Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

A murder of crows

A cauldron of bats

An excess of humans

“ W onder has found me,” I exclaimed from amid a mess of aged paper and swirling ink.

Dawn neared, and after hours of tormenting the landlady, I had felt in a proper centered state to tackle a contract made between my ancestor and King Raise.

Self-care was a wondrous thing.

Valetise set out my nightgown on the only part of the bed not covered in a mountain of unfurled contract. “I am happy for you, my queen.”

“Here is the first mother’s name,” I gasped.

I traced over the signature. “Her name was Cassandra.”

I stared at her writing on the bottom of the contract. “I feel wonderful connection.”

Stretching back, I touched the great stitches either side of my spine. “How I wish that I knew more of you, for I feel how dedicated and faltering you were.” Yet twelve hundred years had passed, and I did not dare to hope that any traces of her would remain.

“Will you dress for daylight slumber, my queen?” Valetise murmured.

She wished to retire. “Yes, very soon.”

“As you wish, and what would you like me to do with this doll?” the haberdashery monster inquired.

Drat . The vibrancy of a good haunt had burned the corn husk dolls from my mind.

Valetise held up the doll that I had tossed on a chaise across the room. “I can easily understand how humans might grow obsessed with you, but I must say that nothing could ever capture the essence of you.”

I smiled and was relieved to feel the smile was genuine. In my queendom and having shared a great fright with pawns, this doll did not cause the same doubt in me. “A king is behind it, so says King Bring.”

I rose to take the doll from her, and then pressed it against the wall. “Mother, would you keep this for me?”

She sucked the doll inside, and then promptly spat it out. A candle was rattled off the wall and fell upon the doll, setting it ablaze.

We watched it burn.

“I fathom that the doll is a force of ruin,” I said when embers remained. “Thank you, Mother. I must expect more ruin from that direction.”

Was it Take? Was it Raise? Was it Change? I had asked Bring to his face, and I believed his answer. No matter the state of affairs with See, I could not believe him capable of this.

The candle and ashes were sucked into the ground, and Mother pushed the candle back into its wall sconce.

“I must say good morning to my princely pawns before I retire,” I said. “You may leave the nightgown there. I will dress myself.”

Valetise curtsied, and I walked outside. All fifteen of my pawns had gathered in the courtyard, cast in threes and standing as far from each other as possible. A matter for concern because while they belonged to five kings, they belonged to one queen too.

“My pawns,” I said, the victim of a sudden thought. “Kindly tell me of your princesses. Huckery, Loup, and Unguis, you first.”

The werebeasts were already in their conventional daylight forms, so everyone could understand them when Loup answered, “Lady Queen, tell you what?”

“What is she like?”

Huckery narrowed his eyes, but Unguis was less concerned with my motivation.

He said, “Lady Queen, she is a haunted soul who serves her king’s purpose faithfully. She spends her woeful existence tending to his forest and yearning properly and numbly for the night when the world is ruined and she might end her disgraceful and despondent life.”

We would need to disagree on much of that, but I could appreciate that the princess worked hard to tend to Change’s forest. I had appreciated the eerie uniformity of the forest while trapped in the haunted kingdom for a time. Tending the forest must be a large undertaking, even for a monster. “Thank you. And what of Princess Raise?”

I knew nothing of her, then again, King Raise understood the value of information more than any king except Take. While Take understood the power of spreading information, Raise understood the power of keeping it all.

Sign, Seal, and Deliver stood at attention in front of my wall of bars.

Deliver explained, “Princess Raise is in confinement.”

Confinement. “I do not follow.”

“Our liege desires that she signs an updated contract, and the princess refuses. Our liege ordered level one protocol upon her.”

Seeing my expression, Seal hastily said, “Worry not, Lady Queen. He has never gone higher than level two with her. As I understand it, her refusal holds… sexual intrigue for him.”

Oh. That made more sense. “He enjoys when she tells him no.”

I pondered that. Raise likely only enjoyed this refusal because she was married to his purpose. “How long has he confined her?”

“Three years,” Sign said.

My eyes widened. “That is an extended foreplay indeed. Can it be that she enjoys such suspense after a few nights?”

“I would say not,” Deliver said. “Three years is not a long time, but not a blink. Our princess—how does a prince say this.”

Huckery scoffed. “Everyone knows that something went wrong with the union.” He looked at me. “The princess refuses her king’s purpose though married to it. Their union is surely warped.”

“Watch how you speak of her,” snapped Seal.

Loup growled in return.

I let them bicker, absorbed in more ancient thoughts. A princess able to shirk her king’s purpose? My intrigue knew no bounds. I would love to know whether she questioned the loss of her purpose before agreeing to union.

While princes were as ancient as one another, having spent one hundred years in the womb before The End, princesses varied in the lengths of their slumbers and therefore their ancientness. Princess Bring had told me that her slumber lasted twenty years. Princess Take’s slumber lasted for fifty. Two princesses had slumbered for thirty years, and so I could assume one of them was Princess Raise.

What about this princess allowed her to refuse her king’s purpose? I very much wanted to know, and so I could count on the answer holding great importance in the scheme of obsession. Curiosity was a great force. “One final question.”

Silence fell as my voice rang out.

Vassal sighed. “A symphony not unlike melting ice on winter flowers.”

I asked, “Which princess married a king first?”

“Princess Change,” Huckery answered. “Ninety-nine years after the dawn of the new age.”

The End. “I see.”

King Change had turned from the pact made with brother kings one hundred years after The End. What a coincidence. But I felt no great curiosity about this, so I moved on.

“Then? Who came next?”

“Princess Raise,” supplied Sign.

Raise married second, but how was she able to refuse her king?

Toil called out, “The princess of our liege was next.”

Bring.

Which left Take, no doubt after a lengthy love triangle war between King See and Take.

Change

Raise

Bring

Take

There seemed an importance to that order, but I could hardly make the recipe with all the ingredients and none of the method.

I glimpsed the first signs of daylight in the dawn sky. “Thank you for enlightening me, my pawns. Good morning to you all.”

Gangrel’s call halted me. “Do you not wish to know of Princess Take? You have asked about the other princesses.”

I schooled away the wrinkle of my nose, then turned back to lean over the balustrade again. “But of course, Gangrel. Tell me, what is Princess Take like? I assume she married last.”

Memory upon memory of her body intertwined with King See’s rose in my mind’s eye. The memories had not haunted me so powerfully before, and I should applaud King Bring’s wisdom in showing me them. He had a greater knowledge of how things might chip at a person over time, particularly when my rise to queendom had altered See so much. See had opted to “know himself better” rather than tutor a queen he had once wanted for princess. And did our previous deal still stand? The one where we would not take pleasure from other monsters? He still had not written, and not visited either.

“Princess Take is everything in a drop of rain,” Gangrel answered. “She is a beam of moonlight and all shades of black in a ghastly shadow.”

My fanged pawns thought highly of her beauty and monsterdom. That only served to sour my mood, as by now, Princess Take was the most ancient of female monsters—who had enjoyed many centuries of physical intimacies with two kings, and also seemed most free and respected of all princesses. Envy was a green, green monster tonight. “She is very beautiful. I have seen something of her. And does she shirk her king’s purpose like Princess Raise?”

They almost fell over each other to reply.

Vassal gasped, “No, Lady Queen, never! She is as married to his purpose as could be. She understands him entirely.”

I tilted my head. “I had heard that Take prefers her flesh, but there was no companionship to their union.”

Vassal smiled. “I said that she understands him best of all, did I not? My liege values such emptiness. How else would those in his fifth be so filled with his whims and amusements and annoyances?”

I had seen and felt this power of King Take’s. A union of the mere flesh seemed very like the cold transactional agreement between King See and me. What a lonely immortality—and apparently a purposely empty one—though at first glance King Take did not seem lonely at all. I supposed that he wasn’t the one emptying himself in an emotional and spiritual sense.

“Is Princess Take fulfilled by their union?” I asked.

Sanguine’s clear voice harbored no uncertainty. “Yes, Lady Queen. She is fulfilled.”

And what of her daylight visits to King See? Had they resumed?

I desperately wished to ask. I believed from watching her interactions with See that the princess was a lively and creative bed partner. Engaging in these activities with See was no hardship on her behalf. He aspired to claim me, but I could not trust his methods in madness.

My mood soured further, and the balustrade cracked under my hands.

“Princess Take visited King See yesterday at dawn,” Gangrel blurted.

I froze in a way that I could not mask from fifteen pawns.

My heart stuttered and coughed, and pain snaked outward from it. Fear had whispered such jealousies in my head, but I had not truly believed See would do such a thing.

Envy seized my vocal chords at last. “For how long did she remain?”

“We know not, Lady Queen.” Vassal bowed. “Our liege did not say.”

My voice was tight. “Did your liege bid you to tell me this?”

Sanguine’s skin wrinkled even more than usual as he frowned. “Yes, but I had decided against doing so, only to then fear you learning the truth from another. So though I have obeyed his order, I have not done so in malice.”

That mollified my feelings greatly, for the actions of the taking princes were those of care.

“I thank you for thinking of my feelings, Gangrel. You were right in connecting that I would wish to know of this from my pawns first.”

Three other princes had nothing to say at all.

I looked at the princes of See, who demonstrated intense interest in the cobblestones. Perhaps Mother might yawn them away for me. “Will you think of my feelings, seeing pawns?”

That drew a shocked noise from Will Be. “We will care,” he spluttered, then grimaced. “Lady Queen, I do not wish to hurt you. The strongest of diamonds though you are, a single scratch or chip cannot be endured.”

Has Been scoffed. “She felt hurt as soon as Gangrel opened his trap.”

“She is already hurt,” Is confirmed.

Will Be sighed. “Princess Take stayed from dawn until dusk. I am very sorry to utter such words, and I am deeply displeased with my liege for the lack of consideration over your heart and wellbeing. I can only say that he is in a floundering place somewhat, and?—”

I stopped listening. Princess Take had stayed in See’s palace for the entire day. Everyone knew what monsters did in daylight hours.

I held up a hand. “I appreciate your drive to heal my hurt, Will Be. You do not need to make excuses for King See. That is his job, even if a maddened and claiming king.”

How could he? Goodness, but pain snaked from my heart so.

How could he move from an offer of union to an offer of tutorage to a transactional agreement and then to the destruction of us? We had agreed to exclusivity, had we not? That must have expired when I became queen.

If only he had bothered to inform me.

See had been courteous and caring and invoking and nurturing since I entered monsterdom, and now he sought to harm my feelings and heart. How could a monster, and a kingly one at that, drift so far and suddenly from himself, even if his wished-for princess had become a queen?

Oh.

Oh. My brow cleared.

There was the immortal answer. For King See might be a maddened claiming king, but he was as astute as ever.

King See was hurting me on purpose.

He wished to harden my heart.

He wished to harden my heart so that I might not link the organ to the pleasures of my body so much. In this way, in time, then love would not get in the way of us. This was his claiming plan. This was how he meant to have me in utter completeness.

And pain did snake from my heart so. Did rage or sadness or hurt affect me more as I destroyed the balustrade before fifteen pawns? Perhaps there was a name for the combination of all three— betrayal.

King See had betrayed me to harden my heart. If he had not writhed in the sheets with Princess Take, then he had still invited her to spend a day in his palace, knowing that I would hear tell of it, and knowing that we had agreed to be for one another.

He had betrayed me. Disrespected me. Acted against my feelings.

I deserved better.

“Thank you,” I whispered to my pawns. “Good morning to you all.”

Such pain in my heart.

I glanced down at my chest, and the pain made a lot of sense, really, in that a dagger protruded there. “I am stabbed.”

In both senses of heart.

My lips trembled into a smile. “How poetic.”

The shouting and roars of pawns overwhelmed me then. Until they didn’t. Until only the pulsing thud of blood rushing through my body remained.

Thud.

Thud.

I expected to die soon. There was a dagger in my heart, after all, and this must be a certain thing. But then I recalled immortality between one thud and another.

So then, I couldn’t die.

If I couldn’t die, then I couldn’t carry on with this weapon in my chest either. I could only imagine the weariness of dressing around it each night.

I drew the dagger out—a butcher’s knife—and the echoing thud in my ears gradually receded until I was able to take stock of the situation.

Humans climbed over the walls. My guard rope whipped any he could, but the sheer number of them was too much for the young monster to handle. His movements grew weaker with every whipping.

Pawns battled against humans, physically throwing them over the walls.

“You are operating outside the scope of your contracts,” Sign roared, so hard that new rips appeared in the hollows of his cheeks.

The mention of contracts implied this was an attack from King Raise.

My, but his humans were quite insane with the need to attack me.

They dragged a large dummy over the wall, and at once, I saw that they had stitched and dyed the dummy in my likeness.

I blinked when a human set the dummy alight, and I did feel some hurt from the act. Raise must be behind the corn husk doll.

He’d decided against waiting for the verdict of kings on eternal servitude.

Humans clambered up the balustrades from the high walls that surrounded the hotel. The shards of glass jammed there wounded many, but a frenzied fever had claimed these humans. They were not themselves and attacked me by the design of the king they did not even know. There were so many of them, and my pawns and guard rope could not hold so many back at once.

Humans rushed the stairs, seeking me out.

Rushed was a relative term as the humans were remarkably slow. There was something endearing about a creature that tried so hard but was so very unskilled, like a baby bird learning to fly.

They reached my landing and raced toward me. I was impressed considering they couldn’t see me, but the power of Raise must have guided them—how else would a dagger have managed to lodge in my heart?

The humans’ rushing charge was abruptly ended when they piled up against the balloon of my power.

I had a balloon.

The closest humans were pressed tight against the invisible force of my power by those still charging behind them.

I wondered how they intended to capture or kill an invisible monster they couldn’t touch…

I called down to my battling pawns, who had nearly emptied the courtyard. “There are some humans up here, my pawns. Do you suppose Raise intends more to this assassination?”

“’Tis a mere capture, Lady Queen,” said Deliver. “We were meant to help with the capturing part, to answer your question. We knew that we would never be able to, and so we went along with our liege for a time.”

I nodded. “Yes, you must agree sometimes to avoid a king’s rage. I would appreciate some warning of capture attempts in the future.”

The stairway pawns dropped to their knees and hastily uttered their devotion.

“This capture attempt is pitiful without you,” I murmured. “Now what is to be done with an excess of humans? I can hardly move around with them.”

The three stairway pawns leaped to their feet.

“We’ll round them up, and with our humble apologies,” Seal replied. “But what would you like to do with the human who threw the blade into your heart?”

I would like to applaud the human’s aim, though guided by Raise. “I am open to suggestions.”

“ Lady Queen , we are but mouthpieces,” Seal exclaimed.

The gate creaked opened, and the collapsed and weary rope was not responsible.

Toil, Sigil, and Hex folded one blob over another to execute hasty bows as Princess Bring slimed in.

She answered, “A queen could hang a human from her walls or submit to a rage and do what comes naturally.”

A message then? I was meant to send a message. In truth, the capture attempt was so futile, that I felt no rage. I felt more amusement that ten seconds had passed before I had recalled that I could not die.

How would I handle this event? What queen would I be?

“Mother,” I called to her grave. “We have received a gift from King Raise.” I tossed the bloodied dagger to her, where she swallowed it away. The dagger had not killed me, as immortal as I was, and this capture attempt must therefore make me stronger.

My survival did beget another question, such as how—and if —an immortal could be killed. A curiosity for another time. “Set the human free, my pawns.”

“Free, my queen?” Has Been spluttered.

“But free,” I repeated. “I would no sooner punish a doll for the actions of the child playing with it.”

I was very hopeful that exact wording would be repeated to King Raise.

My eyes shifted to the burning dummy rendition of me. Did the humans need to be quite so rough with their stitches? Most of mine were very neat and intriguing. I had not thought war would be so personal.

I had survived my first battle this night, and though I knew little of war, my response came unbidden. “Stairway pawns, you might tell your liege that he owes me one capturing.”

“We do not follow,” Seal replied after a beat.

My lips torsioned. “I would expect not.”