Page 123 of Of Monsters Of Kings

I owned all five snuffing shares. “This was the purpose behind my obsession.”

“Lady,” Will Be said hoarsely. “Lady, how is it that I feel your will in me?”

I shook my head. “I can’t say.”

Toil said, “I feel it also. I feel… I feel that I should do your will. What brought this on?”

I didn’t tell them of the snuffing shares. “Do all of you feel this?”

“Yes,” Huckery snapped. “What trickery is this?”

“No trickery,” I answered. “I don’t understand either. Do you still feel the purpose of your kings?”

Fifteen nods.

They felt their kings’ purposes.

They felt my will.

“Which is stronger in you?” I dared to ask in my shock.

No one wished to answer.

Gangrel did at last. “I feel urgency to do your bidding, but there’s no option to relent in keeping my liege to his purpose.”

Sign was aghast. “We’ve become pawns. That’s what we are. We were princes, and now we’re the lady’s pawns. There has never been such a thing since the dawn of the new era.”

“Pawns,” scoffed Has Been. “We’re no such thing. No disrespect, lady, but you’re not even a princess.”

Valetise strode across the courtyard holding a cushion.

I stared at the item atop the cushion, and my mouth dried when she stopped before me.

“She is no princess, you fools,” Valetise said in a scathing voice. “And you are her pawns forevermore until the world ends or doesn’t. You are her pawns, and she is your queen.”

I picked up the black crown on the velvet cushion, and my ancient mind turned over pawns and snuffing shares and the warning of King See to never mention the changes of Hotel Vitale. I considered my growing power and slumbers and increasing ancientness. I thought of my reluctance to marry See’s purpose and lose my own, and then of my annoyance when kings and princes hadn’t showed proper respect of late. I’d felt irritated when See’s chair was more throne-like than mine during our dinner too.

“She is right. I am queen.”

That was the only logical explanation for a series of very impossible and magical happenings.

I put on the crown.

The earthquake that resulted after threw fifteen monsters to the ground and would have thrown Valetise had I not kept her upright.

As the princes staggered upright again, they gaped behind me. I turned to face the first level of the hotel.

The uniform studio doors were gone. A series of low archways had replaced them, studded with gems and precious metals and draped in hellebores. Above the fifteen archways were fifteen names; Has Been, Is, Will Be, Toil, Hex, Sigil, Huckery, Unguis, Loup, Gangrel, Sanguine, and Vassal.

I read the last three names—Sign, Seal, and Deliver. I faced Raise’s princes. Or my pawns. Or were they both?

“What’s going on here?” Seal demanded. “What are you?”

“I am Queen Perantiqua,” I replied. “And you are all my pawns. Each of you apparently has a home here, if you should choose it.”

“Our lieges shall know of this,” said Loup, and his comment wasn’t a threat, just a certainty.

I felt the truth of that and could only marvel at the choices that had driven me to this crown.

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