Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

The moon must witness boons

And wearing a crown

Not seeing them for the gifts they were.

H uckery, Loup, and Unguis prowled outside See’s portcullis, snapping at the barricade. They could sense the menace in the buckling and swaying of the palace I had fled.

I ignored the wooden steed to leap onto Huckery’s back.

My werebeast pawns blurred me from See’s buckling palace and buckling resolve.

“The seeing pawns will remain to contain him,” Loup barked from my left.

How could they contain their king when he had not drifted from his purpose?

Unguis answered my thought, “The power of the queen fills them.”

My power? Goodness. They had stood between me and their liege, but I could not discount that part of King See might have wished them to succeed in stopping his madness. I was not sure that other pawns would be so successful against their kings.

But that was not very important to contemplate, not when I could feel the garter shoved down the front of my leotard.

I had to hide the bridal gift, and the others. But where? The walls of my queendom no longer seemed safe enough. See could tear them apart to find what he wanted, and that might be the first place he would look.

“I am shaken,” I whispered.

Something wordless passed between the three werebeasts then, and they altered course, running with impossible speed until stopping amid the ruins of a collapsed apartment building.

Moss concealed rubble, but rubble concealed ragged breaths and tossing moans. Humans slept within the ruins, shackled in nightmare.

Huckery extended a foreleg, so I could easily dismount.

“You have led me to your king’s kingdom,” I remarked, looking at the horrible corn husk dolls of me with their heads torn out and needles shoved in every place of them.

“Yet you do not question our motive for bringing you here,” he retorted, and there was anger in his beastly voice.

I continued circling the clearing in the rubble. “I have already declared that I will not place you in conflict with your king. Not when your harm is the result. I value you too much for this.”

“You do not know us,” he snarled, teeth bared in a growl.

With another pawn, I might have submitted to queenly fury at his lack of decorum. I longed for a time when I could do so with my werebeasts without fear for their hearts and souls and minds. “I know you as any monster knows another, in that you are perfectly crafted for your dusk purpose. The three of you uniquely shine with the uncommon width of your emotional lens—for you have felt that happiness cannot be forged by others, but you know they might take it away. You have felt set apart from other monsters for an age, and in this we are joined, because twelve hundred years lapsed where most monsters existed but I did not. These are a few ways in which you are unique and wonderful to me.”

They reacted with growls and retreats and howls.

Huckery snickered low and staccato afterward. “You seek to forge our happiness despite knowing only we can do so. But we long for the trappings of convention. In monsterdom resides our wrongness. Your words rub at our wounds instead of healing them, Queen. You will not convince us of our wonder, nor of saving. We believe in ruin, ours included.”

I had seen that they did not always believe in ruin. Of all my pawns, my werebeasts had displayed the strongest sense of right and wrong. Unlike the others, whenever these pawns chose to save, they did so in full knowledge of working against their liege. My other pawns did not need to work so hard to help me.

I would never stop convincing my werebeasts that monsterdom made them exquisite. Yet since holding a garter, quite suddenly I was a more ancient queen who saw that the warmth of my words and actions were—as Huckery had said—rubbing at their wounds. While I viewed my actions less as rubbing than scraping away infection so the wound might scar over, they were understandably in pain from my choice.

Something colder was in order. A good thing, then, that I had a garter this dawn.

Ice entered my voice. “There is the matter of the three of you abandoning me in battle to answer your liege’s call. To lead his sixth against me.”

Unguis, Loup, and Huckery sat in a row facing me. Confused, yes, but they hung on my words where they had not until now. They wondered if punishment and consequence came next, and the possibility of this held comfort for them. These were responses that they knew and found solace in, for the acts reinforced their warped beliefs of their unworthiness.

“We have earned your great ire,” Unguis whined, lowering to a bow.

Their submission churned my stomach. “I had thought you abandoning me on the battlefield would not bother me. I will never stand between you and your liege, but there must also be a consequence for your choices to forsake me.”

“We hate to forsake you,” Loup whispered. “We are pathetic creatures.”

Huckery’s intense focus kept me from wrinkling my nose.

I looked at him. “Each time you choose to help your liege instead of me, you will need to make payment to your queen.”

“A tithe,” mused Huckery. “I am listening.”

A tithe, yes. “Uncomfortable choices come with uncomfortable prices, so whatever drives you from my side to help King Change will also tie you to me more soundly.”

Loup panted with the need for punishment. I was grateful indeed for the new ancient chill in me.

Huckery curled back lip from fang. “What is the price for abandoning a queen in a battle to save her queendom from a king?”

I smiled. “The three of you will slumber in my queendom each day henceforth.”

The yellowed eyeballs of the werebeasts widened. Unguis covered his face with manged paws.

“Our liege will not allow it,” Loup hushed.

I lifted a shoulder. “He cannot stop it.”

“He will prevent us leaving his company,” said Huckery. “Upholding our side of this bargain would prove tricky indeed. We surely would not always succeed.” His eyes glimmered with anticipation at the prospect of failing, yet his open reply was a weakening in him that I rejoiced to see. I had never managed to find an entry point that he believed.

“There is also a payment you must make for the privilege of choice between queen and king,” I told them.

They were nervous. They were eager. Such conventional self-hatred.

Screams rose behind me as humans were ripped from their nightmares by terror of their beastly qualities. Such was the power of King Change with his subjects.

I would not linger in this kingdom, for I could feel an uncomfortable press in my mind the longer I remained.

“In payment for this ongoing choice, you are required to protect yourself from your liege in all matters of the queen,” I declared.

Huckery was as astounded as the others, and I smirked within. I had them.

I explained, “My will fills you with the power to protect yourself against kings. My seeing pawns did so against their liege, did they not? If King Change seeks to punish you for slumbering in my queendom, you are required to protect yourself.”

Huckery spluttered, “We cannot?—”

“ There will be no punishment in my name ,” I thundered. “Do not cross me in this matter. This applies to the issue of slumbering in my queendom and to all future issues involving me and your king. You will protect yourself from him. On and on and forever.”

Minutes passed.

Dawn was well and truly here.

Three werebeasts disappeared as humans stumbled from the ruins, and three likenesses of gods stood where beast had been. Ancients had carved them to obscene perfection.

Maybe that was how I appeared now, too—a goddess without stitch nor patch. Except I did not usually feel such discomfort in my mind, like a headache steadily worsening.

I must quit this kingdom. Change’s power was working on me.

Huckery whispered, “We would choose his punishment over this, my queen. We understand and agree with his actions.”

And that was an ache in my heart that warmth would not heal. So cold it must be. “This is the payment I demand. None of you need to agree or understand my actions to enforce them. You are my valued and worthy pawns, but mere pawns to a queen. Even as princes, you do not exist to understand your liege, and as my pawns, you are required to do less.”

This struck a chord with them, and I could not say how the coldness of this transaction sat with me . I was forcing them to protect themselves.

“We return to my queendom for slumber,” I said. “There, I have three hellebore badges for you that I have intended to present you with since the battle with King Raise. You will wear these as a token of the deal we have struck.”

The nearest humans startled at my voice that must have appeared to come from thin air. Even if I appeared a goddess to them in daylight, they could not appreciate it.

One croaked, “ 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 grimaced at the poem. It would not do for King Change to hear that. Goodness, but my mind was quite painful. I had to leave this kingdom.

“Steal who she is,” roared a human.

The shout was taken up, and the humans scanned wildly for me. Fire was lit, and the husk doll versions of me were tossed in to stoke the flame.

Steal who she is!

King Change had been busy with his whispers indeed.

I walked ahead of my god-like pawns, and they fell into step behind me—my vulnerable werepawns. I would see them less vulnerable in all ways. But I must first make myself less vulnerable by hiding the bridal gifts from See.

I stumbled toward my queendom, fingers pressed to my temple. The pain in my head was crushing, and the simple act of walking grew harder by the second. The pain preventing me from blurring and blinking toward my queendom even, though the urge to hide a garter should have made me do both.

I simply could not, and as I stumbled on, my mind began to squeeze and shimmer in a way it had not done for some time. I gasped at the pressing of my brain against skull, in awe of Change’s attack on me. “Unguis, have we left your king’s territory?”

A low growl. “Yes, a while ago.”

So Change was not causing this pain. The agony was due to a garter. Possessing a third bridal gift must have come with a large leap in ancientness—too much for the confines of me. This was usually the point of forced slumber, but slumber had not found me. Too late to see slumber as the gift it had been.

I staggered, and Loup swung me into his arms.

“What ails you, my queen?” Unguis asked, a panicked edge to his voice.

“I am more ancient suddenly,” I whispered so as not to shake my senses. “All thoughts and memories must be studied through this new ancient lens, but this is happening with every thought and memory at once. This is beyond my limits.”

My head lolled as the rapid whirling of the warping heightened, but no slumber came, and how could it when there were princesses to save and attack.

Obsession must continue.

I must hide the garter.

My warping mind pushed outward against the confines of my skull, somewhat like an explosion, and I groaned low. My vision blurred.

I had not felt such squeezings and shimmerings in months. Could I relent to slumber, perhaps? But for how long would I do so? One month, one year, or one thousand years?

“Hurry,” Huckery growled.

They sped me to my queendom. And Loup’s smooth run triggered rhythmic agony despite its smoothness.

“Take me to Mother’s grave,” I murmured. Or did I? There was a blackness in sight and feeling that made me question whether things were real and happening.

Save your mind.

Such shoutings and bangings in my head, and I could understand that soon insanity would claim me.

I could no longer feel the slight sway of Loup’s run. There was a roughness against the backs of my legs and under my head.

“You are by the grave, my queen. You are here,” Loup blurted. “What would you have us do?”

And here they were committing an act of saving. They were not nearly as believing of ruin as they expected.

“What would you have us do?” he urged again.

Do?

I was meant to do something, yes. There was something very crucial to do.

To… hide, and yet insanity was a more pressing matter. The jumble of it beckoned me, and I could feel a peace about the sensation that allured. I had come this far without much insanity, though, and all I could think was that if I submitted to that peace, King See would never know that I had seen his face. I had seen it in its monstrous and exquisite fury. There would come a night where I might love to stare at him for a long while.

Though he did not like love, and he would immediately guess the truth if I stared so.

What was I meant to do? I could not recall through the distant shouts surrounding me.

Hellebores rustled and stroked my cheek.

“Mother,” I said on a weary exhale.

Such shoutings and bangings . In me and around me.

Another stroke of a hellebore carved the tiniest path in my reason.

With trembling fingers, I reached into my leotard. There was an object of silk and lace there.

I gripped the garter tightly.

And I rolled.

I rolled toward black hellebores because my new ancientness had just studied a memory that had never meant much to me. In the memory, King See whispered that hellebores were the cure of ancient insanity.

I was ancient and growing more insane by the second.

So I rolled toward black hellebores and into Mother’s grave.

Of course, she promptly yawned me away.