Page 115 of Of Monsters Of Kings

He sucked in a breath, and I listened to his shallow breaths while crossing the room. The high back of the rusted, metal chair cooled my fevered skin.

King See took his seat after, and my chest squeezed the tiniest amount against the press of his power. Candles flickered between us, and the light caught at the burgundy velvet of his jacket and the silver of his cufflinks.

“Lady,” he said. “I have waited one week, and I promised to wait no longer. There is not much that makes sense in immortality. Patterns repeat, but there is no reason to how and when they do so. Impossible things come and go, and the part that kings play is unfathomable. But I do fathom one riddle never understood. I understand why I have experienced some pain in my past. Though blinder than ever before, I now connect why I remained alone among my married peers through the ages. You give sense to my lonely immortality, maiden. I feel certain you belong by my side. Perantiqua, you astonish and uproot me. In your company, I am inclined to forget my purpose. I would have you become Princess See. I sought to claim you once before, and you rejected my suit. I ask you again and with the greater feeling born of our deeper acquaintance. Be mine in mind and name. Agree to my hand.”

His words filled me to the brim with feeling.

How easy to simply agree on a whim of emotion. I wanted this to be as simple as that.

“King See, I’ve never asked you the question that I’ve asked other kings. I have been afraid of your answer, and so I shied from it, but I can do so no more. I have heard what other kings say of your purposeful removal from affecting fate, but I wish to hear what you have to say. What role do you play in the fate of the world?”

“This has naught to do with matters of the heart, maiden.”

I disagreed. We were speaking of fate after all.

When I didn’t answer, he leaned back on his seat—the back was higher than mine, and that did annoy me somewhat. I saw no reason why he should sit on a throne at dinner.

“My role,” he mused. “For a long time, I thought the answer resided in working to save it. I was driven to preserve my survival and that of my king peers and all monsters.”

I licked my lips. “What happened?”

He waved a hand in the air. “Nothing, mistress. No matter how we sought to save the world, our efforts resulted in nil. There was no strengthening of possibilities. No clear path formed to success. Every choice to cure famine or gather resources or to create technology or improve environment resulted in an equal and opposite tangle to keep the living creatures of this world in a dwindling place of looming extinction. Centuries of no progress despite the best efforts of immortal and magical kings. To this day, everyone still slides to their end. I saw that I’d become insane to expect a different result from the same action, and so I changed my action.”

A pitcher poured red wine into my goblet, and I nodded my thanks to it, then took a sip. The spiced wine burned down my throat. “There are those who would say you are the king of inaction. Is that the action you took?”

“Is that it then?” he demanded. “Are you ashamed to become princess to a king that is perceived to lack purpose?”

“I am not. I wish to understand. You have the ability to see that which most monsters could only dream of. What have you seen that made you change your mind?”

He answered, “I followed every artery and every vein, Lady Patch, and I saw that kings could choose to save the world for infinity and never win. They could seek to ruin the world for infinity and never win. They would not be allowed to win in either direction because there was something missing, an entire circulatory system. The answer was never for kings to ruin or save, so I decided to maintain the state of the world most carefully for the day when the missing piece came to be. And she, I believe, has arrived.”

She.

Me.

My ancient mind accepted this while my younger self collapsed in a terrified heap. “King Change believes my fate will affect the world.”

“I gather that King Bring believes this also. We are kings after all.”

Raise had put together my usefulness, and if King Take cared about anything, then perhaps he had too. “Is this why you want me for princess, sir?”

“I wanted you for princess before my mind had wondered of the part you played.”

Yes, he’d wanted me for princess very soon after meeting my monster. “And if I am the missing piece, what part will you play in the fate of the world?”

“That remains to be seen.”

I shifted on the seat because my stomach had just swooped in a horrible way. I didn’t like his answer, so I changed the subject. “What is the life of a princess, King See?”

“The life is one where I will look at you as often as you allow me. Where I can listen to your breaths and the rustle of your dress as you move through my palace. It is where you are my companion and my passion forever.”

I couldn’t imagine leaving my hotel. Would Valetise come here? And what of Mother? I’d be loath to leave my conservatory, and the hotel was always changing. What a shame to miss its evolution.

“What of my purpose?” I asked.

“Your purpose would be mine, mistress. You would be my creature in name, but I would be yours in all else.”

I sipped again at the spiced wine. “Sir, you have told me that you do not know which direction your purpose shall take.”

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