Page 10 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Nine

Distractions of body.

I appreciated the simplicity of pawns this dusk.

They were least complicated of all, even less complicated than simple monsters, who liked to evolve and form attachments, and even less complicated than princesses as their loyalty was not tugged elsewhere to a king. Not now that kings were conquered.

“My liegess,” sobbed Vassal, bowing until his nose and the tip of his spear touched the stone floor. “We are overjoyed, yet very overrun with worry of how you perceive us. We did not wish to obey King See?—”

“We always spoke of him unkindly where he could not hear.” Toil slapped his blob on the floor in a way that left me in no doubt of his fury.

Sign narrowed his eyes, which wrinkled his gray and hairless, waxy head. “He received no smile nor help from us, my queen. I assure you. ”

Unguis whimpered and covered his nose with a paw. “He sat on your throne.”

Anger simmered deep in my stomach at that. Because this was a copper throne where hellebores climbed. In other words, this throne was uniquely and magnificently mine. The gall of a king.

Loup added, “He slept in your private chambers.”

On my throne and in my bed.

Copper armrests whined under my tightened grip, buckling slightly. I loosened my hands, then loosened my thoughts. King See would do neither again. For all his glimpses of the future, he was but a shackled monster.

I hoped he had enjoyed his small taste of a copper throne and a queenly bed. Alas, this report only confirmed what I had already gleaned from a restless night spent catching King See’s scent over and over. I would ask Valetise to change the sheets.

My seeing pawns, Has Been, Is, and Will Be hung their heads, and I fathomed that the passage of time had been horrible for them.

They had been King See’s princes for an age.

But they obeyed the call of my power. A horrible predicament indeed.

For all of them. Pawns were simple, but prone to stress.

Tears were evident in the waxy and hairless skin of Deliver and Seal.

My blobbing pawns appeared on the dry side—never a good sign.

Will Be’s seeing eye in the middle of his forehead was streaked yellow, and the eyes either side of Is’s head were the same.

Sanguine and Gangrel’s fangs did not gleam as viciously as usual.

Of all pawns, only one seemed sound in appearance and outlook.

I looked to Huckery, as I often did, for he was somewhat more than a pawn in his connection. “What of you, sir pawn? What did King See receive from an esteemed werebeast? ”

“Less than a queen. Your imminent return was obvious to me.”

All other pawns gasped and squelched.

Loup snapped his teeth at his brother. “You knew our queen would return?”

“You did not!” Sigil said hotly and also damply. “That’s easy enough to say now she is back.”

Huckery did not reply. He was wise in his silence, and always had been. Huckery was somewhat immovable in his ideas—this was his great downfall and his great strength.

Seal grunted. “Though… King See’s threats did not seem to worry Huckery much.”

Neither had mine, once upon a dusk.

Gangrel circled his spear a few times while humming. “I just thought he was giving up like usual.”

Huckery swung his werebeast head to glower at the fanged pawn. Gangrel stopped circling his spear, but smirked.

Vassal had resumed his sobbing. “Six months, liegess. Six months without your magnificence and wonder to gaze upon. How dark the nights have been. How frail the dawns.”

Deliver patted the fanged pawn, one of my most sensitive monsters, on the shoulder.

Six months. I had not thought to ask what the length of my absence had been. Time had been of no matter, really, because only my return and the uncorking of olden stone had started the slide of the world toward The Real End.

Now time mattered where it never had.

“Dear pawns, your loyalty has held fast through the betrayal of King See. This warms my soul.” As did the lack of division between them. As did their reference to me as leigess. I had been their queen for a long time, but they had never vocalized their allegiance when kings remained unconquered.

I interrupted loud and flowery flattery from Toil and Seal. “Report the happenings of my queendom and the world since my departure.”

There was a telling silence after. Drat. That was a rather broad question for a pawn.

“Tell me of humans in the last six months,” I asked.

Hex drew his blob taller. “My queen, humans hover on the brink of extinction. Food supplies dwindle to nothing. Small numbers of them die nightly. They have mostly overrun and contained pulse leaders, including the leader of this pulse.”

The president of Vitale. Goodness. I wished to commend them on the one hand, on the other hand, though, humans were scatterbrained creatures, more likely to fight each other to death than anything else. Perhaps monsters had not been so different until my monstrous arrival. Both needed order.

“ How fares our newest monster ?” I thought.

My pawns shivered at the breeze of my voice.

Huckery snickered with Unguis and Loup, then he said, “Candor has placed herself on the bad side of Princess Take.”

I raised a brow. I could easily believe that Princess Take would not enjoy the vocal and public uncovering of her true thought and motive. “An angry princess is a formidable foe.”

He replied, “Candor shows no fear.”

Did I detect a smidgen of respect in Huckery’s tone?

“What of princesses?” I asked next.

My werebeasts quietened, and that was telling in itself.

Has Been grimaced, shooting an apologetic look their way.

“Princess Change has not stopped her digging, my queen, though she has continued to work on the gardens per your previous order. She has tried to convince King See many times to collect King Change from beyond the grave, and she has tried to enter your mother’s grave every dawn too.

Hellebores choke the breath from her each time. ”

A defiant princess. One willing to be choked by hellebores nightly.

This was clearly a form of self-punishment, for it was Princess Change who had confessed her king’s ingenious strategy to me, under duress.

With that information, I had gone on to conquer him, which she would never forgive herself for until King Change was free once more.

Or so she had fooled herself into believing.

I threw out a tendril of power and tugged sharply.

The doors of my throne room blasted open, and Princess Change sprinted in at a blurring run, both hands clutched over her heart as though trying to keep the organ within her body.

“Stop,” she screamed.

She was here now, so I would. The monster gasped for breath after.

The princess of King Change wore her black bridal dress, as ever. Over the top was her gardening apron. The two garments were the perfect indication of the princess herself, for the loophole of her was plain for all to see.

The clauses of her union with King Change did not allow her to foil any of his ruin. Whether because of this or because of her feelings for him, Princess Change had always been a willing participant in his ruinous plans.

But ruin was not the essence of her.

Soil was her essence. She was the leaves and the trees and moss between.

I reached into the princess’s body and mind, and extracted that essence now.

The roots of her came away with a few small pulls.

In her, I left no joy of hands covered in dirt.

I left no warm memory of whispered encouragement to growing vine or seed.

I took the leaves and the trees and the moss between away.

The princess’s expression blanked, and she crashed to her knees on the cold stone. Princess Change listed and did not physically react when her body and head crashed against stones too.

Hellebores stroked the back of my hands, and I silently thanked them.

Pawns were wide-eyed as I said to Princess Change, “In all the time you have lurked within my queendom, you have worked against me. You understood your intention to harm me when you took the deadly curse offered by my mother. I will not punish you for that, for ancients drove your fate that dusk, and they are wise in all matters. Through your actions, I received the most priceless of gifts. So I offer you a gift tonight, too, or a curse if you would prefer to see it such. Either way, I will have an answer to my question: Are you a princess of change or a princess of no change? So here is the matter I wish you to ponder in coldness of soul and mind and power… If everything but your sole reason for existing was robbed away, then what is the reason that would remain?”

She did not blink or form words or thoughts. I had delivered her with a great shock that her being could not yet fathom.

I said, “The reckoning of the world is upon all creatures and all life, and so you must face your reckoning, if you are to properly serve me, Princess.”

I rose from my throne. “Send word to champions to gather in my private chambers.”

Toil craned to look at Princess Change.

“Not that one,” I clarified, for I was talking to pawns and clarity was often needed.

I floated toward the double doors. “Kindly gather the ashes of Princess Bring. Every speck of them. I would have the flakes of her blob in my possession.”

“Leigess, King Bring asked for them, and we did not see a reason to say no,” mumbled Has Been.

“A queen sees reason. Take them back.”

King Bring might even thank me in the end.