Page 60 of Of Monsters Of Kings

“Enough,” King Take snapped, and I gasped anew at the walloping force of his annoyance.

“What is it now?” the king asked me. “Why did you gasp?”

I straightened. “You do not keep much inside you, is all, King Take. This is hard for my new monster mind. King See takes care to mask away the force of his feelings.”

King Take laughed at that, and his cruel joy was as painful for me as his boyish irritation. I backed away until the squeeze on my mind eased.

“What is amusing?” I asked.

“Much, mistress, but King See most of all. What you call masking away, I call fear. Too much caution in life is an ill thing.”

And what did he say of no caution at all? “Sir, you bid me attend the ball as part of our bargain.”

“And you have come. I found myself curious to see who enamored my prince so, and he is not wrong. Mistress, you are magnificence. You are an alluring change in this unchanging landscape, and for that, I thank you. How came about one such as you? Amuse me, if you would.”

“The ordeal was not amusing for me, sir.” I proceeded to tell him some harmless details of my time since waking a monster, only halting to answer his probing questions as best I could without revealing too much of myself in the doing.

“Ha!” He clapped at the end, and I jolted with each shrill slap of his palms. “My, mistress, but what a time you’ve had. An entertaining story indeed, and one that is far from over, I anticipate.”

I tilted my chin. “I do not wish to be toyed with. I have been warned you enjoy doing such things.”

He hummed. “The best toys are those who try to resist. You may come to wish for my attentions in the end, Lady Patch.”

I couldn’t say one way or another. I had little idea how time might alter my perspective. “On the subject of toying, we must disagree for now. I have a few questions for you. Will you answer them?”

“You seek to question… me?”

That didn’t happen often. “The unusual can be so amusing.”

“Why, vastly so. Proceed with these questions. I find myself eager to know what might go on under your stitches.”

He didn’t appear averse to questions as King See could be. This king was allergic to boredom, and an immortal must spend a great deal of time bored, so that was a shame for him. I would make a point not to be so. “You take to keep balance in Vitale.”

“And the other pulses around the world, yes, go on, go on.”

I did so. “Who do you take? What are the factors behind your choices?”

His shells had jostled me most of the way across the ballroom. King Take’s voice was above me a way, and now that I’d grown accustomed to his voice, I started to lift my gaze from the floor and up the stone steps before me. There were so many. My neck was nearly craned back by the time I came across Take’s bare, slightly blurred feet. His feet appeared as a dead and drained human’s would, except the nails were black and curled under. Goodness, that must hurt awfully when he walked.

King Take sat on a stone throne, barefooted at a monster ball.

“I almost wonder if I should answer you,” the king said, then laughed. “Yes, I shall. I take, lady, whoever is useless. Oftentimes, that means the old. Sometimes, the maimed or grievously injured. And there are other times when the useless are not old or maimed or injured at all. Do you wish to hear of them?”

I squeezed my eyes tight. “No, sir. Not of them.”

“A tender heart filled with life, you have,” he purred. “How I will love to toy with it.”

I shouldn’t have come. I should have gone to King See’s palace. “Do you like to take life?”

“Ancients warped the task to take into my being, but I was left to control the limits of my duty and power, as we all were. I submitted to the addiction of my purpose long ago. My cravings grew too strong, too fast, and are now more immense than any duty I once felt. Do you judge me for this vice? This addiction? I hope so. You will be repulsed even as you crave my dotage.”

“I do not judge you, King Take. Do you judge yourself?”

“You are impertinent, and yet I shall answer because impertinence is rare and not boring.”

His bare feet swung in a playful way I’d expect of a child, yet I could see he was a grown monster by the size of them.

“My answer is this, Lady Patch. Once, I entered a cave with four soldier comrades. We rode together to our respective homes in the wake of a victory over villains. We rode home, bursting with the righteous honor we’d been willing to die for, heroes of the common people. Does that answer your question?”

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