Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Bring. Take. Raise. Change. See.

Three princes, each, shall come to thee.

Monsters to guide kings to thrones,

To keep real monsters chained with blood and bone.

" K indly open," I shouted to the portcullis ahead.

King See's gateway seemed to sense my urgency, and screeched upward.

I rolled under until coming to a panting stop. I set my gaze at the base of the bulbous blobs who'd halted outside the closed-again portcullis.

"Well played, Lady Patch," Toil said. "We cannot pass inside these gates."

Sigil made a wet sound that epitomized nervousness with a touch of relief. "Our liege will be enraged."

Hex snapped his gums together, and I was hit with his frustration.

He said, "After last night too. I wouldn't have thought she could run so fast."

I hadn't run fast at all. I'd zig-zagged my way here nearly to the point of exhaustion. When one of the princes had gotten within a six-foot blink of catching me, I'd stopped dead on the spot, so they ended up ahead of me. Then I'd taken off again. The jerky sprint here had been a long and tiring one. "Until tomorrow night?"

The princes nodded, glaring to the top of the apartment—that was far more like a complete palace tonight—where they must know King See to be.

"Until tomorrow night," Toil said pleasantly. "Don't relax your guard with King Nothing."

I didn't answer. I wished they wouldn't insult him.

I patted the paw of the huge beast statues as I passed, and the beast purred in response. How unexpected and thrilling. Inside, stained glass now adorned the ceiling and windows, catching the soft glow from the lit chandeliers and candelabras.

I climbed the spiral stairs.

New portraits hung at intervals, their bold colors contrasting in reds, dark blues, and blacks with slashes of beige. Mournful music—violins, I thought—drifted from a hall above, and the sound was left behind as I continued to climb to King See's dome at the peak of his palace.

"I am blinded to everything possible," came his cold murmur when I arrived. "You come too soon for a newly healed mind."

"Good evening, King See. I've blinded you a lot in recent times, and I'm sorry to add more to a hard time. I hope this conversation will be short in duration, and first, let me say how greatly I feel the sacrifice of what you did in bringing me here for my one-month rest. I have tried my best to imagine how it would be to see all possibilities everywhere and then nothing but the current moment and surroundings in the next breath. The only verdict I come to is that your discomfort must have been intense like that of waking as I did."

"Waking in a different skin, Perantiqua?" Again he purred the start of my name, then dragged out the last of it like a thirsty man in dire need of water.

My chest ached at his words. Different skin. Yet he wasn't wrong, even if the words stung at my fears. "Waking in a different skin, sir," I replied.

"And why does sorrow fill your voice, rarest of minerals?"

I shook my head. "It is of no matter." I'd confessed some of my difficulties to Bring's princes, and yet confessing them to See felt significant. If he said the wrong words, then I wasn't sure how I'd be rid of them.

"I have asked you a question, and I would see it answered."

"I would ask that you don't demand an answer, sir," I said quietly. "Though I'm sure you could force the matter."

King See toyed with the hole in the skull under his hand. "I could, but I take care not to force possibilities now, so you may have all possible choices in this matter."

I took a breath. "I admire this about you, sir. I hope such choice is graciously offered in another area too."

"You speak of the one-fifth snuffing share. It is yours, mistress. I saw its removal as beneath my notice for a time, and my princes were admonishing about leaving the clutter there, but it seems you care for such clutter?"

I leaned back on the wall, feeling the soft night breeze on my bare shoulders. "I guess kings don't need to bother with possessions."

His tone darkened. "Do you refer just to my supposed needs, mistress, or that of other kings? Have you sought audience with King Bring?"

"No," I said honestly. "I have not seen King Bring."

"Just his princes. Do not seek to play me with choice words. Your blindness burns pathways in my mind, catching sparks on whomever you come in contact with as surely as if fire explodes in the sky."

"I do not mean to hoodwink you, sir. I have seen the princes, yes, but not King Bring, as you know. This is partly why I've come tonight."

The skull under his hand cracked. "And why have you come? Speak no more in riddles and cryptisms."

I'd been doing that? "My apologies. I speak of the matter of you claiming me." I winced as the words left my puffy lips, and I felt more than saw the sudden stillness of the blurred king on his throne.

"What of it?" he snapped.

I was pressed against the wall by the balloon of his power, and my head was turned. I sucked in a breath and lifted a hand to my chest at a sudden tightness there. I wore a strange laced-up top with black jeans, and I could feel my breasts pressing against the firmness of the top with each frantic breath.

"My apologies, mistress," he murmured. The pressure eased. He asked in a plainer tone, "What of it?"

I remained as I was because speaking about claimings felt easier in such a position. "I do not understand much of claimings and… I've been told that when a king claims a person, then what they're really doing is choosing a princess. To be theirs."

"Are you blushing, mistress? I believe I hear it in your voice."

I lifted a hand to my turned cheek. "I am."

A low moan. "I would look upon your dark blush, and yet your mind is newly healed. So your voice, like the softest sea wave, must suffice."

His words were like those whispered between companions, and so eloquently and casually uttered too. Nothing like the awkward words of the occasional schoolboy brave enough to approach me. "Sir, I am grateful for your help. You never had to do half as much. But I do not seek a tiara."

"Would that there could be a tiara in existence exquisite enough to adorn your head, maiden."

"Sir," I said with difficulty. "Please call me mistress again and not maiden."

"I hear the blush, though, and this is a wondrous thing. If calling you maiden achieves this, then I must call you such, and if you blush for me time and again, maiden, why do you not consider my claim?"

I frowned. "Are princesses meant to blush? I had thought a princess wasn't a wife." Bring's princes made the exchange seem impersonal.

"A wife? No, nothing so common as a wife."

My cheeks burned like wildfire. "I am but nineteen?—"

"You are an ancient thing, even warped and broken for a short time."

I didn't care to look very hard within because my mind couldn't consider what I was for too long. But did I feel ancient? Yes, I felt a lot older these days. "I haven't felt nineteen since before my mother started to wither, and less so since I woke after her death. Then less again since the last slumber." I frowned. He was right. I felt very old and not nineteen at all now I thought about it. I spoke differently and could do all manner of things.

My breathing calmed somewhat, and the tightness in my chest eased. I'd do my best not to choose this top again, though I'd begun to suspect I didn't get a choice in what I wore. "I don't wish you to feel that your claiming has been discarded, King See."

"Yet you do so hastily."

I clenched my jaw. "And you claimed me hastily." The words were gone from my mouth, though I tried to snatch them back. Oh no. I'd just snapped at a monster king. "I?—"

He was standing. I could just tell.

"You blush for me time and again. You fidget and fret as I call you maiden," the immortal mused. "Could it be that you reject my claim because I did not woo you as you might believe you deserve?"

"It's n-not that."

He sat again. "If only I could see possibilities in this moment. My heart pounds at the unknown. Uncertainty sharpens me and blunts me by turn. How strange to flounder and flail. How powerful the trivial choice becomes when blind to before and during and after. Mistress, perhaps it is my interest to reset things between us. Will you agree to clean the slate so to speak? It would be as if I'd never claimed you, and if you had never rejected me. You would be as you were, and I would be as I was. If you could agree to this, then I will manage better not to shackle you where you stand until you agree to be my princess. I take care to allow all possibilities, and yet that is not what I want to do when it comes to you. I feel an odd urge to abandon what I have done for so long."

My breaths quickened again at his words, and the tightness returned to my chest, and yet I sensed See believed he'd offered me a very fair deal. At the very least, I was glad he'd been honest. I stared down the stairs, wondering if I should run, but this was his palace, and his beasts guarded the door.

"I will wipe the slate clean, King See, if you allow me to keep the one-fifth of your snuffing share and agree it safe from future attempts from you to take or destroy it by any means possible."

"Yes, yes. And you will not allow yourself to be claimed by another."

"I don't know what to say to that. That is a large request, and how can I be sure what I would want to do in the future?"

"Mistress, you try me, and I would not lose my hold over my power while your mind is fragile."

"I don't intend to be claimed by anyone, but wiping the slate clean would require I be free in all respects," I told him in a shaking voice. "I don't understand how this world works, and I don't know what it means to be unclaimed."

"It means that you are not mine," he said savagely. "And I made the decision hastily, mistress, because a surge of great feeling overcame my senses in a moment where I wondered if you would waken."

I kept my voice soft. "Please do not mistake my rejection for failure to see what an honor you bestowed upon me, hasty or otherwise."

"An honor you do not wish for. Are you not infatuated with me, then?"

"I haven't seen you, so I don't see how I could be."

"Bah," he said. "What has infatuation to do with looks?"

"I thought it had everything to do with them, sir."

"We are creatures of dusk, mistress. We become infatuated with chilling horrors and monstrous powers and uniquities that snatch at our morbid curiosity. You have seen my horror, you have seen my power, and you may have glimpsed a small few of my uniquities. These are the harmless things that one might find themselves contemplating as darkness turns gold and they lie alone and unusually restless in bed. This is infatuation. Are you infatuated with me?"

I would have thought those things to be inspired by love, barring the power, which I could see originating from a shallower sentiment. "What is love?"

"Love," he echoed. "A trivial thing easily broken. That is not what a king is allowed to feel for a princess, lest it distracts from his purpose. And an immortal king knows better than to believe in love in the first place."

Love wasn't what King Bring felt for his princess, by all accounts. I felt more and more glad not to have accepted the fate of princess. Love perhaps wasn't a kingly notion. In the world I'd known, love existed, and companionship was prevalent. I would have the warmth of those connections if I could, and that must mean my future was not beside a king.

King See sighed. "I accept your terms, mistress. Now what is your answer?"

"Consider the slate cleaned," I replied.

"One more thing."

I rested my head back on the stone wall. "Yes?"

"I will not look upon you this night for the same reason I have kept my princes from you this week. Your mind is newly healed, and I wish not to push the confines, though Bring has not given you such courtesy."

"My mind feels fine, sir."

"How would you know?"

"It shimmers and squeezes when overtested."

"Indeed? And do you feel this now?"

"Terribly, sir."

He cursed. "The other princesses slept for far longer. Most can look upon me, if not all into me."

"How long?"

"Varying amounts. Fifty years for… one of them."

I couldn't hope to compete with that. "It's a wonder you would want me for princess when I can't come any closer than this."

"You are ancient, but freshly so. Do not assume what may bring wonder to an immortal king. This is the thing I would ask of you. When next we meet, if your mind is sound, I would look upon you."

He asked for a lot. That was one thing I didn't wish to give right now. But he'd handled my rejection with more grace than he royally had to. He'd seen my monster form before, too, and I recalled how he'd soothed my worries.

"For how long would you look upon me?"

"For a night entire."

An entire night? "Why would anyone wish to look at another for an entire night?"

"You are not a mere another."

I needed an escape hole from Toil, Sigil, and Hex until their liege accepted my offer. "I can do that."

"And will you wear these same clothes that torture me with their creaks at your every breath?"

I glanced down, then covered my swelling chest with both hands. The thought of him looking at me for an entire night in these clothes was unsettling to a powerful degree. Thankfully, that wasn't an issue. "Sir, I have an inkling that the guest's suitcase I dress from doesn't let me choose what I wear."

"Then no matter," he answered, as if I'd told him a cloudy day was forecasted. "There is no tiara fit for your head, and there is no dress that could compete. Only moonlight might dress you as you deserve if it were to touch your naked skin."

"Why do you speak such words to me?" I whispered.

He did not answer, and as he tended to do this, I'd assumed an answer wasn't coming and had turned to leave when King See deigned to reply.

"I find myself powerless not to," he told me.

As I walked down the stairs, I pondered that only a foolish person would hear the words "powerless" and "king" in the same sentence and not feel wary.