Page 47 of Of Monsters Of Kings

“Yet you do so hastily.”

I clenched my jaw. “And you claimed me hastily.” The words were gone from my mouth, though I tried to snatch them back. Oh no. I’d just snapped at a monster king. “I?—”

He was standing. I could just tell.

“You blush for me time and again. You fidget and fret as I call you maiden,” the immortal mused. “Could it be that you reject my claim because I did not woo you as you might believe you deserve?”

“It’s n-not that.”

He sat again. “If only I could see possibilities in this moment. My heart pounds at the unknown. Uncertainty sharpens me and blunts me by turn. How strange to flounder and flail. How powerful the trivial choice becomes when blind to before and during and after. Mistress, perhaps it is my interest to reset things between us. Will you agree to clean the slate so to speak? It would be as if I’d never claimed you, and if you had never rejected me. You would be as you were, and I would be as I was. If you could agree to this, then I will manage better not to shackle you where you stand until you agree to be my princess. I take care to allow all possibilities, and yet that is not what I want to do when it comes to you. I feel an odd urge to abandon what I have done for so long.”

My breaths quickened again at his words, and the tightness returned to my chest, and yet I sensed See believed he’d offered me a very fair deal. At the very least, I was glad he’d been honest. I stared down the stairs, wondering if I should run, but this was his palace, and his beasts guarded the door.

“I will wipe the slate clean, King See, if you allow me to keep the one-fifth of your snuffing share and agree it safe from future attempts from you to take or destroy it by any means possible.”

“Yes, yes. And you will not allow yourself to be claimed by another.”

“I don’t know what to say to that. That is a large request, and how can I be sure what I would want to do in the future?”

“Mistress, you try me, and I would not lose my hold over my power while your mind is fragile.”

“I don’t intend to be claimed by anyone, but wiping the slate clean would require I be free in all respects,” I told him in a shaking voice. “I don’t understand how this world works, and I don’t know what it means to be unclaimed.”

“It means that you are not mine,” he said savagely. “And I made the decision hastily, mistress, because a surge of great feeling overcame my senses in a moment where I wondered if you would waken.”

I kept my voice soft. “Please do not mistake my rejection for failure to see what an honor you bestowed upon me, hasty or otherwise.”

“An honor you do not wish for. Are you not infatuated with me, then?”

“I haven’t seen you, so I don’t see how I could be.”

“Bah,” he said. “What has infatuation to do with looks?”

“I thought it had everything to do with them, sir.”

“We are creatures of dusk, mistress. We become infatuated with chilling horrors and monstrous powers and uniquities that snatch at our morbid curiosity. You have seen my horror, you have seen my power, and you may have glimpsed a small few of my uniquities. These are the harmless things that one might find themselves contemplating as darkness turns gold and they lie alone and unusually restless in bed. This is infatuation. Are you infatuated with me?”

I would have thought those things to be inspired by love, barring the power, which I could see originating from a shallower sentiment. “What is love?”

“Love,” he echoed. “A trivial thing easily broken. That is not what a king is allowed to feel for a princess, lest it distracts from his purpose. And an immortal king knows better than to believe in love in the first place.”

Love wasn’t what King Bring felt for his princess, by all accounts. I felt more and more glad not to have accepted the fate of princess. Love perhaps wasn’t a kingly notion. In the world I’d known, love existed, and companionship was prevalent. I would have the warmth of those connections if I could, and that must mean my future was not beside a king.

King See sighed. “I accept your terms, mistress. Now what is your answer?”

“Consider the slate cleaned,” I replied.

“One more thing.”

I rested my head back on the stone wall. “Yes?”

“I will not look upon you this night for the same reason I have kept my princes from you this week. Your mind is newly healed, and I wish not to push the confines, though Bring has not given you such courtesy.”

“My mind feels fine, sir.”

“How would you know?”

“It shimmers and squeezes when overtested.”

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