Page 17 of Of Monsters Of Kings

I squinted at the railing again, trying to spot a single lily. None. But plenty of hellebores.

I bumped into Ox’s back.

“My apologies.” I rubbed my nose after and belatedly recalled the landlady’s slap. I searched for the wounds with my fingertips. The bleeding had stopped, at least, but she’d done her worst by the bruised feel of things.

I poked my head out from behind Ox to peer ahead. We’d reached the top floor at last. But the metal door to the skull’s room was gone, and a stone archway stood in its place.

Wait. I shook my head.

The metal door blinked into view again. Then the archway again. It remained this time, and I swayed. Stag hooked a hand under my arm.

Ox entered the skull’s room without knocking. And why would he knock on an archway? Except there was a metal door there sometimes, so which was it? A door or an archway?

“What is it?” hissed the skull from inside.

I trembled at his terrible voice. Yesterday—or three weeks ago—I’d prevented my knees knocking together. Not today. Perhaps the starvation and dehydration of the last three weeks were catching up. Except I should be dead from that. The dehydration certainly.

Ox cleared his throat. “My liege?”

“What is it?” he hissed again.

Stag stepped forward and shot Ox a baffled look. “My liege… you need an explanation?”

My focus wandered from the skull’s stiff back to the wooden chair he sat upon. Something funny was happening at the legs. Thin white pillars propped each of the four legs, piling under the chair in a mess of different lengths and thicknesses. I shook my head again and fixed my sights on the skull once more.

His hand formed a fist on the armrest formed of skulls.

I blinked, and the skulls disappeared, a wooden armrest taking its place once more. My heart hammered.

Sand Cat spoke from behind me. “You’ve never needed an explanation before, my liege, is all.”

“Is all well, sire?” Ox asked.

“Perhaps I have sat overlong,” the skull mused in a detached voice.

I took a breath. “What are your plans for me, sir?” Ox had done something to me to make me sleep. I was a felon, but the skeleton had sent my captors away. I was the creature of this skull now. Best to know my path.

The skull jerked his head. “Who is here with you?”

Stag grunted in surprise, and Ox sucked in a breath.

Sand Cat blurted, “S-Sire?”

A pressing silence filled the space as surely as the smell of my mother did—a smell the skull hadn’t reacted to in the slightest.

But here was what I knew: No one would hire me now. Word would spread from the landlady and through Vitale of the girl who kept her dead mother in an elevator shaft. Vitale was large enough to start again in some ways but small enough for a reputation to stick. Even if the agents didn’t update their paperwork with what had happened, the landlady would talk and talk until she got her revenge on me. So, the worst thing that could happen would be for the skull to turn me away. There’d be no option but to do the very thing I’d sworn to never do.

“I would know my fate, please,” I said.

“It’s Capable and Dependable,” Ox told the skull, almost in question. “Three weeks ago after the hotel wasn’t possible. Do you recall, sire?”

The skull remained with his face partly turned to us, except my eyes couldn’t see him. My focus slid down to his armrest of skulls each time I tried to see his face. I blinked, and the wooden version of the armrest returned. I’d just seen skulls that weren’t there.

I needed food and water. Maybe more sleep.

How could I want more sleep?

“Where are your possibilities?” the skull said at last.

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