Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Princesses did not play

In wars of kings

Queens, however…

Surety in destiny was lost.

A kingly tribunal had left me with many troubling thoughts indeed.

But they were not allowed in the conservatory at this dusk hour, especially not after King Change’s words about a fragile, weak, and pitiful queen.

He would ruin me if I let him.

So I would take extra care not to allow troubling thoughts in here at this hour.

I dropped my quilted robe to the thyme-covered ground and approached the mirror, still clad in my white nightgown. My blonde hair had curled with the dampness of coming rain in the air, and I lifted the tresses off my nape.

A half-turn allowed me sight of the great stitch down my spine. Such was the light material of my nightgown that I could spot the darkness of thick thread through the material.

“And who sewed you, largest of stitches?” Most of the stitches on me were small—attaching fingers or toes or ears—but this stitch held together many large and important parts of me at once. This stitch was dedicated and unfaltering.

The deep scoop of my nightgown left most of my upper back bare, and so I stretched back to touch the bumpiness between my shoulder blades. The stitch was wide and penetrated deep into the muscles either side of my spine.

I felt my brows draw together. “You are oldest of all, aren’t you?”

My fingertips absorbed desert and heat and… undeniable purpose from the stitch. And how could I feel such things through a thread? I could feel somewhat of the mother who sewed these stitches, and along with that discovery was a curiosity to know more. Curiosity had led me far in monsterdom, and I would heed it to walk this path a while longer.

Though, I had rarely expected that monsterdom would be a path that I would walk alone, not from my first dusks. Yet after the tribunal, I felt poor in friendship, poor in romance, and poor in monsterdom.

I had been mostly poor in life, but rarely in heart. And yet a claiming stroke of power down my cheek had inspired queenly rage, and I could only fathom from it that a queen was not meant to be claimed.

But I would not allow such troubling thoughts in here at this hour.

“All that remains is that I visit her every dusk to witness such a sight,” menace himself whispered.

I whipped to look across the conservatory.

King See. I had known so before turning. I had sensed his uniquities, and that only poked savagely at my uncertainties of our destiny.

I was not ready to see him after his claiming stroke of power, not even to wonder over the new clarity of his body, even if his face remained invisible as ever. “You intrude on a private moment. Troubling thoughts are not allowed in here at this hour, and not trouble of other kinds.”

“I implore you,” he said in guttural tones, apparently having not heard a single word I had just said. “Arch as you were arched. I see the rosiness of your nipples, and the hints of stitch, and even the shadow between your thighs through that magnificent sleeping gown.”

There was a reason I’d worn my quilted robe up here this dusk. I considered grabbing the robe to deprive See of the sight of rosiness and stitch and shadow, but my body was my own, and he had invaded my privacy, not the other way around.

I tilted my chin. “What brings you here so soon toward evening, King See?”

I was not ready for the conversation that must happen because I was now a queen. He had realized the truth of these changes at the same time. King Take had even connected how romance must change between us.

I could not be a princess, so what could a queen and king share?

King See lost his seductive tone, and I felt the contemplativeness in him as he said, “Not long ago, I asked you to call me See, maiden.”

I lifted a shoulder. “Sometimes a request remains a request, and our dinner together feels long ago indeed.”

King See pushed off the tarnished copper archway and ventured a step inside. The tarnish spread over the panels nearest to him, and I glared. I didn’t wish to know how my hotel liked See when he had irritated me and when our romance seemed uncertain.

He tilted his head. “Perantiqua, you are in a small fury with me. How so?”

The balloon of his power was yet to press against me. He did not force me back as Raise had enjoyed doing at the tribunal.

I narrowed my gaze. “Do you feel amusement at my fury, sir?”

“I do. For it bodes well and reassures me in measure. How came you to a fury?”

I had not felt queenly rage much in the last week, but I was learning my rages now were petulant. I had never been petulant in humanity or early monsterdom, but though foot stomping was surely a childish reaction, I felt very much like doing it right now.

I restrained myself, but such a vice bore closer examination. “I came to a fury when you sought to claim me in front of kings like I were nothing more than a common monster.”

The king circled to my right.

Then I understood how my fury reassured him in measure because I felt distracted beyond reason at his calmness. Did he not understand that a queen could not be claimed? “Are you in a fury, King See?”

He paused to study me. “You are in a fury because I submitted to the urge to claim you in front of kings. Should I fury because you did not submit to the urge to accept my claim in front of kings? Perhaps, yes.”

“You might fury how you like.” I crossed my arms, but when he circled another step, my focus dipped to his belted hips. There was something about his horrendously conventional abdominals that distracted me beyond reason. Though as he moved, his coat opened enough that I gleaned a bulge over his hip bones, like the ridges of his pelvis were oversized as his knuckles and wrists.

“Thank you,” he said with a hint of growl. “I shall do so because I cannot do otherwise.”

Such was the nature of fury.

I studied the white blinding blur of his face. The chalky white skin of his hands enticed me. The color had a matt quality that tugged at my curiosity. Would the white come away on my fingers should I grow powerful enough to touch him? My heart sank. My power would need to grow mighty indeed for that, and I could feel no obsession over doing so. And here I’d been so certain we were destined by ancients.

My fury at his claiming stroke leeched away to reveal the true source of my upset. “Sir, I can no longer be your princess.”

“Ah,” said King See so very quietly. “That.”

“That.” He had connected matters as I.

“You are a queen,” he agreed. “There has never been a queen, so how can you be sure on the matter of princessdom?”

My stomach churned. Maybe he had not connected matters all the way. “Because I felt rage when you sought to claim me. A queen will not be claimed by a king. What remains?”

The air changed, and I glanced out the window. Surely it must rain soon.

“A queen will not be claimed,” he repeated in a mild voice. “Is this why you sent such a message via my princes before the tribunal?”

I winced. “I did not guess that was the intention while in my attack of petulance, but yes, hindsight whispers that a refusal to be claimed was the cause of my verbal slap.”

He recited, “ You might tell him that if twelve hundred years of seeing the past, present, and future have not informed his purpose, then a queen of a mere week shall not either. ”

My words were petulant indeed, but I was not in the habit of tossing See’s vice in his face, and he usually did not toss it in mine. “Did the words injure you, sir? I am sorry for it. Queenship comes with some adjustment.”

“They injured me. They made the first scratch, so to speak.”

He did speak in riddles sometimes. “If they made the first scratch, what made the second?”

King See walked to the window that granted a view of his gothic palace in the distance. “That is where the parts of me grew twisted and began to spin, so the answer you seek is not one I know.”

I was a queen and unwise in immortality, nor so powerful as this king. “I do not follow, sir, but I believe you allude to the difference in the feeling between us.”

There was another change in the air, and I could not fathom why rain did not fall, so heavy was the sky and our surroundings.

King See did not face me, gripping the copper window framing instead. “There is no precedent for how a king will be with a queen. There is no surety of how she moves in purpose—a purpose that apparently had naught to do with kings, or so she declares after my touch inspires rage in her and no urge to accept me before kings. And this after delivering a verbal slap the night before. The matter was simple. I had known that you must be the missing part. You would tip the balance to ruin or saving. I had waited for the missing part, unsure which form it might take, and I had suspended the direction of my purpose while waiting. And then you were a queen, and the way forward was still very clear. I had only to align with you in purpose. Your message obliterated those thoughts and sureties that I had held for centuries, maiden. A first scratch indeed. Or an obliteration more certainly. I always knew the direction of me, if not my purpose, and now I know only ambition and nothing more.”

I had been very careless with my words. “I am filled with sorrow for the confusion I unlocked. You are you, King See. You might be as sure of yourself as two nights ago. But I would never have you decide on purpose pending a declaration of mine. That is what I refused to give you to become your princess. That is not what I want from you as my… as my… as mine.”

His answering laughter was harsh, and quiet fell as the laughter rung away. The nature of the quiet was hopeless and lost, and I could feel only one way out. “Tell me, what is your ambition?”

He turned then. “I shall speak it in the hopes that you might find understanding in who I feel in danger of becoming.”

“You will figure this out,” I answered. “You are used to seeing almost everything and feeling very little confusion and uncertainty, but this spin will not extend indefinitely. All spins must end.”

King See did not answer, and I got a sinking sense that he wished to warn me again. But what of? This king had only ever helped me in monsterdom.

“Listen to my ambition,” he hissed. “It is this. That you will never look at another king as you look at me. That other kings will believe absolutely in your preference for me. I will have you in complete utterness, and I will stop at naught to ensure it. This is my ambition and all I can feel in this spin where I have lost my way.”

I swallowed, more at his tone than his words. “I do not look at other kings as you. They know I prefer you.”

“And yet you did not accept my claim before kings. You were driven to rage instead that informed you that a queen will not be claimed.” A menace layered his voice. “They will not have any part of what we will share, Perantiqua.”

Purrantiquaaah.

A gasp fell from my lips, unbidden.

“They will not draw a gasp from your lips as I,” he said darkly. Another step.

I took another step myself. This was not a version of King See that I had met. We, all of us, were creatures of vice that was not always suppressed, but here was See dressing himself in it to stalk around. “Sir, you are maddened.”

“I am what you say.”

“This discussion will not lead us to a long and meaningful relationship until you know more of your madness.”

He tilted his head. “You said that I might fury how I liked. And what did I reply, maiden?”

I exhaled, my body coiled against his menace. “ I shall do so because I cannot do otherwise .”

And in that, I could understand him because I was a servant of my own fury more often than not. And yet I was a queen, and I saw that battles I had submitted to in the past could no longer be submitted to. “Sir, know that I prefer you above all kings. Also know that I am a queen, and that I choose whom I prefer. If I decide to gasp for another king, then I will.”

“I would prefer you to never do so,” See said mildly.

His words were calm and relieved me. “I do not prefer to do so, either, as I have said. There is no need to be in a fury or to relent to madness.”

“You mistake me, maiden. I would prefer you not to, but I will not leave that to chance. I have warned you of my ambition.”

My hands tightened to fists. “I am not your only ambition, See. You do not see clearly. What of the world? What of purpose?”

“I care not. My obsession is before me, and I am but a monster. Twelve hundred years passed in belief of my path, and now all my resolutions and cares and religions are erased. This happened when you became queen. I am meant to be maddened and obsessed.”

Nothing good could come of this discussion. “You will better understand yourself soon, and I will not let you damage what we share in the meantime. We are… out of alignment for a time. Nothing more. We have mostly agreed in monsterdom, so this is all rather new, but do you not seek to win my affections and warm my thoughts toward you? How can this menacing madness inspire romantic feeling?”

“You speak of love. What we will share will transcend that failing.”

My hotel shook underfoot. He was maddened when I needed him to be calm and certain and stable—everything that I did not feel as a new queen. I had depended on him being as he had always been. “Yet you call me lover when it suits your primal urges . ”

“Need I remind you that I am suddenly obsessed?” he breathed. “Or perhaps I always was from the first sight of stitch and patch.”

If he was obsessed, then so was I. His was the face I yearned to see most of all. Though I had felt obsession in the past when collecting cleaning carts, obsession usually carried a thoughtless abandon with it that I could sense in King See right now. That was not what I felt for him. I did not feel maddened. With him, there was always too much thought. Too little abandon. I felt a wariness of how other monsters might perceive us. I felt a disappointment that he would dismiss love between us, and from this, I felt a great hesitation of falling into more romance with him. I felt constant anticipation and a little terror at what may come of our meetings. I felt an addiction to his visits, for our interactions always came with a little bite and poison that could not be entirely healthy.

Yet I did feel more for King See than any other.

But we were out of alignment and did not agree as we always had.

“No good comes of this conversation,” I whispered. “I am heavy with words uttered and no solutions offered.”

I strode to the entrance, but a tendril of his power wrapped around my waist, gently spinning me back.

I kept my face turned.

He hushed, “The storm of her thunders under my feet and strikes lightning into me. She is at war.”

Of love, this king did not believe, but his mouth did not always share that sentiment.

“You have complicated matters, and uncertainty plagues me,” I told him.

His hold tightened around my waist. “ Uncertainty. ”

The word was hissed. Dark.

I couldn’t stop the tremble of thrill. “I have always thought us destined, sir, and trusted in the feeling between us.”

The air grew so cloying and terrible. Finally, rain erupted from the bruised clouds above.

King See pulled me against the balloon of his power, and did he enjoy the sight of my breasts pressed there? The shallowness of his breaths told me yes .

“You wish to seduce me after such a sad conversation,” I asked.

“I do.”

“And how are we meant to enjoy pleasure with the water between us murkier than ever?”

“As easily as the doing, maiden. Intimacy is no concession and no answer and no promise. Intimacy is just that.”

I tried to inhale, but pressed as I was against his balloon, such breaths were difficult. I could not bring myself to mind when I saw how they affected him.

Here was a king maddened by the want of me. A king whose ambition to have me in completeness would surely clash with my queenly endeavors. Yet my body quickened at the idea of exploring this new version of him too. “You summarize my sentiment most eloquently, sir. Yes, I find that is my concern now that I am queen. When we agreed to only be for each other while navigating our future path, I did not possess such concerns, but now intimacy must be just that and no promise of what may be after.”

King See lowered me to my knees on thyme. “We agree. Remove your gown, Perantiqua.”

Should I do so? He was mad.

Yet my body was tight with intrigue for this mad king, and there was another part that was desperate for us to agree on just one thing.

I lifted my gown overhead, feeling the whisper of material against my breasts, then the soft crunch of thyme under my knees. I knelt naked before him.

“On your hands and knees, maiden,” See said in soft menace, not otherwise moving.

My blonde curls toppled forward as I did so. This was not queenly, but in intimacy we had agreed, and so I would enter this with the same abandon as always.

“I will touch you now,” he said hoarsely. “You are ready for me.”

I’d heard his inhale and swallowed sudden urgency. “Kindly hurry.”

His power kneaded my back, moving lower until reaching my ass. I lowered my forehead onto my hands and widened my knees.

There was an exquisite silence in my head as See touched me, the first since I’d become queen. I needed this touch—this normalcy in the chaos that had become my monsterdom. “See, you quiet the clamor in my head with what you do.”

“Sink into me, Perantiqua.”

I grew desperate to do just that.

See circled the conservatory to the entrance again, to better see me bared. He deepened the pressure of his kneading strokes and the firm pressure in the arches of my feet. His power roamed over my hip bones and over inner thighs and in one stroke, his power was icy cold and the next just shy of burning hot. What was this ?

I gasped and could not stop wriggling amongst the sensations he offered. I had not anticipated that his power could torment my body in so many ways, and I relished the mindlessness of the pleasure most of all.

Until it wasn’t enough. This frustration in my body was a familiar one, and an unwelcome one. One I feared. King See pinched at my skin, and the series of slight pains on my behind only made my frustration swell.

I panted, wriggling again. “You said that you would never deny me again.”

“And I will not. Tell me all you desire.” His voice was tight. Furious.

“I want to be fulfilled,” I snapped.

“Who do you wish to fill you?”

I didn’t correct him, but said on a moan, “You.”

He boomed, “ Who am I ?”

“King See,” I screamed back after leaping in fright at his sudden shout.

See filled me, then, with a thick power that was a lot to bear and exactly, deliciously what I had needed. I was pushed on hands and knees through thyme with the thick entry, and then the feeling of crunching softness disappeared, the feeling of hot and cold strokes disappeared—all feeling disappeared aside from the speed and depth of how he filled me so completely.

I screamed. I must have. I pleaded and begged and called his name. All of these must have happened for he was growling and groaning in a way that informed me I was caressing his masculinity. I had not realized how much desire had built in me since queendom.

I had needed this so badly.

I would keep screaming and pleading if he delivered fulfilment. I would become obsessed for this peace in my mind.

This.

He sat me upright, and his power was still within me, and now under me too. I ground my hips back and forth, riding the thickness on the ground with singlemindedness. Our intimacies had usually involved movement from both of us, but I chased my end now, using his power as the tool, and See’s low and tortured moan only fueled the blinding lust within me that wished to give him an unforgettable show.

We were not in alignment, but in intimacy we agreed.

I clung to this possibility as I stared in an unseeing haze at the roof of my conservatory.

A hypnotic haze that slowed my brutal rhythm as a warm surety saturated my ancient mind. Fulfillment.

A king would not deny me tonight, and intimacy would be our rock until See stopped spinning.

Shudders rocked me all the way down, and just when I’d thought they were ended, another round began. I came back to myself, though, and rested forward on my hands. My breaths came shallow and quick. My curls stuck to the perspiration on my face.

Relaxation saturated my body. I felt centered and whole in a way I hadn’t all week. “I needed that.”

“I will better tend to your needs,” he said hoarsely, then as if to himself, “She will make an addict of me.”

He wouldn’t be the only one.

I opened my eyes, then froze when I found myself on top of a glass panel. A shriek lodged in my throat, and I blinked away from the entrance to Raise’s kingdom.

Six feet away, I stood on shaking legs and stared at the glass panel in the middle of my conservatory. “What?—"

“I would not have let you fall,” he said. “Tell me, maiden. For how long have you possessed the ability to blink?”

I’d shown my hand in more ways than one. He’d witnessed my fright of Raise, and also my ability to blink. Of all the kings, I would have worried least about See knowing the truth. Before this dusk’s conversation.

Before…

A chill entered my heart as I stared at the glass panel. See had known I was fucking his power where a king, three princes, and even a princess might have seen. My tongue was dry, and I could not find the right words for what he had done. “You displayed me.”

“I did, yes.”

I did, yes. He had no trouble admitting the truth. “You showed me to Raise. Your ambition overran your senses.” I was more shocked by that than anything, and he had warned me clearly of the ambition. But King See had never been a creature of ambition, so I had not believed him.

Now I did.

I faced the mirror, sweeping my gaze over all that Raise might have seen. I twisted to see my back, then froze at the word written across the globes of my ass.

SEE

The series of pinches I’d felt. He’d jotted his claim. “And did you plan this from the start?”

“Close to it,” he answered.

And then I’d sat up on the glass panel to ride See’s power. I’d pressed that word against the entrance to Raise’s kingdom along with my most intimate parts.

The chill spread in me, and yet my thighs still pressed together from the remnants of what See had delivered. I felt a languid delight and a shocked numbness at the same time.

I had thought that our intimacy might provide us with a rock to cling to, but See had used our pleasure for his own end. I highly doubted that Raise had seen what just transpired, but that wasn’t the point. “How would you wish me to interpret what you have done?”

“Is it not clear?”

“You wish other kings to know what we do. There was to be no promise or concession or answer in our intimacy.”

“And there was none of those.”

My chest rose sharply. “Not in the sense of the words, but I do not feel we can be intimate again, and I will likely yearn for the mindlessness of your touch in not many nights. You have complicated this possibility with your mad agenda.”

“I have.” King See glanced out the window to his palace. “I have been surprised by my actions this evening too. I had wondered if I could control the spin in me, but this confirms that it controls me. Guilt grips my ankles for displaying you such, and yet there is a deep satisfaction of doing so that stops me feeling truly sorry for the act. Perantiqua, I am not as I was.”

On that we could agree. “What is left between us if not intimacy, sir? We cannot even agree on the topic of pleasure.”

“It appears not,” he mused. “Yet my ambition is unchanged. My madness reigns still. So there will be agreement to be had, unless that is not our way forward.”

One week as a queen had seen me pestered and annoyed and drowning, and yet I had always been sure of this king. I had woken each dusk with his calm presence and stability in my heart and mind. Perhaps we had been at an impasse, but there had existed a trust in our destiny.

That trust felt trodden upon. “See, you have done us no favors this night. If Take were here, he might smell the heartbreak in me.”

My words pulled him from the deepness of reflection, and where he had started to walk away, he snapped his head to look back. “Indeed…”

I narrowed my gaze. “Indeed what?”

He shook himself, saying, “Expect that I might do such things again in the future, maiden.”

“You mean write your name on my body and let me fuck another king’s kingdom?”

“Yes, I feel a different king now you are queen.”

“You are still yourself,” I cried out.

But he wasn’t, and we had both learned that this night.

King See shook his head, a sadness to the gesture. “No, Perantiqua. I am but a claiming king now.”