Page 90 of Of Brides Of Queens
King Bring leaned forward. “Finish your thought. Please!”
“I cannot finish the thought. I must go on believing this conversation is the game of a king who wants me for concubine and no more. In this world of monsters, a king might only have one princess. You wish me for my body, sir, you have been most clear about that. I cannot depend upon what you say.”
His second mouth purred, and his words were a spring breeze, there one moment and gone the next. “I could convince you.”
I turned my head aside to catch my breath as an uncertain maiden might.
The clink of glass drew my focus back.
King Bring held a stoppered vial. I had seen his kitchen and watched him create curse and charm, and so I knew what the vial held. The black, sparking liquid within did not suggest charm.
I eyed the vial. “Is it a gift then?”
He gripped the vial tight, then shoved it into an inner pocket of his long coat. “Not a gift for you, young queen. Never a gift for you.”
A curse indeed. I stared at the vial. “I do not follow.”
I followed all too well.
The king patted the front of his coat. “This curse has eluded me for many months, and then in despair, the recipe became available to me. This is how a king will hold a new princess. This is how a king will become strong in saving.”
Bring ate every curse and charm he made to grow his power.
He pressed his lips together, and I held my demure princess act in place.
“You wish that I would drink from this vial and new possibilities would open?” I asked. “I would not open myself to any king’s power, sir. How could I trust the contents of that vial would not harm me? And even then, where would Princess Bring go?”
I had not expected him to divulge more, and he did not. Even a king could hardly confess murderous intentions for his princess.
“You would leave that to me,” he answered. “You know of the indifference between my princess and me. This would be a charm for her, really.”
The twisting of his reason was monstrous. I could nearly commend him for how many turns and bends he had navigated to convince himself that killing Princess Bring was a lovely gift instead of cold death.
As it was, I could not err in the role of pretty doll on a swing that existed in readiness to be drunk from because this king had created a curse that might kill an immortal. He could as soon use it on me. “I came here to discuss alliance. I am unsettled by what you reveal, sir.”
“Midnight is for uncertainty.”
In that, we could agree.
A wincing queen, I stood. “I return to my queendom.”
“Your mind is heavy with my words.”
“It is. Not the least of which is your refusal to ally with me unless I join with you in body if not princessdom, though I am vastly confused on how that could ever be.”
King Bring rose to his full height, and I saw a monstrous, crimson body to fantasize over, and a second mouth to explore. This quaint life in a vibrant kingdom could lure me overcenturies—as could the idea of him drinking under my dress. But while he might have created a curse to kill an immortal, there was no charm that existed to transform him into King See.
And so no sensual stirrings or mouth curiosities or quaint vibrancies mattered.
“I do not refuse you in alliance,” he murmured. “Yet that will never be all we are.”
Fright found me then because hebelieved this in fullness.
He had assumed a small victory, for I had not run screaming from here after the hints of his sinister plans. This midnight picnic would cost me in time, for the moon had witnessed my demure acts most certainly. She would deal out the dire consequences when it suited her.
I dipped in a shallow curtsey and could not hold back a grimace. I no longer wished to because such grimaces kept cold distance between me and the bringing King. “Good morning to you, sir.”
“Good morning to you, queen of magnificence.”
