Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

Consequences.

Consequences.

I slid off the wooden mount and hobbled to the base of King Bring’s pedestal kingdom. Mother’s steed could move each of its legs independently now, but its gait remained rigid and, well, wooden .

I had experienced the ride in every tender part of me.

“You would like us to remain here, my queen?” said Toil.

My bringing pawns had been ecstatic when I singled them out for a task. Not so much when I divulged the details. I would enter King Bring’s meadow alone for our midnight picnic. My pawns—his princes—would be close to intervene should Bring entertain any petty envies. The king would swallow intervention from his princes easier than intervention from others.

I withheld a grimace at the swollen feeling between my legs. “Yes, Toil. Remain here.”

I nodded at Sigil and Hex, then leaped rather high.

The pedestal cliffs of this kingdom were strong in my memory; the small ledges where a person might cling to life and attempt to gather their remaining strength for the next jump, along with the swimming and shrinking bird’s-eye view of Vitale’s housing blocks and the crops growing between them.

As a queen with a very capable body, the ascent was enjoyable but for my tenderness, and not at all as hope-draining as memory recalled.

I leaped to the very top, and the view of Bring’s meadow stole my breath away anew.

The woeful rawness of my body was interrupted by wonder of lush grass painted in fifty wondrous hues of green. Splashes of wildflowers lent spring warmth to the oasis of his kingdom, and rabbits dashed between cover. Deer who had paused at my arrival, dismissed me as a threat to return to their browsing meals.

A thatched house happily occupied the center of the meadow, wrapped by a porch that served as a drying space for any number of herbs and plants and harvest. The rocking chair that rocked itself occupied the far corner, just as I remembered.

The thing was, out of all the kingdoms, I wished myself here the most. In many ways, this was the kingdom closest to what I had yearned for as a human. I had lived with the cycle of the seasons, and the flow of harvest and preserving efforts—the use and need for medicinal herbs and tinctures and balms. This kingdom called to me as an example of how the world might be without inhospitable conditions and ever-present consideration of survival. This was how the world might have been when myth was not myth and romance was commonplace.

This meadow made me think of my mother, and how my human time with her could have been otherwise. Instead, The End had trapped in the relentless cycle of survival, living always based on what we needed for food, water, shelter, and medicine. The only option to live was to obey the rules of walled cities because outside those walls existed nothing but sand and whipping sandstorm, deadly heat and icy midnights.

This meadow was a sample of potential joy.

Yes, I felt that pull and urge. I felt how a life here could be and how the world might be too.

King Bring should abandon his seductions and focus efforts on selling me to his saving purpose, but I would not inform him so because there was a danger of him succeeding.

“Queen Perantiqua.” His warm voice arose from the door of the thatched kingdom. “You arrive.”

As always, his crimson torso was bare while black leather clad his legs, and a black coat covered his shoulders and back, hanging to brush the ground. He was barefoot, and I would be too if fangs jutted out from my feet.

For the first time, I garnered that this king might have white hair, shaved very short against his head. “I arrive, King Bring. ’Tis midnight.”

The king descended the steps to walk amongst the grass and wildflowers, and I walked forward to meet him.

He stopped. “But are you injured?”

I swallowed a groan. He had noticed my limping stride. “I am well, sir.”

No lie. I had slept like the dead and awoken more relaxed in queendom than ever.

“You usually glide as a terrible fairy granting impossible wish or delivering wicked curse. Now you hobble more like a…”

I could only imagine what comparisons he had allowed to trail to nothing. “Wishes and curses are more your purpose, King Bring. Where shall we picnic?”

He swept a small bow. “You do not like my line of questions. Let us picnic.”

We maintained a distance of twenty feet between us as we strode through swaying grass. If Bring did not realize how close we could really be, that would be better. I should not like to order his own princes to attack him.

“Here, and does a midnight picnic in the bringing kingdom meet the approval of a queen?” As he gestured, the ends of his coat gaped, and I saw a flash of his second mouth.

The sight did not stir me as it had recently done, and See would have felt happy about that.

I looked at Bring’s picnic and did smile.

An enormous blanket stretched over a cushion of grass. Plump cushions were ready to be perched upon. Twinkling glasses and platters of small foods waited nestled in wildflowers. Moonlight streamed upon the midnight display as if in approval. “A beautiful arrangement, sir.”

“I thank you. Beauty herself inspired it, and I feared failing her.” He sat on the furthest cushion, then gestured to the very far corner. Twenty feet between us, and that was no bad thing.

I lowered myself onto the cushion and grimaced as my thighs pressed together with the act. A night of pleasurable transaction had left me tender indeed.

Valetise had dressed me in somewhat of a sack that bulged and folded over a narrow-corseted belt around my middle, and I was grateful that it did not squeeze at my raw body, but the thick fabric still whispered over my nipples, and I sucked in a pained breath as they did so now.

King Bring opened his mouth, and I waited for his questions on my wellness again. But quite suddenly, the king snapped his mouth shut.

He inhaled.

He grew very still.

I almost felt him shackle connections together as he considered the hobbling queen who would not admit to injury.

His thatched kingdom was shaking on its foundations. Drying herbs swung wildly. The rocking chair teetered precariously. Windows shattered.

I sat, ready to summon pawns.

“King Bring,” I said. “You invited me here to discuss alliance, did you not?”

He simmered. He seethed. Signs of these grated in his voice where I often struggled to detect rage in See.

Bring said, “You come to me covered in him.”

I had hoped Bring would not uncover things so. “You speak of me as if you owned me, sir. Might I remind you that I am my own monster and a queen.”

“You know how I feel, and still you came this way.”

“We are but two rulers, King Bring. You forget that King See also feels as he does. He became blinded to your future when we formed our picnic plans.”

Bring’s crimson torso contracted as his second mouth chomped over that tidbit. “His agenda is that I witness his mark on you. But you let him do this. You knew that I might notice his mark.” He straightened. “You wanted my jealousy. You wish me to act upon it.”

Ah. He had almost had the right of the matter, then shot out the other end. “What I think, King Bring, is that you were not honest in your letter to me. Your lust over me blinds you to alliance between us. You would bargain for me in body instead of dealing with me in mind.” I rose and was annoyed to have sat in the first place. “I go now, for I did not come to picnic with a king who does not consider all parts of me.”

Bring burst to his feet. “But I must apologize. I must, and I do so. I had formed ideas of this picnic that were rained upon when I smelled See on you and sensed the lack of lust in your chalice. Allow me to adjust my ideas now, Queen Perantiqua. I would go on with this picnic and discussion of alliance. Allow me this adjustment.”

I considered that. He would only adjust his ideas and go about his seduction a different way, but leaving this picnic in this annoyed manner did not serve me either. I had come here to wiggle princess intentions from one of his mouths.

I lowered to perch on the cushion again.

I perched in silence as King Bring returned to his. His posture flittered as his ideas flittered too. His second mouth chomped and growled and gnashed. How curious. After a time, I watched the animals bound, and then listened to the changes in his thatched house.

Calm arrived in the kingdom of bringing once more.

“I find myself thinking of what charms and curses you could inspire,” he mused. “I would have a swing made in my kitchen. You would sit there, and your dress would hang prettily to the floor. You would swing as I toiled in saving, and when the presence of you grew too much, I would kneel under that pretty dress and find you dripping with readiness, and I would drink it all.”

A queen could be very relieved that she had emptied a chalice.

I said, “You were allowed time to adjust your ideas, or do you waste my time this night?”

The king jerked, and I wondered if he had forgotten my presence beyond his swinging and drinking desires. “I have adjusted my ideas, Queen Perantiqua.”

Clearly, and not at all in the direction he had stated.

“I am here to discuss alliance,” I answered.

A nod. He gestured to the platters close to me.

I selected a small pastry and inspected it with my power before consuming the treat. Here was a poisoning king, after all.

“You are a saving queen,” the king said. “Though the battling actions of your pawns confused me at first, I believed it best to focus on the nature of your actions. You only saved during the battle with Raise’s fifth. You are a saving queen. This is your purpose.” He breathed the last sentence.

If only he understood that I knew little of purpose. I knew more of obsession. Whatever purpose I might find would have little to do with kings. “What does this mean to you?”

“We are destined, young queen. Ancient as you are, I mourn that you are not ancient enough to see as I do. You try my patience with your youthful way of connecting. I am driven to madness, and yet such is the strength of my certainty that the oldest of kings will join with the youngest of queens that I cling to stability of mind.”

I had not known that he was the eldest king. Perhaps he referred to the time brother kings spent as human, because in immortality, they were one and the same age. “You are right in thinking that I do not connect matters as you have, though I appreciate your determination in clinging to stability of mind. That is not always easy.”

Before his house could rattle too much, I added, “Perhaps you are right in thinking I am not ancient enough; however, I ask you now… Why must we only be destined in body to save the world? Why can we not go about this as friends?”

“ I will not be your friend.”

My eyes widened at his rattling, chomping rage, and my head was whipped aside by the strength. My breaths came fast, though I did not feel shimmer and squeeze.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” he said, fury tight in his tone still. “Talk of friendship inspires such ire.”

I kept my head turned, battling my own fury at his lack of control. I was a new queen, and any king that cared about me would care for me. King See had remembered to do so in the face of his world-shaking fulfillment, yet Bring had forgotten in simple fury.

Taking a page from See’s book, I said mildly, “You wish to go about saving together as destined in body. I do not make this connection, sir. I wish to go about saving as friends, but you do not make that connection. Might we meet in the middle? Not in body and not as friends, but as rulers?” I looked at him. “Saving is important to you above all else.”

He did not like what I had to say.

Rulers was a colder version of friends.

“I am attempting to adjust my ideas,” he eventually said. “Kings are not used to compromise. You are a queen, and I am blinded to the woman of you. She would own me.”

Bring tried to lure me in with the promise that I would control him. In fairness, he offered a powerful gift—a king at my disposal. But it would not be so. In any deal with him, over time perhaps, he would want me at his disposal. To inspire him. To battle for him. To add to his purpose.

The queen of me enticed him and stirred his thoughts of our powerful destiny, but King Bring otherwise viewed me as a princess. Perhaps See had caused me more heartbreak than anything since queendom, but he did at least recognize that queendom changed everything for us. Bring had not connected my difference nor the lack of precedence in what I was.

I said, “Your battle must be to unblind yourself to the woman of me, sir. That mindset is restricting our alliance possibilities, and it makes you speak as if we could be joined in more than body. I am not long a monster and a queen even less, but I know the dreams you speak cannot be. You have a princess, and there is no sense in wondering how we might have gone on if I had arrived before her.”

His second mouth closed its sharp teeth with a ringing slide. “Just because a thing has never been, does not mean it cannot be.”

“If you were right, then surely kings and princesses would have altered their unions before—the Raises to fix the warping of theirs. And would you not have severed your own union, too, if you do not mind me saying so?”

“I can only say that other kings do not hold the power of curse, young queen. They are not so powerful in their mindless drive to save. As for myself, the manner of my saving took more defined shape when you walked into the toothed beast’s yawn. You have inspired new thoughts and actions.”

He sought to bring about a curse strong enough to break his union with his princess. But would he achieve that without killing her?

I shook my head in a pretty and demure way. “You are an ancient king, and I cannot follow your connections. How could any man be powerful enough to make an impossible thing possible? You are a king, but not an ancient. Do not toy with me this way because I have been told there is but one king for me, and I will be in great turmoil if I am convinced otherwise. Sir, how could you hold two princesses in your arms?”

I could see the outline of his hardness. He made no effort to hide it, and such was the tight leather of his pants. My thoughts immediately raced to all I had not seen of See. I did not like that I could see less of See than other kings, but I imagined that was because See might hold more power over me than any other king.

Or was the most powerful of five kings.

Bring rose to his knees on the picnic blanket. The food and wine were forgotten, but this picnic was never about picnicking. “The answer is that I would hold only one princess.”

“Oh,” I said, making sure to deflate in voice and body. “Yes, that is what I had thought.”

“You misunderstand me, young queen. I would only hold you .”

I lifted a hand to my temple. “You speak in riddles so.”

There was a thud of silence, and I could feel his deliberation. Had I overplayed the role of pretty princess on a kitchen swing?

“My princess is in your queendom,” said King Bring. “Why is she there?”

“Because Princess Raise is there. I assumed you had granted her permission to visit.”

“I did not. How comes it to be that my princess did not return for daylight slumber?”

I tilted my head. “I did not realize she did so.”

“Yet you did not ask for her.”

My lips torsioned. “Did you wish me to ask of her, King Bring?”

He chuckled after a beat. “Perhaps not.”

“I would imagine that she stayed up until dawn speaking to Princess Raise. They were very excited to see one another. I left them to renew their acquaintance to attend queenly matters.”

I cleared my throat, remembering all the queenly matters I had attended.

King Bring was quiet for so lengthy a time. “I need a sign from you. I need minuscule encouragement. I feel a mad fool and must have a token to go on by before I confess the whole.”

“You are the only saving king. How could that man feel a mad fool? You see more than any other king about the potential of this world.”

He shook his head. “I tell myself this, too, and yet a young queen had made me doubt sanity. She warps the floor underfoot so that I never feel stable. I am more uncertain in recent months than in twelve hundred years prior and even in my paltry human years.”

“Sir, you remark that I am lacking in ancientness, yet you expect me to understand the riddles of kings. Your offer to hold me as your only princess is impossible, and so I cannot entertain the idea because it…” I made sure to keep my breaths shallow though each one dragged fabric across my nipples and reminded me of See.

King Bring leaned forward. “Finish your thought. Please!”

“I cannot finish the thought. I must go on believing this conversation is the game of a king who wants me for concubine and no more. In this world of monsters, a king might only have one princess. You wish me for my body, sir, you have been most clear about that. I cannot depend upon what you say.”

His second mouth purred, and his words were a spring breeze, there one moment and gone the next. “I could convince you.”

I turned my head aside to catch my breath as an uncertain maiden might.

The clink of glass drew my focus back.

King Bring held a stoppered vial. I had seen his kitchen and watched him create curse and charm, and so I knew what the vial held. The black, sparking liquid within did not suggest charm.

I eyed the vial. “Is it a gift then?”

He gripped the vial tight, then shoved it into an inner pocket of his long coat. “Not a gift for you, young queen. Never a gift for you.”

A curse indeed. I stared at the vial. “I do not follow.”

I followed all too well.

The king patted the front of his coat. “This curse has eluded me for many months, and then in despair, the recipe became available to me. This is how a king will hold a new princess. This is how a king will become strong in saving.”

Bring ate every curse and charm he made to grow his power.

He pressed his lips together, and I held my demure princess act in place.

“You wish that I would drink from this vial and new possibilities would open?” I asked. “I would not open myself to any king’s power, sir. How could I trust the contents of that vial would not harm me? And even then, where would Princess Bring go?”

I had not expected him to divulge more, and he did not. Even a king could hardly confess murderous intentions for his princess.

“You would leave that to me,” he answered. “You know of the indifference between my princess and me. This would be a charm for her, really.”

The twisting of his reason was monstrous. I could nearly commend him for how many turns and bends he had navigated to convince himself that killing Princess Bring was a lovely gift instead of cold death.

As it was, I could not err in the role of pretty doll on a swing that existed in readiness to be drunk from because this king had created a curse that might kill an immortal. He could as soon use it on me. “I came here to discuss alliance. I am unsettled by what you reveal, sir.”

“Midnight is for uncertainty.”

In that, we could agree.

A wincing queen, I stood. “I return to my queendom.”

“Your mind is heavy with my words.”

“It is. Not the least of which is your refusal to ally with me unless I join with you in body if not princessdom, though I am vastly confused on how that could ever be.”

King Bring rose to his full height, and I saw a monstrous, crimson body to fantasize over, and a second mouth to explore. This quaint life in a vibrant kingdom could lure me over centuries—as could the idea of him drinking under my dress. But while he might have created a curse to kill an immortal, there was no charm that existed to transform him into King See.

And so no sensual stirrings or mouth curiosities or quaint vibrancies mattered.

“I do not refuse you in alliance,” he murmured. “Yet that will never be all we are.”

Fright found me then because he believed this in fullness.

He had assumed a small victory, for I had not run screaming from here after the hints of his sinister plans. This midnight picnic would cost me in time, for the moon had witnessed my demure acts most certainly. She would deal out the dire consequences when it suited her.

I dipped in a shallow curtsey and could not hold back a grimace. I no longer wished to because such grimaces kept cold distance between me and the bringing King. “Good morning to you, sir.”

“Good morning to you, queen of magnificence.”

He patted the hidden pocket as he bid me goodbye.

Perhaps the moon would not wait to deal out her consequences. A king was about to learn what I truly thought of him, whether I liked it or not.

Princess Bring could not return to this kingdom.