Page 18 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

“My husband could resent me and you,” said Princess Raise.

That should not be underestimated. King Raise had been a king for an age.

He had grown to think of himself in this way, and identify in this way.

He, alone amongst kings, would be asked or forced to humble himself to the title of Duke.

Princess Raise’s part was easier—she was ascending to greater power.

She was being given the proper tools for a job she had undertaken for centuries, even when locked away for so many years at a time.

Princess Raise had manipulated, persuaded, and convinced her husband into that ploy. “I have faith in your ability to present this to your king. When the time comes, I will wield my power to increase your ancient ability and lessen his, but the matter must arise from love.”

“You ask me to wield our love like a weapon,” she said raggedly.

Whether love, lust, lack of trust, indifference, or betrayal, each monstrous romance wielded its fault as a weapon. Love was the harshest weapon of all. It chipped away at a person in every waking moment of each night. The Raises had hurt each other in this invisible way since first daring to love.

And how beautiful that dark fate, for they wished to be deeper and deeper in the feeling and never free of it. Love was the deadliest and most alluring predator.

There were many things that princesses should not know.

“I would ask that you do what is necessary to save your union. Before a queen, a princess could not have been granted the power to fulfill her destiny. You have always been meant for this, Princess Raise. From your birth. Ancients had to use their resources wisely until I arrived to help. Trust in the unfolding of your monsterdom.”

“I must, and yet I fear.”

“You fear because you are wise,” I told her. “Go about this as you see fit. Know that time is of the essence.”

Sand trickled into the hole, no matter our feelings.

Princess Change stared at her hands. “My union is broken beyond repair.”

“You cannot break what was never there,” I said gently.

The princess still winced.

I said, “Your trust was contractual, and so was not trust at all. You have relied and depended on his power to curb you to the terms of that contract. Under my power, those terms are obsolete, and so your union has been swept into flood waters and neither of you has any skill at swimming.”

“You want King No Change to trust her again?” Princess Take laughed coldly.

I could appreciate the irony, if not the clear difficulty of expecting change from the king incapable of it.

“There is truth in what they share. I have seen it in the way his eyes track her in a room. I have seen it in the way she wishes to do her best for him. This is the princess who defied the orders of a queen to make amends despite uncertain consequences. Until recently, your king clearly trusted that you would endeavor to always free him.”

“But now I am too aware of the single reason for my existence,” said the princess of change. “You declared this before everyone, including him. So he understands that we do not share the same reason for being. I believe in ruin, but I can do with it. My king cannot.”

She was right.

Princess Raise had shaken off some of the weight of her future task, and said, “I am not the same as my husband, but we trust one another. Princess Take does not share the moral hauntings of her king, but they trust each other in the flesh— and she trusts him in more ways too.” The princess turned her head my way, then bit off the rest of her comment.

My lips torsioned in a wry smile. “My turn is coming, Princess Raise. I am not exempt from this reckoning.”

Princesses were shocked. Princesses were stumped.

“But a queen?” blurted Princess Change.

“A queen,” I confirmed. “But what of a princess building trust with her king?”

Princess Raise slumped back on the couch, and it was a wonder that her suit never showed a crease. “That is the matter. Trust must be built. Broken trust must take a great deal of time to mend. It would be better if she had never agreed to the terms of his union.”

Princess Change glared at her. “It would be better if your king was not weak.”

Yes, yes. It would be better if I had never loved.

“Such thinkings and comments do not heal anything. You are right that mending trust will take more time than we have. There is an answer, I am certain and hopeful, but if obsessions have taught me anything, it is that we must pick up a pebble to see what landslide results. What is at the root of trust?”

“Respect,” said Princess Take.

Princess Raise said, “Understanding and appreciation.”

I added, “Honesty.”

No one in this room could say that their romance possessed all of these qualities. Certainly not me.

“Honesty.” The changing princess lowered her head into her hands. “I have never been honest with him in union, nor even with myself. I still do not wish to tell myself the truth either. How is he meant to trust me when he does not know me… when I do not know myself?”

I tuned out my senses at the subtle feeling of a wisp of connection awaiting me.

I cradled the wisp and returned to the conversation at hand.

“You must talk frankly with him of the monster you are uncovering. He knows himself, and you know him, but the key to healing him and your union must reside in who he is with you. There has been no you. There must be. This is what you must undertake, Princess.”

Fear filled her eyes, and I could surmise that no monster would relish enlisting in this battle with King No Change.

“I do not feel brave. In myself or in this,” she mumbled, breath hitching. “If I do not, then I will have no reason to exist. Nothing will grow. Beauty will die.”

“How can I help you?” I asked.

The other princesses echoed me. Of all the unions of princesses, hers was most difficult. Indifference might be reversed—and power too. Love of one aspect might be expanded to love of more.

Yet I quailed within for Princess Change was merely building a trust that had never existed.

She had not truly betrayed her king by revealing the nature of his ruin on other monsters.

I had used my power to drag this from her, and no king would fool himself into believing a monster could withstand one such as me.

Her king did not feel much of anything about her confession beyond annoyance that I had learned the truth.

Resentment that I had conquered him. Anticipation of my crushing downfall.

But my romance?

Trust had been broken. Trust had once existed between us, and so that trust must be mended before any building could begin.

Yet sand trickled steadily to fill the hourglass of The Real End. Trust between monsters might take decades or centuries. Unless I was mistaken, which I was not, then we had weeks.

“I do not wish for an audience when I must be vulnerable,” whispered Princess Change. “I know that I have broken trust with you, too, Queen Perantiqua, but I do not have any intentions to free my king now. Might I speak somewhere private with him each night?”

My pawns could simply move his copper panel to the rooftop garden. “I can grant you private surroundings, though monsters who wish to will hear you. This is difficult to avoid.”

“I understand,” she said. “Perhaps all other monsters must get to know me too.”

“There is the matter of your frequency,” I told her. “Once nightly will not do. I suggest once hourly.”

Her eyes boggled and likely her mind did too. “But hourly?”

“Hourly. I realize this will impact your growing capacity. This is necessary. And King No Change is not busy, shackled as he is.”

Her face worked, and she gripped her gardening apron. “It will be done.”

Three princesses set on the task of healing their unions, and King Bring was deep in his inner journey. I would speak with him, too, to accelerate what I could.

And then.

And then.

There was a temptation to sneak away and not speak of my romance… my heart.

Three princesses inhaled the reckoning in the air, and the way they suddenly looked at me, in perfect unison, reminded me of the owlish looks of Is, Has Been, and Will Be, when I first met them at Hotel Vitale.

Hotel Vitale at the heart of the City of Vitale. The center of the main pulse.

Goodness, such signs had always surrounded me.

“I will not shy away, dear monsters. Do not look at me so.”

“You must heal the feeling between you and King See?” asked Princess Change. There was awe in her voice, and not the good kind. She was awed by the impossibility of the task, even in relation to her own .

I answered, “I must try. And I have reflected deepest of all on this matter, for I feel no meaningful way forward with this king, no stepping stone. I cannot seem to locate any pebble to trigger a landslide. So, my champions, I put the task to you. In romance, what must a queen do?”

Princess Take licked her full lips. “You know, my king did mention that a pawn carried a message for King See before you entered the grave. Is it true that King See requested an audience that you denied?”

My heart fell. Because the pebble was so grotesquely simple. Yet so heavy that I felt foolish trying to pick it up. This surely could not work.

Surely speaking with King See would not lead to anything.