Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

A mad misunderstanding,

no more

I took care to avoid the glass panel in the conservatory floor. More than ever, I should avoid a trip to Raise’s stairway kingdom. “King Bring, what is the meaning of this subterfuge?”

“You understand my exact meaning, glorious Perantiqua.”

He did not purr my name like another king, that was what I understood. “It is Queen Perantiqua to you, sir.”

Goodness, but he was handsome with that crimson skin and stark white hair, shaved so close. His soft mouth, such a dreadful contrast to his snapping stomach, curved in a sensual smirk. “My princess is gone, and nothing remains between us.”

I curled my shaking hands to fists. He had left her shriveled body on the chaise in the dining hall to speak such words to me not five minutes after her departure. “Your princess deserved more in the death than for you to abandon her body before burial.”

“We might have drifted in body and mind,” he replied. “But my first princess always understood my reverence of saving. She would expect me to drive forward in purpose. She will feel no abandonment in death. We have time to converse.”

Actually, we did not. Not much anyway. I had a king and princess to pursue. “We shall never know what Princess Bring might think about you poisoning her. You have killed an immortal tonight, King Bring. Tell me how that saves.”

There was a flicker before his face firmed, but the flicker informed me that he had worked hard to deny any ruin in this. “Saving is in the summation, Perantiqua. Killing her did not save, but killing her to join with you will. Finally the scales will tip in my favor.”

I tilted my head. “But you seem very sure of your success. If I say no, then you are left weaker than other kings with the power of a princess to boost you. The scales would tip against you.”

I could no longer hear the Changes’ footsteps. They were at least five blocks away. My, but I was grateful for the hellebore behind my ear, or I would have rushed after them already.

“Do you think I would let that happen?” he said, and his tone was dark. I had rarely heard him use it.

“I do not.”

“Good, and I do not feel weaker for her passing. There has never been a king with a dead princess, so perhaps we were mistaken on that front.”

I corrected him, “Murdered princess. There has never been a king who murdered his princess.”

His crimson forehead wrinkled with a frown. “I had hoped you might rejoice at her death. She has stood between us.”

“I could not rejoice over the murder or death of any monster. Raise was correct in her assessment. What you have done is a vile act.”

His black, long coat parted as he clasped his hands. King Bring walked closer. “Other monsters believe that you committed this act. You grow outnumbered, young queen. Take and Change have joined against you, and Raise will soon return to the alliance with them.”

“You do not believe in ruin, King Bring, but you hint at allying with other kings to ruin me.”

“I think of the summation, you recall.”

That was a quaint way of alluding to his denial . “You have framed me for the murder of your princess. You threaten to join with other kings against me. To what end? What is your proposition?”

“My proposition is a proposal on union,” replied the king. “Agree to be my princess and save alongside me. Agree this night, and things will go easy. Disagree this night, and I will gather a tribunal of kings against you to decide the matter. In the meantime, I will batter my fifth against you night and day.”

Sixth.

This conversation was taking too long. I had to follow the Changes. “So I agree tonight, tomorrow, or after a tribunal. But if I do not agree to princessdom now, then you will attack my queendom.”

He faced me. “Attack is a strong word, Perantiqua. I would have your answer.”

“Yes,” I said, glancing out of the West window. How far away were they now? “I?—”

The glass panel beneath his feet opened very suddenly, and with a shout of surprise, King Bring disappeared from sight.

I covered my mouth. “ Mother. ”

My queendom shook, and I had to join them—my mother and Cassandra—in shocked laughter. I had rather felt like doing that too.

In all seriousness, I had a bouquet to retrieve. I ripped the hellebore from behind my ear and tossed it to thyme.

“Thank you,” I whispered, then erupted into a blurring blink as madness claimed me.

How freeing to travel this way, with speed and to my full ability.

Picket’s wave was barely noticed with my monstrous leap off the balustrade and over my wall of bars. I bounded and blinked and blurred out of my queendom, heading west. I could not sense them at all, and perhaps I should slow to better ensure my safety against King Change.

Yet I could not do that because the greater danger was that the princess would reach the beastly kingdom first.

Such savagery filled me. Such thirst. Such obsession.

I had three bridal gifts, and the fourth was closer with each blinking blur. I would rip it from her. I would clutch the bouquet to my chest.

I would cherish the flowers always, along with the power they granted me. I would water them with my tears, if need be.

My monstrous hearing was very excellent, and I had become attuned to the voice of Princess Raise. She was ahead and speaking to another.

My ancient mind snapped to betrayal, so savage and violent were my thoughts. But then I bounded closer and could hear somewhat of her conversation.

“Just thinking about it,” she was saying. “We used to enjoy the occasional scare.”

The princess replied in a monotone, as if speaking from a trance, “That was long ago, dear Raise. There is little ruin in giving frights, I have learned. I must center my efforts on larger targets. Numbness and despondency are very effective.”

“Every little bit of ruin counts,” Raise said cheerfully. “Who is to say you cannot scare in numbness?”

“I say so, and I must return to tend my haunted forest now.”

“B-but cannot we talk of past scares a time?” blurted Princess Raise.

There was a pause. “Why?”

“I am so lonely after being locked away.”

“Loneliness is a source of ruin. I will not seek to lessen it. Good evening, Princess Raise.”

Their conversation had swelled in volume as I covered the last few blocks between us. Princess Raise had caught up to Princess Change just one block from the haunted forest kingdom and also delayed the ruining princess. I would thank her later, especially as the king of ruin had gone off ahead.

But right now?

The two princesses came into view, and I could not guess at the sight of me, because when they noticed my blurring and blinking approach, both of them screamed and scrambled back.

My stitches were tight as drawn bowstrings. My hands clawed. My teeth felt snarling—my lips pulled back in a bared snap.

Princess Raise was nothing to me in that moment.

And Princess Change was not numb. She shrieked in fear, “Murderer!”

The princess tried to run.

Quite simply, I flung a stitch after the fleeing monster. The stitch had been part of me, and there was looseness in my torso where two patches were no longer joined after flinging the stitch away. The thrown thread looped around the princess’s feet and she crashed to the dirt.

She rolled, but in a blinking blur, I had a hand around her throat. The thread unraveled and returned to stitch my torso together again.

I did not crush her throat as I pinned her to the dirt ground. “Give it to me.”

My voice whined and grated.

She gurgled, and the skin of her face between the scars and mange deepened purple. Her yellowed eyes bulged. “W?—”

My breath was harsh in my ears. A constant growl rose with each inhale though I was unaware of making it. Blood rushed in me. Thirst of power.

Yet through that madness came a beautiful, exquisite rustle. The rustle of a dried bridal bouquet.

“Your flowers,” I demanded. And the strength of my feeling shook the very world.

Confusion lit her gaze. “But my flowers.”

“Your flowers,” hushed Princess Raise from behind me.

I maintained my grip around Princess Change’s throat as I patted her garden apron with the other hand. Princess Raise dropped to her knees on the other side.

“Sorry, Change. Nothing personal,” she said hastily. “Here they?—”

“ Don’t touch them,” I snarled.

Princess Raise was flung away by the force of my fury, and I might feel sorry for such violence later. But for now, a rustling filled my ears, delicate and warm.

The sweetest sound of death.

I released Princess Change in a daze to obey the hammering wonder of my heart that told me to touch trembling fingertips to vibrant dusk. “What flowers are these?”

“Black strawflowers and roses.”

Her numbness suggested that she had accepted the ruin of this situation.

I licked my lips. “What do they mean?”

“Strawflowers speak of immortality,” she answered without feeling. “Black roses signify the ruin of my king and the dishonor of monsterdom.”

I could thank the strawflowers for the transcendent rustle. The roses for the aroma, even dried and ancient as they were.

“I will take them now,” I hushed. Princess Change remained limp under my grip. Princess Raise did not return to help and watched us from a crouched position.

But then a roar shook the world, much as my mad obsession had just done.

The roar was familiar and gave me pause. Through my mad obsession, I felt something else, and that should not be an easy feat. “Who is that?”

“’Tis King See,” called Princess Raise. “He is in a grand fury.”

I had left him at my queendom. Perhaps I had forgotten him in my haste, but I could not fathom that my absence might have put him in such a shattering fury.

His fury was rarely raised by anyone other than me, however.

I reached into Princess Change’s gardening apron and eased free her bridal bouquet. My stitched-on fingers wrapped around the stems, and my insides warped and shook and quaked.

I sighed and groaned, and the towering apartment buildings around us were dragged toward me until the sound trailed off. I was adhered to the ground, and the sheer magnitude of world itself flowed in and out of me. The third bridal gift had prepared me for such an ancient experience, and this time, I could feel the ancient beast in me waiting to strike.

I had some time—a very little time—to get to my mother’s grave.

There I would hide my fourth bridal gift.

There I must tumble through black hellebores to cure the ancient insanity that would come soon.

Power tremored in the wings of my mind in readiness of blasting my skull apart from the inside out.

Princess Raise remained crouched. Her face conveyed that she was suddenly unsure of the gamble she had taken on me.

She had seen the real monster of me. Her doubts were too little and too late.

“Thank you, Princess Change,” I said, standing. “I look forward to meeting you under less violent and thieving and conniving circumstances.”

She remained still. “This is why you invited us to a royal dinner affair.”

I considered that. “Yes. One reason. Good evening.”

Princess Raise fell into step behind me as I strode to the heart of Vitale and to my queendom. A desperate panic to reach Mother’s grave had taken up residence in me. I almost preferred mad savagery to this. I broke into a run. “Thank you for delaying her.”

“We made a deal.”

I glanced at her. “And still you did not need to delay her. I hope that does not come between you.”

She lifted a shoulder, faceless as ever. “Princesses are rather good at forgiveness. Grudges are the things of kings, and perhaps a queen. I do not know on that score.”

I did not care to speak of grudges. “I must move faster now. Panic fills me.”

“I will follow.”

Her words were left in my wake as I took up a pace no less bounding and blurring and blinking than that I had taken to retrieve my dried bouquet. How I wished to croon over them and explore their fragile petals.

How I wished to keep my sanity.

I raced through Vitale, and dirt kicked in all directions. Would humans speak on their radio of the tornados that attacked the city and left destruction in their wakes?

“Hurry,” I bid myself.

The low walls of my queendom came into sight, and the thatched houses beyond them. Picket was dutifully bricking the walls higher, and I almost sobbed my relief.

A pain had sparked in my skull.

More would come, and quickly.

I slowed to run through my own queendom, apparently caring more for these buildings and plants than those in the wider city. My bare feet sunk into soft ground basked with the first of dawn’s rays.

The first signs of day filled me with fear, and the fear was sinister and warning. I had until dawn to enter a grave.

A shrill scream split through the air, and my blurring run was slow enough to see that Princess Take was stuck to the outside of my queendom with slime. Goodness. I did not have time to stop and talk.

Mother’s grave was so close.

My panic of reaching her in time had loosened its grip. Too soon. For I had noticed See’s earlier shattering roar and even wondered at the agony and fury and whether I was the cause.

I had also observed many times that See grew quieter in rage, not louder.

In short, panic had made a fool of me.

I burst through the wall of bars, and stopped short at the sight of King See in the courtyard.

He lurked between me and mother’s grave with his booted feet planted wider than usual.

The dried bouquet was in my hand. The power of the fourth bridal gift had not settled fully in me, and any sudden use of it seemed more likely to send me into insanity than anything.

I was vulnerable.

And here was a king who saw far too much.

“Was this your plan?” I whispered.

He smiled, and the smile was ice-cold. A rage indeed. “It had occurred to me to let you do the work. You returned to your queendom after securing the third bridal gift and disappeared here for a time. I guessed that you would return here with the fourth.”

The air was charged. His tone was mild, never milder. This king’s rage was deadly and mad. I sensed the savage in him because I had just been one.

And he stood between me and Mother’s grave with dawn rising steadily to battle night away.

The pain in my head swelled, and I withheld a wince. “What has angered you so?”

“I am not angry.”

I disagreed, but not aloud. “Are you decided on whether you will steal the bouquet away to control me forevermore?”

“Yes,” he answered.

King See attacked.

I might have wished to blame a painful head and desperate panic on how little I saw of his attack, but in truth, his speed was humbling to a rising queen.

King See arrested his attack an arm’s length from me, and then I felt his power at every one of my stitches. His power was slicing in nature, and pulling. The intent clear. He would rip apart the patches of me.

A creative strategy.

I was against my wall of bars. I must have scrambled back from his assault. “You attack me in my own queendom, sir.”

“Will you do something about it?” He sneered.

My armored corset had felt empowering before dinner. Now it felt like the confines on my skull too. I moaned low as thousands of layers of ancient whisper struck up in my mind. “I cannot, as you know. Now less than usual. If I do not get to Mother’s grave soon, I will lose my mind.”

He glanced behind. “The hellebores. I wondered such after the royal dinner affair.”

“You connect the whole.”

“You may go there,” King See informed me. “I shall keep the bouquet.”

“I must have the bouquet. You must let me have it, See.”

The world shook. The air charged and whined with the tension of his mad fury. Ever so mildly, a king said, “I must do nothing.”

I cried out at the tightening of his power on my stitches—he prepared to undo me. “You are not the villain.”

He smirked. Slowly. “But I am. ”

“Why now when you resisted the garter?” I stomped my foot. “I am the villain in this play!”

“Petulant queen,” he chided in cold menace. “There are six villains, and you are merely one of them, and an infant villain at that. Stomp your delightful foot all you like. I shall enjoy the sight and hope for a pout too.”

I would not do so, then, especially because pain felt more like agony. The whispers were more like mutters. The first rays of dawn strengthened in the sky.

“See,” I whispered. “Tell me true, what has raised your ire so? Mildness does not fool me. You are mad, and you have managed such madness with more care lately. The air is charged with everything you feel. What usurped your control?”

The world started to rumble again. “Tell me true, queen of private promises. King Bring climbed from the stairway kingdom not long ago and informed me that you had agreed to union with him in payment for the murder of his princess.”

I frowned. “He told you what?”

“He asked, and you said yes,” King See snarled in a terrible voice.

I… That was not what happened at all. “I did not speak this word in answer to his proposal. The rest of what I said was cut off when my mother dropped him into Raise’s kingdom.”

“He has declared it was so, and he raced off like a hound to inform other kings of such. Kings will soon believe that you are his. Promises uttered to kings have precedent.” King See turned to walk a short distance, though his power remained ready to pluck and slice me.

His voice was one of despair. “Perantiqua, an accepted proposal is especially what my control could not bear. I, who managed to allow you a private conversation with King Bring after your claiming of me at dinner. Only for this to occur. I should have relented to madness, for now you must join Bring in union. He will fight for this to be, and you might eventually say yes in truth if rendered vulnerable. But if I have that which you require, then you could not say yes, whether vulnerable or not. You and I would continue in destiny.”

He was a fearful king, a monster as panicked and in pain as I.

King See understood that if I kept this bouquet and entered the grave, that his chance to hold me close might disappear. This was the last bridal gift, and the last opportunity to control me. If he allowed this bouquet to slip through hellebores with me, then he would be at mercy to whatever decisions I made.

He had denied madness once before, but never with these stakes. If in his position, I could not have done so.

“You did warn me of your ambition, sir. But I have not agreed to union with King Bring this night. I cannot, in fact.”

“Because you are a queen?” He faced me again, halfway between me and Mother’s grave.

His milky gaze held anguish and torment. His oversized hands were clawed as if he might drop his head into them in self-loathing. As towering as See was, he seemed in danger of crumpling.

I gasped against the loud talking in my mind. So many conversations at once. “Because his princess is not dead, sir.”

A burst of hope before despair returned. “I watched her die as did everyone else.”

“She acted out her death so beautifully. Perhaps only my sliming pawns would have guessed the truth—had I not ordered them to silence. Blobbing monsters can give moisture to their surroundings, were you aware? King Bring was not, seeing as he does not share the same form as his princess.” I groaned low. My knees shook.

But King See was not shaken from his resolve to take the bouquet. He was listening, though.

“She is alive,” I said on a sigh. “And part of my ploy. Dinner tonight granted King Bring with the perfect opportunity to put his deadly charm to use. He did so when Princess Take distracted us with her undertable activities. But I had asked Mother to whisk away the poison already, if he should reveal it tonight. Mother refilled the goblet with delicious and undeadly contents, and then Princess Bring performed her part brilliantly. As expected, King Bring then tried to draw me into union. I had thought to delay him in war once he believed his princess dead, but his lack of care over her fake death annoyed me so. But no matter, I just needed him to believe his princess dead, so he would not attack until I had the bouquet.”

Dirt blew in a soft wave along the cobblestones between us. Princess Take’s shrieks were audible in the distance. Dawn was coming. How long before her king came?

I lifted fingertips to my temple. The shaking of my body intensified. Such clamor.

“None of your ploys convince me from taking the fourth bridal gift,” King See said. “Your ancientness of thought is greater than ever, and I feel less brave in our destiny by the night. I will take you to the hellebores, but the bridal gift will remain in my care forevermore. I am weak with madness and vice, and you hold such meaning to my existence that I cannot deny it as I have other times.”

“Do you believe me brave in our destiny?” I whispered harshly.

I could not bear it any longer. I dropped to one knee.

“You are brave in accepting fear of the unknown. You are a new creature, and most of your monsterdom has likely felt uncertain and new. I have not felt this way in a millennium. I do not handle this well.”

Clearly. “Pawns. Come to me.”

I had not wished to use them against King See, but I must. Our obsessions clashed yet again.

My werebeasts came first of all, stalking from their kennels with snarled lips curled back over yellowed fangs dripping with saliva. Twelve other pawns exited their chambers, and my seeing pawns drew closest of all. My taking pawns gripped their fierce spears, and my blobbing pawns gathered their slime in readiness. The ground-under-my-stairway pawns rippled in readiness of them disappearing to erupt elsewhere in my defense.

My pawns remained in vigil and readiness, not yet surrounding King See. I had not ordered so.

King See’s laughter filled the courtyard, so cruel in sound. “Do you think that fifteen princes, nothing more than pawns to you, will stop me?”

“I think that I am the villain in this story,” I said, and my voice was weaker than I would have liked.

I only needed enough time to enter the grave with the bouquet.

Bracing myself with a deep inhale first, I rose to my feet, then staggered toward the seeing king.

The blind king. Never blinder.

I staggered until I was an arm’s length from him. And then I craned my head to look at his face.

His breath halted.

I said, “You are by far the most wonderfully crafted monster I have and will ever see. I can think of no other who could better watch past, present, and future. Your eyes possess the milkiness of immortality, your joints are thickened to bear the weight of the futures you must consider, and your skin is as chalky as the past is dead.”

“ You see me,” he said on an exhale. “Can it be that you see me in completeness?”

My inhale hitched. “I do, See.”

The king lowered to his knees. “Why do ancients grant me this mercy?”

The third bridal gift had granted me sight of him, and what had the fourth done? I had an inkling…

My flowing skirt whipped around my legs as I stepped forward and reached out a hand.

No balloon of power stopped me.

I cupped his jaw. His short, black beard caught at the stitch over my palm, and that sensation reduced the clamor in my skull to a pinprick. I sucked in a breath at the impossible relief. But the reduction in clamor had been necessary to hear the twin thuds in my mind instead. The thuds were his heartbeat and mine, and they thudded in different rhythms.

Two thumps.

Then, quite suddenly, they thumped as one.

King See’s milky eyes opened, and he stared up at me in wonder. “What power is this that holds me?”

That we held over each other. Wonder filled me too. And shock, and soul-deep certainty. I had deeply missed feeling certainty of destiny with this king. I felt it now. I felt it more strongly than an urge to tumble through hellebores with a bouquet.

I held my breath as I ran a hand through his dark hair. Coarse. Thick. Hanging to brush his shoulders. “I can touch you.”

A tear squeezed from my eye, but it felt to have arisen in my heart. “We can touch in the flesh.”

The tear dropped and King See caught it in his palm, staring down at the glistening evidence of my feelings. He rasped, “I have attacked you in your own queendom this night. I have whispered my intention to be your captor for all time. I let you exist in pain instead of helping you to hellebores. You called your pawns against me in fright of me, yet now you part your lips to touch them to mine. Could it be that you intend to kiss the king that has treated you so instead of worshiping and adoring you?” He looked up at me. “The king who will not love you.”

“Yes,” I said hoarsely.

His shoulders relaxed. “Then perhaps there is hope for us.”

I had not kissed another, not human nor monster.

I set my lips to King See’s. His lips were thin and cruel and designed for the torsion and stitch of mine. Such warmth and ice. Such threat and vow.

The world shook with our kiss, and why would it not when ancient clamor had quieted with our simple touch? Everything must move and react to the movement of his lips on mine. Something had to dance with this. This. A rumble grew in See. I felt it in me too. The earthquake—the desperation and relief. The fear and surety.

The completion.

My hands were dragged from his face and down to his lapels as See rose from his knees. My face tilted with him, and our kiss remained intact as he circled an arm around my copper bodice to drag me close. I lifted on tiptoes to move my mouth against his still. Wants filled me so, and I would not deny the urge to explore his mouth and tongue.

He groaned low, and I traced along his upper lip some more in response.

The beating of our hearts boomed in my head. See’s breath was as ragged as mine. But while the touch of him had reduced the pain in my head, ancients were resuming their boom in my skull.

They would not be denied for long. But I did try.

Until I could no longer.

My knees buckled, and I would have toppled but for a king. This king who could inspire any number of things in me—and I to him.

We were destined, yes, and as likely for doom as anything. Yet we existed in this tangle and so must see how it might unravel.

I moaned and clutched my head as King See lifted me in his arms. The thudding sway of his footsteps was felt in every part of me as my mind shimmered and squeezed. The bouquet was clutched but weakly in my grip.

He had me. I was but a vulnerable queen.

King See took my hand holding the bouquet. And so perhaps See was the villain after all. I cracked open my blue eyes to peer up at him. See’s milky gaze bored into mine as he placed the hand holding my bouquet against my chest, and then rested my other hand on top. Much as one might arrange a corpse before burial.

There was a rustle of hellebores. The bouquet in my hand rustled back in greeting.

“I cannot fathom what a fool I am,” King See whispered in despair as he lowered me into Mother’s grave.

Not a fool, I wanted to say. Not a fool. But I could not.

Hellebores closed in on me from all sides.

Bouquet in hand, and a kiss in soul, I knew no more.