Page 8

Chapter Eight

Time and seasons

Rhyme and reasons.

I had watched her for some time. Firstly in an attempt to understand the reason for her snooping, and then after for immortal amusement.

Princess Change lugged aside my bedside dresser. She peered behind tapestries next, then swept aside artworks before lifting candelabras to inspect the underside.

Princess Change lifted my mattress to squint beneath there, too, and I decided the watching should be done.

I summoned a rage. The rage was not real, so it did not shake and squeeze my queendom. But the princess would not doubt my feeling. Not everyone was discerning of such details.

“You dare to rummage in my private rooms?” I made sure to keep my voice terrible.

Princess Change’s shock and scream were a great delight.

She whirled, clenching her gardening apron over her black wedding gown. “Q-Queen Perantiqua!”

I pumped menace into slow steps forward. “Explain. Yourself.”

“I was cleaning,” she said, scrambling to put the bed between us. “Princess Bring was out?—”

I blurred forward and gripped her throat. “ Lies. Tell me what you seek.”

“My dried bouquet,” she screamed, and the way her legs kicked told me that I had lifted her bodily from the ground.

Goodness.

I lowered her and evaporated my rage and menace. “Ah, I see. You snoop and sneak to steal that which gave me power. A spy in my midst, you seek to weaken me.”

She was unsure what to do with the sudden evaporation of my fury.

I glanced at her after strolling a short distance away. “And now we have a problem, Princess Change, for you have betrayed my hospitality. That of a queen. There will be consequences for this choice.”

“Consequences?” she squeaked.

“But of course. You must have guessed what must happen if you were caught.”

Her face firmed, pulling at scar and mange. “I cared not if punishment would be had. I cared to find what I sought.”

“I fathom,” I mocked.

My interest was piqued, though, because I could not sense any yearning in her for punishment. There was a more typical apprehension of punishment instead that was very unlike how my werebeasts would react if in her position.

“You will deal with my king on this matter,” she bravely said, drawing herself tall.

My lips torsioned. “You have said that this is something you sought. You betrayed the nature of the deal I made with your king, and so you relinquished his protection too. We will deal directly.”

She had very little say. If the princess could reach her king, then there might have been hope for her, but I was glad when Princess Change did not waste my time begging and pleading.

The princess tilted her chin. “What is the price?”

“An answer, in fullness and truth.”

Fear glimmered in her eyes.

I said, “You mentioned that your king is a risk-taker and a pioneer of purpose. You have said that where other kings take a nibble, he takes a bite. You informed me that no one might ever know the true layers and scope of his plans. Here is the price, Princess Change. You will tell me what makes him a risk-taker and pioneer of purpose and what bites he takes. You will tell me of the layers and scopes of his plans.”

She staggered to sit on the bed. “I cannot do such a thing. I cannot . I am married to my king’s ruin.”

Ah. Here might be a way forward. I would get my answers about her king’s rhyme and reason this dawn. My next obsession was here, and I had no time left. But I would prefer she offer the information herself.

Ice entered my voice. “This conversation is one of ruin, Princess Change. If you find yourself unable to speak, then your words must be of a saving nature and impossible within the confines of your union. I will assess the way forward if you become seized that way. Until that time, speak in fullness and truth to pay for your spying behavior.”

She still did not speak.

Another method then.

“Mother,” I drawled. “Please show our guest to wherever you put people who are spies and who do not believe there should be consequences to their actions.”

Mother yawned the princess halfway down into the floor.

The princess screamed and thrashed her upper body. “What are you doing? Where is your queendom taking me?”

“Not my queendom,” I said. “My mother. And to where you will go, I cannot say. She has never swallowed a person into her walls forevermore in answer to my displeasure. Perhaps she will deposit you in stone for a century or two. Think how wild your haunting forest will become, princess.”

Horror struck the princess’s features. “But wild?”

Ah, here was the way to go about this.

“Wild,” I purred with relish. “Wild as the world reborn. Saved, in fact.”

Her breath quickened. “No. I will answer your question. I will answer!”

I crossed my arms. “Mother, what do you say?”

There was a whisper from the walls. A whisper, no less. “Mother? Are you talking now?”

The pictures on the walls rattled in response.

So the whispering was not her. Or she would have simply whispered again. The noise that had originated as hum was now whisper, and what might a whisper become in time? I had an inkling about what queendom noises may prove to be.

“You talk to her. You surely control her,” the princess shrieked.

I laughed. “Control my mother? Of course not. She is her own person, Princess, or have you not seen her grave in the courtyard? Start talking, and we shall see if Mother can be convinced to release you.”

The princess was undone. The promise of ruin had not lured her, though, nor even Mother trapping her in a stone prison, but a threat to her haunted forest had worked magnificently.

“My king is all the things I have said.” She hung her head. “He has dared to do what no other king considered.”

“You bore me, Princess. Speak plainly or be yawned away.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and muttered, “I am but a woeful creature filled with everything monstrous. I cannot resist the evilness that I am, and so I betray my king this night.”

Revolt rose in me. Woeful? Evil? How could she see herself thus?

Her exhale shook. “My king does not battle with humans; that is the answer to your question. He ensures to use them from time to time to play his part.”

Whatever could she mean? I had never seen King Change battle himself, but that was not unusual among kings. They only stepped from here to there with an occasional blur or stalking gait. “With what does he battle?”

“With himself.”

I had no time for riddles. “Mother, you might have her?—”

“No! I mean what I say! My king battles himself, and he…” No matter that her beloved haunted forest was under threat, the princess really did appear to be incapable of uttering the truth, married to ruin as she was.

A nudge was necessary after all. “Speak in fullness,” I thundered, pulsing my power forward at her.

The princess jerked straight, eyes widening as she shouted, “My king exacts his ruin on kings . Sometimes princess and pawn. This is what makes him a pioneer and risk-taker, for to ruin a king demands a toll on his very flesh.

I stilled in mind and body and released my power.

Princess Change sagged forward, still trapped in the floor.

I kept my tone neutral. “You say that he sacrifices his flesh so that he can deal out ruin on other monsters instead of humans.”

“Yes,” the princess whispered.

I considered that. “King See would glimpse it.”

“Not if a second sacrifice is made to blind him for the space of a blink while the ruin takes hold. King See’s power is not infallible.”

“And this is my value for King Change,” I murmured. “To be kept in a cage so that he need not sacrifice more of himself to blind See to his ruin.”

My instincts had warned that King Change had a hidden game. He had orchestrated the humans’ obsession with crafting terrible corn husk versions of me in a bid to tear at my self-esteem. He had commented strangely on how a little more ruin would have seen him succeed. And now I understood why. I had his reason—King Change believed he could end the world by attacking monsters instead of humans.

But I did not have his rhyme. For instance, if a little more ruin would have ensured his success in tearing down my self-esteem, then why did he not do it? “What are the limits of his ruin on monsters?”

She answered without help, “He is greatly weakened after doing so. For two nights and two days.”

Two nights and two days. If I had possessed fangs, they might have descended at the promise of a meal. “How does he pick and choose his targets?”

The princess trembled. “I cannot?—”

“Worry not, my power shall help you along.”

She blurted, “He watches the human matters of this city closely. He pays King Take for information on other monsters too.”

“What is the nature of his transactions with King Take?”

“My king gives him beastly humans to take from, so that the fanged king might pretend he is not wholly a monster.”

Hmm . King Change relied on King Take’s information, and King Take relied on Change’s beastly humans.

I could use that to my advantage. Now that I had the rhyme and reason of four kings, I could start to feel how they could be undone—how I could play on their dependance on each other.

“You will recite King Change’s ruining actions from the most recent to the oldest,” I told the princess, taking the armchair opposite the bed. “You will tell me all.”

Maybe in that time my shock at Change’s brilliance would lessen its hold on me. He was all the exemplary things his princess had said, and more.

No king had guessed at the layers of his plans.

Not even a queen.

“Most recently there was the matter of how he pushed ruin on King See during your shared intimacies in the conservatory of your queendom.”

I blinked. “You refer to the way See wrote upon my body and displayed me.”

“I do. Though my king never really knows how the ruin will manifest. He just set the intention of his ruin to come between the two of you.”

I blinked. “He was watching? How did he know King See would be there.”

She rolled her eyes, and I caught up. There were not many connections that passed me by these days, so I felt mildly ashamed not to have connected that King Change’s ruin had been the catalyst for King See’s sudden dusk visit in the name of ruin.

Goodness , that interaction with See, when he wrote upon my body, had nearly fractured our relationship entirely, as well as thrown King See into a violent spin. “Continue.”

“My king gifted the ignorant King Bring with a boost of power, which allowed Bring to craft a curse that would claim an immortal life.”

My heart thudded.

The princess continued, detailing acts of ruin upon unions, and acts of ruin upon kings. She spoke of the deepening divide between various monsters, from princes to princesses to kings, as though the orchestration of the divide were a priceless work of art.

And it was. A horrible, priceless, and terribly brilliant work of art. King Change was entirely to blame and congratulate for the sorry state of affairs between monsters. The divide was a work of centuries. A subtle and undetected ruin.

To add to his brilliance, Change’s sacrifices showed in every scar and piece of mange that covered him and, to a lesser extent, his princess. Yet no one had asked why Change’s appearance was altering so drastically. I, myself, had assumed that his appearance was a result of self-punishment.

Which was correct in a sense, but all punishment was toward a plan.

The princess fell into a chanting state as she recited her king’s ruin, and I could feel that this was in response to my queenly power over her.

There was no need for more threats, and I was largely speechless from what I had learned anyway.

King Change had set his ruin upon monsters nearly from his first immortal days, and so no wonder a pact to save had been no pact at all. No wonder they had not stood unified since touching left hand to olden rock.

The princess was speaking of how King Change worked on Princess Bring for a long time. He had been trying to sever her union to steal away King Bring’s princess-given power, but when Change had succeeded in creating indifference between them, he had then set out to do the same to other kings with various success.

All at once, I saw that Change was far more of a villain than I had believed. He was far more of a villain than me.

But I now possessed the rhyme and reason of the fourth king. And I saw. Yes, I did see. How the beginning must be.

There was no rhyme to how King Change’s ruin arose, as such—he merely seized opportunities as he saw them. But once he exacted ruin, there was a clear rhythm. One that rendered him weakened for two days.

I leaned back on the armchair.

I saw how to begin indeed.

The keys to Change’s kingdom would be mine.