Page 16 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Thirteen

In monsterdom

Impossibilities were rarely that

Until now.

T heir chant filled me. And though I did not know the language of the dead, I could make the sounds with my torsioned lips and in this state where I was an impressionable child and brimming with maternal vigil.

I sat cross-legged. My body swayed and dipped in circles with the swaying and dipping circles of other mothers. I sensed this was reality. For in truth, my sights fixed unblinkingly on the tumultuous and swirling thunderclouds above.

Power.

Understanding of power awaited me.

The ancient knowledge built in me, drawn out of the world’s center and upward into my body by the vigil of fifty mothers and fifty daughters. The circling dip of my body became more urgent and erratic, as if my torso was being batted back and forth by a cat set on torturing its prey.

The rhythm quickened into a blur of the departed. My throat vibrated with the words of the undead that I could not fathom: the language of withered mothers.

I should not speak these words, I knew. They were not mine, not even meant for a queen.

But there was that which had to be known to save the world.

I must be privy to ancient understandings beyond my ability to connect, and fifty mothers had always been the medium by which monsterdom arrived to me.

They were the heart of my monsterdom; They, and their stitches and patches that had made me.

Thunderclouds gathered. And I was already somehow aware of what must be, in the same way that fifty mothers always seemed to garner what must happen too.

I knew it was coming, for the lightning of ancients struck the first mother, Cassandra, in a great sandstorm. The purpose of ancients had filled her after.

I watched as lightning sparked high above, a sudden flare of white in a grayscale world—an eruption in a silent storm. I did not look away as the lightning speared toward me, for in this childlike state I could not fear. There was only trust that fifty mothers would guide and nurture me.

My head and back crashed flat against the ground as the lightning pinned me down. My body rattled and leaped as the ancient force continued to pour through me and into the ground.

I was a conduit. And though my eyes were wide and unblinking— blinded by white—my internal eyes could see everything previously unseen as a queen.

My power.

Here was the place where body and mind were eradicated and overwhelmed, so only my power remained. And my power whispered to me .

My power pulled back the curtain, and I glimpsed everything beyond.

From high above, I looked down upon my body where it lay on the dirt ground in the middle of fifty mothers. Lightning speared me there, and I was a conduit indeed. A queenly paintbrush for ancients to draw the truth.

The lightning pouring through me snaked out in lines from the base of my tower and outward in all directions. As I watched from high above, I could see the pattern emerging.

The white snaking lines were akin to veins. All of the veins were connecting to each other in an intricate web. Thicker lines, like arteries, were forming between sections of smaller lines.

Once the web was complete, the area surrounding my tower flared brilliant white and started to throb.

To pulse.

Like a heart.

I hovered in my power as my body and mind continued to be obliterated by ancient lightning, and I understood very easily and naturally that ancients had just revealed the circulatory system of the world.

The lightning cut off, burned away like silk and ribbon. My body was no longer pinned to the ground. The map of the world’s circulatory system was complete.

Below, my body lifted off the ground. It rose in the air until ancients deposited me atop the tower so surrounded by the pulsing white. Even amid my power, I could barely tolerate looking upon its brilliance.

I was set on my feet beside an olden rock.

And then my power stopped whispering so clearly to me.

A blink, and I was back within my body and staring out across the haze. The olden rock was beside me. Mind, body, and power hummed harmoniously in me for the first time in queendom. All parts of me understood.

I looked out at everything that ancients had revealed. A map was carved in the barren world, from tower and through the haze.

While in my power, I had seen the version of a healthy and saved world. But now , I saw how the world really was, so near The Real End.

No blood could have flowed in this system.

Broken veins so marked with sickness and rips and despair.

The thickest arteries were wrecked and twisted and hardened, and the sight of their injury drew tears to my eyes.

The artery to the west. Goodness. My shoulder ached as I looked upon it.

I rubbed the joint and yelped when the stitch was hot to touch.

Very hot, but why?

Not long ago that stitch was nearly ripped out of me upon placing bridal gifts on this very tower.

Ah. But ah.

Without the bridal gifts here, I could not have seen this map, and without both of these ingredients, I could not have realized the hard-won truth.

I touched the stitch of my other shoulder, and an artery to the east twitched pathetically. This artery was frayed to such an extent that the two sides of its walls were nearly separated.

Frayed , one might say.

Frayed as the unions of kings and princesses were foretold to be.

My heart pumped faster, and I touched the stitches connecting my legs to my torso. One, and then the other.

Thick and frayed lines to the north and south flopped and squirmed in response.

My mind was making sense of the visual before me. There were four main arteries in the system. From them, branched tens of thousands of veins, maybe hundreds of thousands.

Four seams. Four unions.

Four arteries in dire need of mending .

But there was a fifth king, and one queen too. Where did they factor into this map of The Real End? I did not feel brave to look.

Yet monsters needed me, now and forever, and so I touched my fingers to the thick stitch connecting my head to my body.

Oof.

My knees met with stone, and the olden rock grated and whined in its fitting. I turned to peer into the rock, and a low groan left my lips.

Such hardening . Such callouses and disease. Black plague and ulcers.

A queen was the heart of monsters.

And her romance was the heart of the world.

This heart was nearly dead.

I fell against the olden stone, weak with the horror unmasked. This was my heart. Our heart. So focused on unions, I had not anticipated that my romance would be necessary to saving the world, but this…

Without a healthy heart, no part of the world could survive. Even if I managed to fix all other unions.

Stone crumbled under my hands, and my right forefinger sank into a hole. I traced the hole and allowed myself a single soul-weary sigh.

I drew the fifth and final key out of my pocket. His key.

King See’s key.

I drew on my power to set the gothic, delicate black key into the hole. Twist. Click.

The rock under my hands hummed, glowing deep within—a whir of a machine. As I peered out at the grayscale world again, there was a difference—a sight unlocked by the fifth key.

Seven hundred and thirteen differences to be exact, though I could not count all of them so quickly.

As a human, I had called them walled cities. They were the last stand of humans, and of life on this world. Monsters called them pulses.

Vitale was known as the largest and best protected of all cities, and whether this had to do with its position closest to my tower, I could not say.

Pulses.

Vitals.

Vital.

Vitale.

And my queendom at the exact center of Vitale, exactly where a heart should be.

I slid down to a shocked and numb pool on the ground. My cheek rested against the olden rock, though I detested it for the knowledge just granted.

Kings had held the world together as best as they could until I arrived. They had fumbled as well as possible, with no real knowledge from ancients.

Yet the time of kings was over, and now a queen could see all, and what for?

How I had congratulated myself with the small healing ideas already put in motion for princesses and kings—mediations for the Raises, brutal self-awareness for the princess of change, an inner journey for King Bring, and the hints of emotional diversity for the Takes.

All for naught.

For I had never seen my romance with King See as necessary. And now that I had finally accepted its disrepair while in the haze, I was meant to reverse my thinking somehow to love him again?

Fate was cruel, yes, but that was of no matter. The matter was the utter impossibility of the task.

Yet the sorry romance I shared with See was painfully evident in seven hundred and thirteen weak and sickly pulses, four enormous and frayed arteries, and tens of thousands of veins.

So, then.

The world could not be saved.