Page 21 of A Kingdom of Monsters

“Come on.” I turned on the spot to go back the way we’d come. “We should go see what’s wrong.”

“We know what’s wrong, little monster. They hate each other just as much today as they did yesterday and every day before that. There’s no reason to waste our time playing referees when we could be finding out how to break the curse within the hour.”

I bit my lip, feeling conflicted. “You’re right, but I’m still going to intervene. I’ll hate myself if one of them kills the other before we even reach the guest wing.”

Bael rolled his eyes, but turned around and begrudgingly followed me back in the direction of all the yelling.

“If we’re taking bets on who comes out alive, my money is on Scion,” Bael muttered darkly. “Ambrose is a better physical fighter, but Sci has magic on his side, and he’s far angrier.”

I frowned. “You’ve thought about this?”

“Just a bit.” Bael gave me a slightly guilty grin.“Like, if for whatever reason I had to fight Ambrose I think it would be a toss up who’d win.”

“Why is that?” I asked, internally kicking myself for feeding into this.

“Ambrose is really old, and he’s been fighting far longer than I’ve been alive. Give me another hundred years or so, and I'll win every time.”

“In one hundred years he’ll have more experience too.”

“Sure, but magic is like wine, and not just because it tastes delicious–” he winked at me “--power gets stronger as you get older, which is an advantage for someone like me. But for seers, more power isn’t necessarily a good thing.”

“It’s not?”

“The more power a seer has, the more they lose touch with the present. They get kind of…strange and distant. Like they’re here with you, but really somewhere else.”

I scowled. I’d never seen Ambrose do anything like that. He was always alert, always wary of everything and everyone around him. I couldn’t imagine what it might look like if he looked at me without his usual intensity.

“I don’t know why we’re discussing this,” I snapped as the distant shouting grew louder. “I don’t want any of you to fight.”

“Don’t worry little monster. Soon it won’t matter who will kill whom.”

“Why?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

“Well…” He shrugged, almost sheepishly. “I assume Ambrose won’t want to stay here much longer now that the question of king has been settled. You’re the queen and we’re your mates, so unless he was somehow able to kill all three of us, which is doubtful, he’d never have a clear claim to the throne.”

“I don’t think he wants to hurt any of us,” I said flatly.

Bael cocked his head at me in question. “Then what has he been doing for the last several decades?”

“I—” I broke off, unsure what to say.

The time I’d spent on the ship had felt like a lifetime for me, but Bael and Scion hadn’t been there with us. Until recently, the only time’s they’d seen Ambrose, he’d been attacking them. He’d destroyed their castle and his rebels killed all their guards. The fact that he’d helped rescue them wouldn’t fix all the bad blood between them. It was hard to argue that all Ambrose wanted was to rejoin his family after he’d spent years trying to destabilize them. He’d been the leader of the rebellion for longer than I’d been alive, yet somehow I was positive that none of us were in any danger from him or his rebel army.

“He never hurt me while we were on the ship,” I said defensively. “And he helped me rescue both of you, and let us use his ship to return from Underneath.”

“And that’s why he’s still breathing,” Bael said flippantly. “But you can’t honestly think he’s going to stay and…what? Go back to being a prince?”

“He’s still here now,” I argued.

“Sure, because we have to break the curse, but once that’s done, and we start rebuilding the court, there’s no place for him here anymore. Not after he gave up his title to go raise an army against us. The best thing for everyone would be for him to disappear.”

A tiny spark of fear shot through me, but I tamped it down, forcing a neutral expression onto my face. “You’re right. I suppose I’ve just gotten used to all this chaos, I keep forgetting what normal would feel like. If there ever really is a normal.”

As if to illustrate my point, at that moment Scion and Ambrose rounded the corner on the opposite end of the hall, walking straight toward us. They were clearly still locked in theirargument, both gesturing wildly as they yelled back and forth. They hadn’t seen us yet, and we stopped walking, waiting for them to notice our presence.

Bael put a hand on my lower back, and bent to press a kiss to the side of my jaw. “Don’t worry, little monster. If Idris knows how to break the curse, hopefully things will be better than normal again soon.”

He’d clearly meant that as comforting, but instead I bit my lip, feeling slightly uneasy.

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