess Take and an answer I desired. I felt victorious, and I had not felt victorious with this king in some time. “I accept.”

The air changed, and rage was not the cause. We caused it together with our tension and anticipation and relief.

Perhaps some rage too.

Some betrayal. Guilt. Shame. Hope. A ragged exhale left me at the sheer overwhelm of the emotional release.

King See hooked his power in the front of my corset and there was a small pause before hooks and laces went flying as the corset was ripped away.

I clutched the blouse beneath. “I would have your answer now, sir.”

“What?” he demanded, already half-crazed.

“What did King Take give his princess at their union?” My voice was muffled as his power entered my mouth and hooked in my cheek.

He snarled, “A garter.”

A garter.

Perfect.

My blouse was ripped away, too, but my belted skirt was left. His power, like hands, then lifted the skirt high around my hips to display me.

“Dressed like a peasant,” he mused.

“Taken like a peasant?” I asked breathlessly.

He spun me around, and I went willingly. Desperately. And so hopefully it broke my heart a little more.

This night had taken a delicious turn.