Page 18 of Of Monsters Of Kings

My possibilities? First, he’d said I’d had too many, and now he was saying I had none?

The skeleton crew turned to me as one, and my mind squeezed.

The skull unfolded from his chair, and I was pushed back a few steps.

“I cannot see her possibilities,” he stated.

Stag blurted, “That’s impossible.”

“There’s nothing to her?” Ox asked the skull.

My gaze was driven to the stone ground as the skull walked around his chair. No, not stone. I shook my head, and the stone ground became carpet again. I stared at the carpet as the skull strode forward to me. I walked backward with each of his steps closer. My shoulder blades thumped against stone, and then a force like a giant balloon pressed against my chest and face, crushing the air from me.

I gasped for breath against the power squashing me between the wall and the skull ten feet away.

“Who are you?” he demanded in a voice of splintered bones.

I panted, biting back a scream at the squeeze on my mind. “Patch.”

“Who are you?” He stepped closer. I heard a crack of bone. My own. The pain in my collarbone and the sudden loss of control over my left arm was nothing against the balloon of him.

“Patch,” I wheezed. “I don’t want to know more about you. Stop!”

The pressure eased somewhat. Enough for me to collapse against the balloon and suck in gulps of air. I moaned and nearly missed his quiet words.

“You would keep your denial, and that is your choice. If you must cling to denial, then it is too late for you.”

“I see that,” I snapped.

I shouldn’t have snapped at a skull. Especially when I could only look at his booted feet and no higher with him this close. Supple black leather boots. Embroidered with a silver stitch. By far the most exquisite footwear I had seen. How strange what the mind chose to see when clinging to sanity.

“I see nothing.” There was a leaden beat after his statement.

“My liege?” Stag hushed. “You see nothing at all?”

“She has no possibilities. I see no possibilities between the three of you and her either. I cannot see anything. Though before you arrived, I could, and so I fathom that she blinds me.” He tilted his head. “Yet when last I saw her a blink ago, she had a sickening amount of possibilities. Grotesquely unset and horrifically purposeless.”

The skull didn’t move closer. If he did, I felt my death would be the result. He, the balloon that extended before him, was a terrible thing.

The problem appeared to be that the skull didn’t know what was going on, and he was somehow used to knowing everything.

“My mother died,” I explained. “She’s in that blanket.”

He didn’t look to where I’d nodded.

“This is true?” he asked his skeleton. He sounded very unhappy about asking.

“Yes, my liege,” said Sand Cat, still holding my mother like she weighed nothing. “Capable and Dependable was found clinging to the body. She’d been there for three weeks.”

Though the skull’s shoes were very lovely, I’d prefer to see his face. I tried to budge my eyes higher to no avail. In fact, my mind pulsed in warning when I tried.

“What did you do to me, Ox?” I muttered. “Why did you make me sleep for three weeks?”

“Who is Ox?” the skull bit out.

“I believe I am Ox, sire. I did nothing of the kind to her. I bade her return home to force her from here. No more. But sire, she was able to hold Iz’s gaze for longer this time. She is well and good after a three-week slumber too. We thought…”

“You thought what?” the skull asked in a chilling voice.

---