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Chapter Sixteen

Thirty-seven disappointments

One Weakness

A barren land. Grayscale and empty.

“I am here,” I whispered to the bland, lifeless sky. The sky was stuck in time and unchanging, I had learned. No cloud interrupted the gray, and the gray did not denote night nor day, but nothingness.

My mother answered, “You are here. Just and barely.”

I rubbed my face, feeling the roll and bump of my stitches. “They got me to the grave.”

“He did, yes.’

I was near the tower, but I turned my head to look at her across the gray dirt. “See?”

“King Raise. He then shackled himself.”

A king conquered had delivered me to hellebores, then placed himself in shackle. Goodness, how great the stroke to queenly ego. I could not fathom any conquering stroking my ego more. “Am I well?”

Cassandra said, “You were insane for a number of nights. Three of them, and four days.”

Ah.

“She threatens everything,” snapped Molly, tugging at her stitches as though intending to launch at me.

Madison, her daughter, said in undertones, “Mother, that hurts.”

Molly stopped, of course, because her daughter was the cure to her bitterness about life and death.

Adalina said next, “Daughter, you mean well, but time grows thin.”

I thudded my head on dirt. Time. I was heartily sick of that notion. “Immortality is ironic.”

A few mothers laughed. Some did not like the joke at all because they struggled with the journey of their immortal stitched death.

“I feel very strongly that I cannot enter the haze without conquering all kings,” I told them. “I have two. My power should now exceed that of a king. Conquering the others might go easier.”

“Should,” said one of the newer mothers, Hazel. “Might.”

I sighed. “I deal in shoulds and mights, and queendom might always be this way, so you should accept that.”

Hazel dipped her head. “I accept your admonishment, daughter.”

I sat. Only then did I see that five mothers lurked unstitched. Three sat, and two were lying. The breath of one was labored.

Staggering upright, I weaved to them, and grew stronger with every step. I started with the weakest, stitched her to Hazel, and then returned for the other mother, who had stitched on my big toe on my left foot. Though her job had been smaller in comparison to, say, Cassandra’s, she had stitched with all the care in the world.

As I approached the next mother, I felt a pang down my chest akin to what I imagined a horse kick might feel like.

I grunted at the warning, and sure enough, the mother who had stitched it surged to her feet at my approach.

“It is not enough that you stole half of my life,” she shouted.

The shout cost her. She did not have the energy for this fight. “I did no such thing.”

“No,” she seethed, then cast her glare at Cassandra. “ She did.”

Cassandra returned her look, but without the heat. “I did, while controlled by another.”

The mother demanded, “Does this ‘another’ still control you?”

“No,” replied Cassandra. “But ancients now drive our fiftieth daughter. I have felt the undeniable force of them. I will support another in that position.”

The mother returned her glare to me. “So you ask this of fifty mothers? You would accept half of our lives and also the entirety of our death?”

“This has not been phrased such until now,” I replied. “Mothers have mostly phrased these as their own gift and sacrifice more than my expectation and demand.”

“Mostly,” the mother said, latching on to the weakness.

I gestured at Molly. “Not everyone feels the same because not every person is the same. Molly felt robbed of a life with her daughter. She is now content to spend death with her; however, this does not erase her bitterness toward me and the other mothers yet. Some other mothers here have mixed feelings about their withering and the call to sit in vigil to protect my queendom and the world.”

The mother crossed her arms.

I said, “Would the arrival of your daughter help you, Mother?”

Her eyes widened at my use of “mother.” She reclaimed her glare. “The daughter who abandoned me in my last days? I withered alone, and for a daughter who did not love me.” She laughed. “What a fool I was. I always wondered if she at least had the sense to turn away from withering herself. Clearly not. Selfish and a fool, I see.”

This was a very hurt mother. This was a mother who felt betrayed by her very soul—her child. “You are welcome here. As will your daughter be when she arrives. I hope that you might find peace when that time comes. You are important to me, Mother, in the wellness of you and in the warm presence of you. I also have thirty-six other mothers to consider now. They have chosen this, and I have no option but to choose this. If a way presents itself to free you, I will take it at considerable cost to free you in death. Until that time, you will remain here in vigil with the rest of our line.”

She turned to run.

I had done some horrible things, but with the weight of withering and unwilling sacrifice in my heart and mind, I did something very horrible.

I dragged a mother, kicking and screaming to be stitched. I made sure to stitch her tightly to the unconscious mother beside her, and then to the next mother, who calmly took her place.

The last of the recently arrived ancestors took my hand in hers as we walked to stitch her too. “We will look after her,” she said. “In our maternal care, she will heal and thrive. And with the return of her daughter.”

I nodded. I agreed that the solution rested there. Her daughter had surely not left her mother to wither alone. “Thank you for wise words, Mother.”

I stitched her. Then there were thirty-seven mothers. Thirteen left.

The haze stole my focus, and I fixed my unseeing eyes on the barren mysteries beyond. Would all mothers make it?

I felt that could not be so. Something would force me to enter the haze, and an absent mother or two was surely the “something.”

I set the needle and thread beside the last mother, and played with the humming stitch at my waist that she was responsible for. Grounded. Seeing. I could rely on this mother.

“I must return,” I announced.

No one answered. They had told me what I must do. What else was there to say?

Three nights and four days spent through the grave while recovering from the conquering of King Raise, and then conquering him had cost me four nights too. My, but what might have occurred in that time?

I took a tumble through hellebores and climbed out into a world of color and life.

A shiver shook me because I felt the weight of the place I had just left more with each passing night. Something terrible awaited me there.

A hand appeared in my vision. A chalky hand, so very large, that I knew.

I took See’s hand, and he helped me stand.

“You were gone for many nights,” he said.

I looked up into his eyes, and his sigh was audible with mine as our hearts synced. This was not a feeling to disrupt— such power. This must be cherished… though perhaps that was too warm a sentiment. This must be acknowledged. And so we did acknowledge the symbol of our destiny for however long passed.

The clanging of Picket’s hammer broke through our stare eventually, and when the stare was over, I was left more unsettled than ever.

Because four kings had demanded my focus lately. Four, but not five. One king had been on his best claiming behavior, apparently “reassured by what he could see.”

King See was too… agreeable.

Why? Luckily for him, as ancient as I was—more ancient than him even—I did not have the capacity to figure out queendom and figure out him. In fact, he was a larger mystery than anything else.

I might spend my entire existence understanding him.

I smiled, and he tilted my chin higher, twisting my face side to side to better see all the torsion of my lips, no doubt.

“What amuses a queen who is now more powerful than a king?” he murmured.

“Have I told you that love is so… detestable? I know you are fond of the notion of warm things, but I am afraid to tell you that I cannot love you. You must learn not to love me, or we are doomed, and I am certain what we share must transcend love.”

“I am but a weak king, though,” he answered.

I narrowed my gaze, certain that he teased me.

The lift of the corner of his mouth confirmed it. “If you cannot love me, what will you feel?”

Now there was the conundrum. There was the predicament. My whisper trembled. “I cannot say. Knowing that love is not strong enough for us is one thing, but choosing to feel other things while denying love always… how can it be done?”

He broke our stare at last. “A king hopes that a more ancient queen will see the way because he sees everything to do with her in dribs and drabs.”

“You have not connected our destiny?”

“Our destiny is ever clear. We are for each other and forever so.”

“What of the rest? Of fate and path and immortality?”

King See did not answer, and my unsettled feelings heightened. He knew something. He must surely plot heartbreak. “Tell me, See. Shall I survive the pain you seek to deliver me?”

He stilled, and a full minute went by before he finally said, “I cannot tell.”

I closed my eyes. A queen would suffer some more, and only a fool queen would be content to await it. I had nothing more to give outside of queendom and stitching mothers and conquering kings, but I must somehow manage the situation with King See too. I was a queen. Many depended on me. Golden fate might decide the fate of the world.

I could not be undone by any monster. “I was thinking, when I smiled, of how the mystery of you will never be understood though we are immortal. There is beauty in that which is greater than love. I smile at the idea of unlocking more of our puzzle.”

King See’s voice was heavy indeed. “You speak of the desire to always know more of a person. This must be part of how we shall share warmth.”

Warmth.

“What of the cold, See? What of that?”

He pulled me close. The embrace was light, because he was towering, and not a crushing embracer in character. The embrace was light, then, but no less like a cage. A cage I wished to be in. How befitting of romance in monsterdom.

See said, “You have heard me speak of heartbreak, my darkness. There is no warmth in that.”

“There is more.”

“There must be more. There are choices that cannot consider the wellbeing of the other. There are betrayals we must survive. There is a hardening that will make our warmth harder to feel, unless we are careful. What else might exist, I am yet blind to. Here are my thoughts only, and nothing proven or truly connected.”

My insides chilled. “Must we keep building warmth to survive the rest, See? Or must we desist? I would hear it all.”

“Can any warmth be enough to combat what we must do? Are we better to chill to ice? Is choice the only factor in our destiny? Must there be a constant and irrational choice to exist together through any matter of cold acts we commit together or against each other? Then why choose such a future? How do those things we speak of—respect and understanding and trust—how do those survive in the blizzard of immortality and monsterdom?”

My voice was husky around the huge lump rising in my throat. “You inspire great dread in me this dusk, sir, for I hear the sense in what you say.”

“I feel dread from dusk to dawn, then back again, maiden. I am weak enough to want company in that sometimes.”

I rested my hand on his arm. “I will stay in dread with you for a time so you need not be alone.”

See lowered his lips to mine. This kiss was simple and brief and… casual. Beautiful. The most exquisite we had shared, this kiss of comfort and certainty. The kiss where he was sure that I was his, and sure that he was mine, and that we were in a hopeless situation but together. “That must be how we win. You will stay with me, and I will stay with you. We must be irrational in regard to the beating of our hearts.”

I rested my head on his protruding ribs to listen to our heartbeats, and we were quiet for a time.

“Raise is shackled in the middle of your conservatory.”

Over the glass entrance to his ex-kingdom. I had forgotten. I released a stitch and cast it to Raise’s shackles to ensure they could not be opened by anyone but me. The king had shackled himself, and remained there as I recovered through hellebores, but still. A queen could not be too careful.

“Who is next?” See asked.

“The order is a matter of confusion. I cannot make sense of it. There is no mention in the original poem of kings that Change went first, then Raise. Perhaps it has to do with union because Change did this first and Raise second; however, the conquering of kings has naught to do with unions, as you are a king and have not been joined to anyone in union.”

I had not meant the words as a proposal, but there was a sudden weight in the air at my remark. A charging of our bodies.

My body had frozen against him, and he had frozen in the stroking of my long hair.

“You would have me in union,” he said at last. “Would you call me husband, Perantiqua, or king? Or… consort?”

“I did not mean anything by my words other than the intended meaning,” I replied.

His menacing laughter rumbled in his chest.

I maintained a stony silence until his laughter faded.

“I do enjoy your anger,” he said after. Then when I snapped up my head to rage, he smirked and said, “And I can uncover the mystery of the order you must conquer kings.”

I snapped my mouth shut. My rage simmered, but I did not let it out. Just yet.

See whispered, “I enjoy that, too—controlling your rage.”

“Do you enjoy when you fail to control it because you are too busy gloating?” I asked.

He grinned. “I enjoy that most of all, my powerful beauty, for you shake the world and that is fitting of everything I feel for you and our future.”

My rage leeched away. His grin widened.

“Careful, See,” I warned.

He drew back his amusement to a simple twinkling in his milky eyes. “There is an order, and the order is in the original poem of kings.”

The poem raced through my mind. “Where?”

“In reversal.”

In reversal. There word rang in my mind, for I was reminded of many prior reversals. Like returning to the place where five kings had last agreed—the olden rock. And then again when I had returned and reduced King Raise back to foot soldier.

Bring. Take. Raise. Change. See.

Three princes, each, shall come to thee.

Monsters to guide kings to thrones,

To keep real monsters chained with blood and bone.

Reversal , of course. Here was the answer to a great puzzle, at last. “I conquered you first.”

See dipped his head. “You did. Do you fathom when?”

I considered that. The end revealed the start. Each king conquered required me to trip through hellebores after. “I conquered you on the cusp of insanity when you were locked in madness about to steal the last bridal gift and the possibility of queendom from me.” I lifted my gaze. “You lowered me into the hellebore grave instead.”

“I did. After our kiss, I did. That is when I was conquered.”

Our hearts skipped a beat. Such power and warmth in a kiss.

See searched my gaze. “I told you that my madness had faded due to the ailment upon other kings. That was true, but only half of the matter. With my conquering, you gained in queendom, and your gains in queendom tend to… level me somewhat.”

That was true enough. He had been least stable in the infancy of my queendom.

He held up a key of black metal, and the head of the key was a cobweb pattern to match his gothic palace. “I never thought to give these to you until hearing of your trip to a door that five kings locked long ago.”

I steeled myself to take them. For once I took them, how could See and I remain equals? He would be in my power. His kingdom would be mine.

“I make my choice willingly and irrationally, and you conquered my kingdom and me some time ago.”

I released a rush of air— oof. “I am very glad that this all happened without my awareness. Though I do require one last thing of you in the interest of conquering you.”

“Name it,” he said, though I sensed a small, curious hesitation in him.

“I drove you to one knee in my dining hall, I recollect, but I have not driven you to both knees. You must kneel before me now.” I did not smile. This was a simple necessity of obsession.

King See lowered to his knees and bowed his head. He extended the key to me. “Does the sight please you?”

Lust stirred in my chest. The sight did please me, and I had expected it. “Queenly ego is a vice I cannot deny, though ancients drive this detail of my obsession where kings must kneel, not I.”

“Ego is necessary when burden is great. You must hover above the mountains and clouds sometimes to do what is needed. A heart might only take so much battering. Ego provides resilience until true resilience can grow.”

He would know. He was in the business of heart battering, but I did not comment so, for this interaction was woefully and painfully beautiful, and I could not bring myself to bring harsh truths forth to ruin beauty tonight.

I took the key from him and tucked it away. “I want you, See.”

The king sucked in a breath. “Speak plain, maiden. What do you want?”

“To spend midnight in your embrace.”

Our breaths were as uneven as our heartbeats. That must be the point of sharing a heartbeat with him. How could we ever lie to one another? I could feel the shifts in him.

I tilted his face upward, for he remained on his knees. “Will you spend midnight in my bed, sir?”

“I cannot fathom any creature who would turn from such a prospect, and certainly not I.” He stood, and I could see the ridge of his hardness straining against his trousers.

“Does the unevenness of our power bother you, See?” I asked quietly. “Might I do something to alleviate it?”

“I would hope not.” His low voice curled around me, as tangible as his arm that curled around my waist. He drew me tight, and then hissed when I stroked my fingers over his cock.

“Do you see a king who was robbed of his title and power? I was a king who was meant to possess great power for a time so that I might eventually tend to a queen who possesses ultimate power. I had to understand her, and now I am richer in immortality than ever before.”

Truth. He did not begrudge the differences in our power as I had sometimes done.

I hooked my fingers in his trousers, then pressed my lips to his chest through his black tunic. “Then take me to my chambers, sir. Midnight calls us to finish what we have started.”

King See lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. He could have unfastened his trousers and taken me right there.

I would have let him. This was my queendom after all.

But there was something deadly important about what we were about to share. This was crucial in the whole scheme of how we would survive immortality together. This moment must be perfect.

We would explore and share in one other.

King See hoisted me higher to kiss and bite up my neck. I granted him access, moaning.

“Hurry,” I urged.

I felt his body coil to break into a blurring run.

Except ancients were unmerciful, and they must vastly anticipate small amusements such as delaying the daylight activities of a queen and her conquered king.

“Where are you going?” called an annoyed monster. He was often annoyed, King Take. “You can fuck each other later!”