Page 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

So many undoings to be undone

In body

In mind

In soul

In queendom.

O f course I understood that I had not resided in my body as such for any number of hours, for I felt a great returning to my being suddenly, along with a return of some thought and awareness. Daylight slumber.

I could not be sure, such was my disorientation after my bodily union with See.

See.

I opened my eyes with colossal effort. His body was curled around my back. We must have toppled to the side after finding completion, for I distinctly recalled being on all fours before that. My slight shift informed me that See was still inside me.

My lips curved, and then the small amusement faded and was lost in the soul seriousness of what we had shared. “Completion.”

Completion indeed. I had known our bodies would share more than physical pleasure when we submitted at last. I had known, and so I had feared.

But See loved me.

We would work to move beyond our love together, toward a feeling more immortal and stronger, but we would do this together.

Soft sun rays battled through the open windows, shoving against cool moonlight to get within.

“Dying day,” I rasped. “Though I feel that I have slumbered an age.”

“You sleep through two days, yes.”

King See, though breathing, did not stir at the voice.

I pulled away from See, feeling his cock slide from between my thighs. I sat on the edge of the huge bed, my feet dangling. “King Bring.”

The king sat on the armchair by the cold fireplace. Tiny slivers of crimson made their weak rally through the cracked blackness that otherwise had claimed his skin. He appeared charred, like meat roasted too close to the flames. The teeth that used to grace his feet had fallen out and left ulcerous craters behind. King Bring had covered his body as much as possible.

“I have sat here for some time,” he said in a frail voice that I could not ever have imagined of him. “I have sat here and thought many things. Firstly of killing See for stealing away my fate, and then of killing you for betraying our fate. Then I recalled that I cannot kill immortals without a curse that I am too weakened to remake. So then I dreamed about all the ways I could maim both of you. How I might make each of you witness the others’ pain. I thought of how I am so close to death that my cock would not twitch at the bare sight of you, though I willed it to.”

The king sighed heavily, then coughed as though soot filled his lungs. Some escaped his cracked and black lips. “A cockless king. A king who has lost. And why? I considered my mistakes next, much in the way mortals might do on their deathbeds. I have made mistakes, and soon I will die.”

King Bring was unique among kings. He was the only king who had tricked himself into believing that his obsession with purpose had not corrupted him. Take had tried to mitigate his corruption. Raise had carried no care about corruption because he could never fathom kingliness at all. See and Change were dedicated to their chosen path and entertained no illusion about what they were.

But King Bring had chosen to save, and then justified any number of misdeeds in the name of such. Murdering his princess. Trapping a queen into union. By his words, he might have killed me and See this day if in possession of the means to do so.

Near death, King Bring had looked at his denial. He might have chosen to die with it, but he had chosen not to.

He had adhered to the pact of saving when no other king did, even if misguided along the way. As ever, his vision of a vibrant world was the kingly vision I agreed with most. He had wanted this so very badly. King Bring had become a desperate king for a time, but perhaps that was not who he was without the burden of the world’s saving upon his shoulders. “How should we save you, King Bring?”

He looked up, and I almost winced at the cracking sound that must be the back of his neck.

“But save me, fair queen?”

I said, “You were the first king that I understood, King Bring. The world you wish for echoes in my wishes too. Saving had become a desperate matter of late, but we all become carried away sometimes. I would not wish to ever see you dead, nor any monster.”

He licked his lips, and his tongue was yellowed. “You know how to save me?”

“I must conquer you, sir. That is how matters must go.”

Bring’s face contorted. “You wish me to surrender my kingdom?”

“Ancients wish it, sir. I am merely driven by them. They gave me the power and means to conquer four other kings. Do you believe yourself a king among kings?”

His gaze slid to King See, then back. “I do, as did every king. Such ego comes with a crown, including yours.”

“Ego is sometimes necessary when great burden exists,” I answered.

The king nodded. “I see the world sliding to ruin.”

“It is. Pawns and kings are a’plagued. I fathom that princesses might soon succumb. Then King See. Then myself. This could be the end. Sir, if you will not be conquered by a queen, then conquer yourself in the name of saving, for I know that is what drives you always.”

He closed his eyes and I watched the last of his eyelashes fall away. “I have,” the king hushed in a puff of soot. “I have been driven so, and to what end? To the end that I poisoned my princess and became vain with kingdom? I have prided myself on saving. I have fallen on ruin instead.”

“Your actions need not be rendered to one moment unless you wish to give up. Hold to thoughts of what we shall do next. This mistake will be nothing if you move forward with the wisdom gained of it.”

He watched me, breaths labored. One strong wind might reduce him to dust. My chest tightened, for I had meant what I said about kings needing to live. Or my power would be incomplete. Then, I could not do whatever was needed. I felt certain of this.

King Bring could not die.

“I cannot see how this unravels,” the king said at last.

I slipped off the bed and padded over. I picked up his hand and patted the back. “But I can. I understand you, and our next step. So trust that I have the best intentions for monsterdom. Trust that I respect and regard your kingliness.” Because he was a king that would resist conquering at all costs, I added, “And trust that I will conquer you whether you agree or not. You are very weak and crumbly, King Bring.”

His shoulders shook and he sooted a low laugh, breaking off the sound with a pained wheeze. “Then you will shackle me, Queen of Monsters. You will shackle me, and all will be well.”

I smiled. “Yes, all will be well. Let me help you.”

A knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” I called.

Valetise entered. “My queen, I have come to dress you.”

She gestured at a screen.

“I will not be long,” I said to the king.

I joined Valetise. “I did not need the second daylight outfit after all.”

“No, my queen. Before dawn on the first night of the gala, it became clear that the outfit would only be needed if matters between the two of you were uncertain.”

In case See had needed more persuasion. “I see.”

I used the basin and cloths behind the screen to scrub at some of our lovemaking—for lovemaking was what it had been. Never again, but once and treasured.

I faced Valetise and frowned at the dress in her hands. Not a dress, as such. The trousers were loose, but made of sturdy fabric that would not easily tear. She tended to dress me in fragile materials unless my emotional state did not allow it. The tunic was partly dress and hung to the knee. Nogs fastened the high collar and large slits parted the garment from knee to hip to allow easy movement.

“Beautiful,” I remarked, then lifted my gaze to Valetise’s. This was not the stately and fierce conquering gown I had expected.

She met my gaze. “Beautiful… and functional.”

Fighting attire. King Bring would resist. I inhaled and straightened my back. “Beauty without functionality is a wasted thing. True magnificence resides in being functionally crafted.”

Valetise curtsied, and then set to braiding my hair. The braid was certainly beautiful, too, and I could feel how tight she made it.

Functional.

My wardrobe monster prepared me for war.

I tuned into the king on the other side. He had not moved. His breaths had calmed somewhat. I could not detect any tension radiating from him, nor any malintent. Curious.

Valetise curtsied again. “Done, my queen. Princess Take asked me to inform you that she has transported over King Bring’s shackles.”

“That was farseeing of her. Excellent.” I strode out from the screen and approached the king.

His eyes were bloodshot and yellowed as he swayed on the armchair. “Magnificent, as ever.”

I dipped my head. “Let us walk together, sir.”

I was a monster queen, and guiding a king through the gothic corridors was no strenuous task. Rather, not breaking him was the harder task. I kept my support under his arm light and spread my hand wide so as not to dig parts of his arm away.

I walked as he shuffled, and when the king could not shuffle further, I cradled him in my arms to complete our journey.

Has Been and Is opened the doors for me, and when I entered the lounge, my other sick pawns lined the walls.

Three kings awoke at my appearance. Princesses stood from their chairs. All princesses.

I frowned at Princess Change. “King See ordered you locked in the dungeon during daylight hours.”

“Yes, my queen,” said Princess Raise. “But pawns were too sick to see the order carried out.”

I considered the princess of ruin. “And what did you do during daylight? Let me guess. You went digging.”

She did not break her numbness. The princess was digging at the last of my patience. I had been too lenient with her, and that must change.

I shot out a stitch to bind her hands behind her back. Fear and panic flared in her gaze, and I relished the lack of despondency. “Princess Bring, take her to the dungeons and lock her there.”

Princess Bring had stared steadfastly at her king cradled in my arms. “Y-yes, my queen. Will he live?”

King Bring cracked open an eyelid. “Do you wish me to live, princess who was mine?”

“I do, of course!” she cried. “I would never wish a monster to die.

“That is the beauty of you that I have not appreciated until too late,” he wheezed. “I am sorry, Princess Bring. How quickly I became undeserving of you.”

The princess started to wobble her upset.

“The dungeon,” I reminded her softly. “All will be well once he is shackled. If mending is fated, then mending you will have.”

Though I never would have seen a repair of union between the two royals.

Princess Bring slimed away with Princess Change. Both princesses cast wide-eyed looks at their kings over their shoulders. And neither king ignored them. Not the dying king, and not King Change either.

I carried King Bring to the new copper panel carted here from my conservatory. The shackles were in place. I set him against the panel, then stood back. King Bring wavered on his feet, then fell hard to both knees. That will do nicely .

“Your key, sir,” I hissed, unable to hide the menace of obsession.

His left hand was lifted by ancients, and as his fist was unfurled, a key was revealed. The key to the bringing kingdom. Ah. Bliss awaited me—the end of another obsession. I took the key.

I might have walked past this key any number of times and never guessed the truth, for at first glance, the key was nothing more than a simple brass leaf. At closer glance, the tiny notches on the leaf’s stem were apparent, and only they gave away the importance of this object.

Five keys.

I used my power to stand King Bring up again, and this time the shackles slammed shut, satisfied that obsession was met. I bound the shackles with a stitch from my hip.

“Five kings are conquered,” I rasped. I would need to trip through hellebores without delay. Perhaps I should not have shackled him here, but I had three pawns who could transport me to hellebores in the space of a few seconds.

Strangely… I felt no squeezing or pressing on my mind at all.

“King Bring, how do you fare? How goes your plague?” I stood in front of him.

He hacked a weak cough. “I detect no change.”

I strode around the perimeter of the room to inspect pawns. No visible change .

King Change started to laugh, and that confirmed that which I preferred to deny. “The conquering has not solved the plague.”

“Was there more to conquering than the simple shackling of kings?” mused King Take.

King Change’s laughter swelled, and I tuned the sound out to focus on his brother.

I answered, “There was an order to the conquering of kings. I had to conquer them absolutely. They were then shackled and stitched.” But each time, I gained power and tripped through hellebores.

Usually completing a set of monsters—whether pawn or princess—resulting in an exponential power increase.

Something was wrong.

Princess Raise made the connection at the same time. “King See is not here.”

I exhaled my relief, quietly so as not to alarm simpler monsters. “Is, Has Been, and Will Be, kindly fetch your liege from his chambers. He may not stir, but carry him here, and clothe him beforehand.”

The pawns bowed stiffly, then limped and hobbled away, a far cry from their usual easy lumbering gait.

Five kings must be shackled, that must be it, for I had never truly shackled and stitched King See. While no cause for alarm, I could connect the sloppiness of not doing so. Kings must be treated the same in obsession. All details must be adhered to—securing the key from their left hand as they knelt on two knees. Conquering in fullness. Shackling and stitching too. I would shackle See tonight. Just for the sake of satisfying ancients. Kings would not always be shackled, and See hardly ever. Eventually, all kings might come and go in the tending of their old territories on my behalf, akin to barons, perhaps. Once I believed them trustworthy, and once I was unshakeable in power and connection, then they might move freely.

Princess Bring returned, and she immediately slimed to her king. “But is there anything I might do to lift your pain?”

He asked on a sigh, “No, my princess, there is naught. Tell me, though, did you miss me? Did thoughts of me fill your head as thoughts of you filled mine?”

I grimaced. Princess Raise and Princess Take muffled their snorts. Other kings grinned, and every single pawn present found somewhere else to look.

“There was a rise and fall of feelings toward you that confused,” the princess admitted with an embarrassed squelch. “But I must confess that I spent most of my time satiating the towering lust of my body with pawns. There had been such a building up, you see.”

Her king took a long moment to absorb that. “With pawns? But which one?”

His princess glanced behind. “Why, all of them, my king. I did not wish them to grow jealous of each other, so I split my time evenly. And efforts, for if I let one empty between my blobs, then I had to let them all take turns, or they might feel lesser in my affections.”

King Bring’s mouth fell ajar. He dragged in a breath. He spluttered, “ You … they have filled you? For how long?”

The princess rolled her top blob in a nod. “Yes, my king. For as long as I started to shed the cloak. But I am satiated now. I suppose any future lust must be dealt with, but for now?—”

“You will not satiate yourself with pawns,” the king snapped—or tried to in his weakness.

The princess stilled, finally seeming to realize that her king was not impervious to her lust-reducing affairs. “You. My king, can it be that you are jealous?”

“I am reddened and greened by it,” he snarled, coughing after. “You are my princess.”

“ Sir, ” she gasped. “You are jealous over me. ’Tis a great gift.”

His chest heaved, and his yellowed eyes were furious as they set on her. If not for shackles and plague, the king would be ravishing her certainly.

What a happy ending.

“A great gift,” she said sadly. “A great goodbye.”

“There need not be goodbyes between us, my princess,” Bring said. “Perhaps we are done with those.”

The princess took a damp breath. “Some good came of your attempt to kill me. We must have needed the shaking. We had drifted so. How foolish we were.”

“ I was,” he answered. “You have never been a fool. I will never stop trying to make amends for my attempts to murder you.”

Princess Bring stretched out some of her blob to pat his cheek. “King Bring, you are forgiven already. You must not take any of this upon yourself. We were victims of ruin, after all.”

Goodness, she was far more forgiving than I would have been in her slime. That was her beauty, truly, and yet there was such leaping in her regard. The princess had moved from spending lust with pawns to feeling confused and then to complete forgiveness in the space of a week. What has spurred the change?

There was something.

“What ruin do you speak of, my princess?” Bring whispered so pitifully.

“Shackling has not altered your state,” the princess was saying, apparently not having heard his question. “I had guessed that shackles were not the answer, but I had hoped. Our queen does so many miraculous things.”

She glanced back to me. “You will save monsterdom. You saved me. ” Princess Bring glanced at the other princesses. “What friendships have been enjoyed.”

Then, I knew.

I did not know how she intended to do it. But I knew what the princess would do.

“Princess Bring!” I strode forward.

A muffled shattering of glass stopped me. All monsters peered around for the source, while I only stared at the princess. I stared at her in horror as words spilled from her.

“You ail from the plague because you sampled a curse never consumed,” she blurted to her king. “Our queen did not wish to believe the truth, and so she created other solutions, but the matter was ever as simple as first thought. The curse had to be consumed by me, so that kings and their princes might be saved. Do not blame yourself for creating such a curse, my king. King Change set ruin upon us long ago, and if you think back as I did, then you shall see how our union then frayed. What we first shared was true. Who knows what delights we might have shared across centuries if not for the cruelty of a king. If only we could go back to that time again.”

King Bring stared at the princess in horror. “What are you saying, my princess? Ruin from Change? How could this be so?” He blanched. “Where is the curse? Tell me where the curse is!”

She pushed the vial out from her body, and the glass clinked against the stones, but did not shatter.

No! “That cannot be,” I blurted. “My mother hid it within my queendom.”

King Change started to laugh again, and while he would find the death of a princess very amusing, his timing implied something different.

“Princess Change was never looking for her bouquet,” I said, my mouth dry.

“If not a queen’s death, then a princess’s death will do nicely,” King Change sneered, then returned to his laughter.

The door opened to admit his princess.

I blurred to her and pushed her to the wall, my hand gripping her throat. “ Where did you find it? ”

She cracked a cold grin, her eyes empty of goodness. “I found nothing. For all my digging, I found nothing. I returned to your queendom today in desperation to find anything that might weaken you, and your mother offered up the vial from her grave. She gave it to me. ”

My grip loosened.

The princess rubbed her throat. “Your own mother sought to poison you. Though when Princess Bring searched me before pushing me into the dungeon, I believed all was lost. She was so eager to kill herself and ‘saving monsterdom’ that she failed to lock me in. She should not be the one dying right now. It should be you.”

Princess Bring melted to the floor. Her color was changing. There was no rapid loss of moisture as in the faking of her death. She was boiling alive. Her pants became moan, which became cries, then screams.

I rushed to her side and fell to my knees. I was a queen of monsters, and monsters had to live. The truth of this was unshakeable in me. “You will live.”

I poured power into her. Or tried to. My power slipped off the surface of her.

“Save her,” her king choked out.

Their union had been mended too little too late. “ I will,” I said on a gale of wind that knocked over those closest to me.

“ The queen would not save her,” Candor said sadly.

I ignored her and tried to stab power through the barrier of the poison next to no avail. I could not find an entrance, and the all-seeing parts of my mind whispered that there was no entrance, because there was no cure.

Pawns were crowded around me. Princesses, excluding Change, hovered around their dying friend.

Her screams wrenched at the deepest parts of me. Bubbles began to appear in her, popping at their height.

And then, quite horribly and suddenly, her screams were halted. The boiling stopped and steam rose from the puddle of her melted blobs and slime. The steam rose high and carried the fluid of her remains away, leaving only a tiny trace of dust behind.

Pawns and princesses and kings and a queen stared at the dust.

“No,” I said numbly. “No.”

There was no other sound.

A princess was dead.