Page 12 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

And if I healed their union, then the world would heal in whatever magnitude the Brings’ union represented, so I was beginning to gather.

But what exactly did they represent? As the Brings healed their union, I would closely observe the effect on the world.

“ Mother ,” I thought.

Monsters shivered and gasped at the whirl of my voice. The panels holding the other kings turned them to face me. Including him , who I could feel listening to my every word and thought. Somehow.

His eyes calculated me.

And that was all the space I gave King See. For this moment belonged to all monsters, and to the friends and king of Princess Bring.

Mother pushed up the glass bowl holding Baby Bring to hover above the olden rock. The infant version of my lady’s maid was not visible in the sand.

I walked to the bowl. “In the haze where body was robbed from me, ancients showed me a tiny path, which I followed with King Change trailed in my wake, and a copper-furred creature walked at my side. A scritch-scratch and rustle led me to this pile of sand. I watched the disturbance of these grains, and sensed the tiny upheaval within them.”

“What is it?” King Raise asked in wonder.

His princess had already taken a step forward and clutched at her heart, guessing the truth. There was a difference between them.

I said, “Her place is in the world of monsters, and as she sacrificed herself for monsters, we shall make sacrifices for her always.”

King Bring strained at his shackles. “What are you saying? What is in the bowl? Who is in the bowl? ”

I reached in and scooped out the tiny sticky mass. “Ancients have shown us the greatest mercy by returning one of our number to the beast’s yawn.”

Shocked gasps rang out from most onlookers.

I smiled at the sticky mass. “Monsters will always nurture you, Princess Bring. We will nurse you back to your full form, and then always and forever cherish you. You relinquished immortality and peered at the brutal truth when a queen could not.”

No one said a word, and I held the princess before my eyes. “Welcome home, Baby Bring. We have missed you. In our loving care, you need never worry.”

The princesses were first to unfreeze.

Tears dripped off the bottom of Princess Raise’s chin. Princess Take’s hands trembled.

“She must return to sand.” I eased the infant back inside the bowl.

King Bring said hoarsely, “She needs her ashes. I fathom. Take them from me.”

Has Been did so, and placed the leather pouch into my waiting hand.

An unwanted flash of awareness hit me, alerting me to King See’s pondering and awed expression.

I quashed the line of thought again and unfastened the leather pouch. I sprinkled the ashes into the bowl of sand, and a soft purring arose from Baby Bring, which drew soft smiles to the lips of princesses and pawns.

“She likes it,” sobbed Toil, secreting globs of tears.

Hex’s voice shuddered. “O-our p-princess will live.”

“She will find fullness again?” rasped King Bring.

I glanced at him. “Does it matter?”

He shook his head. “Can I go to her?”

“No. You rather exceeded your purpose with near dire consequences, sir. When you have journeyed as you must, then I will consider gifting you the proximity of her. When shackles are released, you may know that you have won in the battle of yourself.”

King Bring inhaled. “Your reasoning is fair, wise queen.”

Fairness had little to do with it. Their union would only heal with his inner growth, and with her physical growth.

Mother drew Baby Bring into her embrace again, and princesses and pawns sighed and despaired at her departure.

“Leave us,” I ordered.

Princesses inhaled and surely smelled the reckoning in the air, for they turned on their heels and obeyed. Pawns followed their lead.

And a queen was left with five kings.

I floated a circle around the olden rock and considered smaller kingdoms, all of them shrunken to reflect the change in power.

A queen must save the world… and princesses had sparked deeper thought within me.

If the lips of kings moved and spoke, then I did not reply.

Indeed, I forgot them altogether in my circling.

I might as well have walked in the other version of this conservatory that existed in the barren world atop a tower, for no one else existed.

How.

Why.

Why did the world begin its slide to ruin? I stopped, and did not immediately register that I had stopped before the seeing king.

Yet here was the irritating truth: Fifty mothers would not fathom The End of the world, for they were human—though they had all led ancient-touched human lives.

Princes and most princesses had been born as monsters.

All but Princess Bring, who did not possess the ability of powerful and ancient connection, even if she had been more than a baby.

Five others had once walked as humans before warping to immortality. They were powerful in connection. One above all possessed the ability to see past, present, and future, except in matters pertaining to me.

But The End of the world had occurred far before my coming.

This was the irritating truth. Only one monster could answer my question, and I would rather not ask him for any answer.

I looked into King See’s milky gaze. He did not know what to do with my proximity. I felt the unrest of him. I felt that my body called to him still. I felt his distance too. We were not the same as we had once been. He had ensured that.

A queen must not fail in pride and vanity as King Bring had. King See was a wealth of unique power and information and experience. I must wield that for the existence of humans and monsters.

King See warred within himself for control, and I watched until he eventually reclaimed it. Icy chilliness emanated from him after.

I had not thought or spoken aloud. “Why did the world begin its slide to ruin, Seeing King? To save the world, I must understand the origins of its demise.”

King See inhaled at my quiet question, or more likely at the powerful music of my voice. The tiniest spark glinted in his cold eyes before dying again. The tiny spark reminded me of a tiny path that had formed in the haze. The tiny spark begged me to follow it.

I did not. “The answer resides with humans. It must, as monsters came after The End, and likely because of it. Assumedly ancients arrived before The End in answer to the world’s dire state. What has the king of seeing connected about the reason for the world’s end?”

The fullness of me, and so close, was wreaking havoc on his focus. His breath came fast. His pupils were dilated. Our heartbeats rocketed together.

And he did his best to freeze everything he felt.

As for myself, I existed above the clouds, and so the clouds of him could float beneath me and not affect me.

I waited.

King See gathered his thoughts. “You would trust the answer of a king who sought to steal your throne?”

My lips torsioned. “What has trust to do with your answer? Your past decisions have altered future paths, but not the path where you are shackled as a servant of my queendom. Your purpose here is to advise me whenever I might seek advice.”

Instead of entering a rage, the tiny spark reappeared in his gaze. This time, the spark lingered a while.

“Waste a queen’s time at the peril of monsters,” I said, and my queendom squeezed and shook.

King See straightened in his shackles, and I was annoyed to discover that I had forgotten he wore them. He did not seem as weighed by them as the others. He wove the illusion of being able to step away from the shackles at any moment. Perhaps I should add a few more to his panel.

He said, “The answer rests with humans, as you connected. Humans, themselves, made half of the connection as to what transpired to cause the dawn of the new age. They had raped the world, and the world returned the favor. Yet that was only half, or rather less so, of the truth. The disease was within humans, too, and still is. So while they have not raped the world in centuries, the world remains so very sick. Humans’ monstrous power is their parasitic presence.

For they are so infused through all facets of nature and the world, that if they die, then they drag all of everything into death with them. ”

My gaze darted between See’s milky eyes, for he had put my warning instincts into words.

Humans were the skull, and a body should not exist decapitated.

Humans could not die, and here was the reason.

Humans had woven their way into us and everything, and now our fates were linked.

Incredible and monstrous power indeed. Their failings had become our fate, and so our failings to undo.

As for the nature of their disease, their failing was as it had ever and always been. One fatal flaw rested at the heart of humanity.

“Convention,” I stated for the benefit of other kings.

The reason for interference of ancients.

The reason for The End.

The reason for monsters.

The reason for ruin.

That was the sickness and ruin of humans, and therefore everything else in the world, and unless I was successful, their convention would cause the end of life.

“Convention,” repeated King See, and as he answered my question, I felt the draw of my power.

Power ran from me to him. I did not enjoy giving him power at all, but I enjoyed the knowledge he had granted more in that it may help me to save my monsters.

For that, I felt grateful. “Thank you, sir.”

And in his milky gaze, I saw a shock at my gratitude.

I saw shock, and the third return of a tiny spark that did not fade, and that ice did not freeze away.