Page 3 of Of Brides Of Queens

Repeat. Since the very dusk after I received a crown and fifteen pawns, monsters had pestered me for answers, answers, answers.

Immortal kings spent twelve hundred years refining their purpose, but apparently, a queen had to beg for anything more than twelve hours.

A rage rumbled in me, and the black hellebores covering Mother’s grave rustled in support of my indignation. The princely pawns closest to her resting place cast furtive looks at the hellebores, and I couldn’t blame them for treating them much as a human may treat a rattle snake. Mother had yawned many treasures away into her grave during my months as a monster. Recently, she’d yawned the princes away, too, only to spit them out in coppered livery. They might not wish to repeat that experience.

I should reassure them not to worry, for if Mother wished to yawn them away, there was nothing they could do to escape her. Best not to feel nervous about certainties.

The squabbling in the courtyard had expanded to include growls, snarls, snaps, hisses, and some very rude squelches.

As with every dusk since queendom, this seemed a good time to escape. “I have many queenly things to do.”

I swept along the second-floor landing in a swirl of white material. My heels echoed on the gem-studded copper floor, but the hollow booms didn’t block out the questions flung after me.

“Lady Queen!” cried Prince Gangrel. “A letter from my liege.”

I scoffed. A letter from King Take was bound to bind me up in knots. He wanted to toy with me indeed.Not in this fragile state, sir.

“Is now a good time to deliver a response to our liege about your eternal servitude?” inquired Prince Seal.

I’d visited King Raise in his kingdom and barely escaped. I would never return there—not free and not as a slave.

A howl. Prince Huckery. His words would be a jumbled, beastly mess to most of the other princes, but I’d become ancient enough to understand them.

“Our liege wants to remind you of his ire,” said the werebeast.

I rolled my eyes. King Change would be my best friend if I set my purpose to ruin and my best enemy if I chose to save the world instead.

Their shouted questions grew fainter as I climbed the sweeping stairs, careful not to tread on the hellebores encroaching on the steps.

The blooms had five petals, and never failed to remind me of five kings, so I directed my weary thoughts to them. “Dear hellebores, please tell me why one king wants to chain me and one wishes to snuff me out. Another wants to toy with my mind, then yet another wants to toy with my body. And the fifth? Hewants to—” I stopped myself, just barely, from finishing that thought with “love me.”

That was the exact opposite of what King See wanted to do, and this was a bitter point between us.

I amended, “Twokings want to toy with my body.” One for power and the other for… uncomplicated pleasure.

The words didn’t feel exactly honest. “One king wants to toy with my body. One king wants me for princess, which would regrettably erase my purpose and will. He would like my intellectual and sexual companionship, but without any love.”

I exhaled. No wonder a queen had no answers.

“Our liege wishes very much to know how your purpose might inform his, Queen Patch!”

I wrenched to a halt at the top of the sweeping stairs at the faint shout from the prince of King See.

The king who wished for many things with me, but never love. His princes had not pestered me a single time in the last week. I had thought fondly of the orders of silence King See must have given them. Surely because he understood how uncentered and drowning I must feel upon becoming a queen.

But tonight his princes had joined the others in pestering me. Had King See’s understanding expired? And could I understand from his question that King See not only wished to know my purpose, but wished to know so that he might formhispurpose at long last?

I refused to forsake my purpose to become See’s princess, and I shuddered at the idea of him forsaking his purpose for mine.

Yet King See believed I was the “missing part” to the saving or ruining of the world. He believed that I would make any number of things possible. He was ready to forsake his desires and ambitions for mine.

The feeling that inspired was monstrous. This didn’t seem a healthy start to what might still prove a long and meaningful relationship.

Didn’t he know that any monster could wear a crown? No one should give up their purpose for me… ever.

His question had sparked a hint of fury in me, and so I gathered my voice and called back, “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 copper crown chose that moment to flop over my forehead, so I pushed up the ill-fitting thing and somewhat stomped into the conservatory.