Page 14 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Did he like the chainmail draped across my shoulders?

Likely not, for in war we had often disagreed, and so we were at war with each other forevermore.

But I did revel in his turmoil, as Candor had revealed earlier.

I reveled in the idea that he might live in great regret.

All this through the beating of our hearts, and there was my torture.

For as he was affected, then so was I. One of us could not be calm when the other was not.

Both of our hearts stuttered and skipped.

King Change snarled, “What have you done to her?”

I finished listening to Toil admonish Hex for drawing the whole plate of potatoes into his blob and not leaving any for another.

I answered the king. “I removed her single reason for existing.”

Change blinked. But with the melted appearance of his eyelids, the blink was neither symmetrical nor complete.

King Raise said from partway down the left of the table, “How is it possible to remove that from a person?”

How? My brows rose. I had not much considered how. I had wished to do it. “In the same way I would pick a flower, sir. Though a deeply rooted flower, I grant you.”

The king did not understand, but that was to be expected.

“You seek to punish me through my princess.” King Change accompanied his accusation with a glare of mange and scar.

I sipped from my goblet. “Punishment of you never entered my mind, King of No Change. This is entirely to do with a princess. ”

“How so?” King Take asked, tearing his focus from his princess’s breasts.

Princess Raise answered for me, “Our queen wishes to ascertain whether a princess is of No Change too.”

The connections of a princess satisfied a queen. Her king gazed upon her with adoration and respect.

“You are correct,” I told her. “I wish to fathom whether a princess shares the unchanging fault of her king.” I set my goblet down. “Shall we see?”

Pawns hastened away from the despondent princess. She was despondent indeed. I had often seen her pretend such a feeling, and the difference of that pretend numbness to this was plain for all to witness. But could a princess feel the difference?

I pulled her single reason for existing from the walls of my queendom and gently eased it back into Princess Change.

She gulped in an enormous breath, and her chest rose as though tugged sharply upward with string.

Color returned to her skin, as did the energy in her posture.

She clutched at her head, and then her heart, and then she took in her surroundings for the first time.

Princess Change looked first to the hellebores climbing here and there in the dining hall. Then she looked at the food.

Then she looked at monsters.

And then her king.

I said softly, “Princess, I have returned your single reason for existing. Tell me, and tell all, what do you breathe for?”

She looked away from her king and fixed her sights on my dinner plate before finding the strength to meet my gaze.

The princess winced, then glanced at her king again.

Her breath came rather fast, and she clawed at the table.

I could not be the only one to notice how sweat beaded on her forehead, not how she was positioned to flee.

From whom ?

No one could flee me.

Which she knew, for she did not try to do that. But she did try to resist the lesson that would break her if she did not remake herself with the knowledge gained.

I cast Candor a silencing look. This was a truth that had to come from the princess. Sure enough, Candor already had both bony hands clamped over her jaw and teeth.

“You can do it,” Unguis whimpered and whined to his princess. “Just tell us.”

The encouragement of pawns should never be underestimated.

The princess closed her eyes. “I breathe to grow.”

Her words rang through the dining hall and through me too. For the princess had not said, “I breathe to ruin.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks, and the changing princess did not meet the stinging and condemning gaze of her king.

She sobbed. “My single reason for existing is to grow, and when it was taken from me, there was no reason to go on.”

I stood and picked up my goblet. “You are correct, of course. In stating the truth of your self, you have taken the first step to remaking yourself. I commend you, Princess. Unlike your king, you are a monster capable of change.”

I sipped from my goblet, and other monsters followed suit.

I sat again. “Your reason for ruin is tied up in your union, that is all. You do not need to be the same as your king, Princess Change. Who you are is no betrayal to who he is, but through his own weaknesses, he has sought to convince you otherwise.”

She did not see the matter like this, not yet. Maybe she never would, but if that was so, then I did not understand how their union could be mended. If their union remained frayed, then their seam in the world would surely remain so too.

I could not see that part clearly, but I could clearly see that the making of a princess had been required as a first step.

King Change sneered, then said, “A queen is quick to point out all that other monsters deny while in denial herself. ”

Candor stated, “ He referred to the betrayal of King See. ”

So I had garnered. “There is no denial in me, sir. The betrayal of King See holds no weight on the future of monsters, and we gain nothing from the discussion of it. By contrast, there is much to gain from the remaking of a princess.”

Candor was silent, and more than a few monsters were surprised by the truth in my words.

“Nothing to be gained?” King See spoke for the first time. “You require no clarity nor validation nor vengeance? I find that hard to believe.”

I wished that he had not, for I preferred his silence. “I imagine you do.”

Everyone looked at Candor, and she did speak this time. “ Contrary to her assumption, King See found such things easier to believe by the hour. ”

What did that mean?

“Is it true that he fucked you to gain power?” King Change asked, determined to make matters worse.

“Yes,” I answered. “He had guessed that the delights of my body would prove too much for him, and that ancients would send him into slumber. This was always his design.”

King Take grinned. “I always wondered why he did not mentor or support you in queendom. I expected that the pair of you had a deal.”

“No deal, sir,” I said. “Just a long-held ploy to overthrow a queen.”

My words were truth, and King See did not dispute them, nor did Candor.

“I believe he felt for you at times,” King Raise mused, and his was a perception that I would not entertain.

“In time, once the world is saved, then I may ponder your words, sir,” I answered.

“My rise to queendom awakened See’s betraying purpose.

Perhaps there were prior interactions that were not artificial, but I am not inclined to consider those during the world’s reckoning.

” Despite my lack of inclination, my minds carried the thought onward.

There were the times King See had gone to war for me.

The times he had rushed to save me from other kings.

The times he had watched over me in slumber. The first times I had seduced him.

Will Be blurted, “His proposals were real. His rage and despair after your rejections were powerful and vulnerable.”

I chuckled. “You must refer to his first proposals, dear pawn, and not his last where I was to merely be one princess in his harem of female monsters.”

Still, King See remained silent.

King Take did not. “A harem? How could he ever have a harem when no princess can touch him? Since his rise in power, even my princess cannot get within three feet of him.”

In my soul and minds, I sucked in a pained inhale, as if a giant had punched me in the chest. There was a stutter of shock as I heard King Take’s words that muted everything in me and blanketed all thought.

Just a stutter before my minds resumed their toil, but that spoke of the magnitude of my shock, for erasing thought from a queen even for a stutter of time was an enormous feat.

Princesses cannot touch him.

Only Princess Take had been able to touch him, and Candor had not corrected King Take’s comment just now, so he spoke truth about King See’s new power.

King See could never have kept a harem, and I—in my agony of heart and self—had forgotten that simple truth.

No princess can touch him.

As if privy to my thoughts, Candor stated, “ No princess would ever touch King See again. ”

Such a simple statement, but the power of it… that simple truth threatened to undo everything learned and accepted.

King See had woven such betrayal against me in my most vulnerable moment.

He had convinced me entirely of his plotting subterfuge.

Yet here was one part that could not be true.

King See could never have kept a harem, so I never would have needed to share him, even if I had been reduced to princess.

Yet he had been so eager and determined to convince me otherwise.

There was a sudden loose thread in the usurpation of a king.

And there was now a threat that his entire betrayal would unravel. And a fear that would happen too.

Never since uncovering my self in the haze had I been so hard pressed to put all of my learning into practice. I tuned out my senses instinctively, and my mind was slow to offer the wisp of connection needed.

This was surely as undone as a queen could be. I had not anticipated that I could be this undone now.

Yet here I was again, and over King See, no less. Again.

Monsters are my reason for being.

My minds sought the calm I had learned in the haze, but where the sensations of my body had distracted me from proper queenly connection for so long, now thoughts of See were the culprit.

I engaged in my bodily senses and dialed them high to overwhelm the shouting of my minds. Ah. Calm spread through me once more. How curious that I could now dial the various parts of me whenever I wished.

Monsters watched me, though not in a curious or concerned way. Only a blink and a second had passed.

King See still adhered to silence as he watched me through milky eyes that could not see my past nor future, but which had always and always seen the present of me.

I banished my feelings and thoughts and picked up my goblet.

“Dear monsters, while this feast was called to celebrate my return, I would also like to use this as an opportunity to formally celebrate the return of another cherished monster to our midst. Please join me in welcoming Princess Bring back.”

A loud cheer went up from most monsters. For they believed that their queen was entirely unaffected by what she had heard. She had listened to the truth and to the opinions of kings, but she was not angered or upset.

And I was not, in this moment. Because I had chosen not to be.

But there were unravelings to consider later. Later, when I was alone.