Page 2 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Two

The death of trust.

W eary were my thoughts when the creature returned to circle.

Back already?

His snarl heightened, so I must have spoken aloud.

I should worry about such a creature, especially because he circled closer tonight. I should, but such deep weariness did not allow for fear. Death did not seem so cold nor final to me as it once might have.

At least in death, this clamor in my head would end. I wished for the clamor to be gone. Had this always existed in me, or was the noise and bang and whine a symptom of the haze?

A sudden rise to monsterdom and queendom and power had not managed to steal my sanity, but this numbness of haze might prove to.

Snarls and growls and snaps. I should worry about him. I could not .

So tired, I thought or said.

The creature’s answering growl was terrible indeed. It circled closer.

Will you end the clamor?

He circled tighter again.

After such obsessions and learnings and turmoil, was this My End? If ancients had deemed so, then it was because I was not enough.

For him. For queendom. For monsters. For myself.

I am not enough.

The creature’s growl cut off.

Inwardly, maybe outwardly, I tilted my head at the change. A cut-off growl was no small thing for this creature who had only ever growled.

Does that interest you? Is that what you wish to hear?

He snarled, and set up his circling again. No closer. No farther.

I was not enough for a king. For King See had chosen against supporting me in queendom as he could have. He had opted to render me a mere princess, and to spread his lust across a harem of princesses too. He had said that I, alone, could not satiate him.

King See, who could witness and sense so much of the past, present, and future.

What had he fathomed of my queendom that had convinced him against trusting me with the fate of the world and monsters?

Why was I not enough for him?

Am I so terrible at wearing a crown? Had my crown always slipped, as King See had so cruelly said? I had thought the crown was fitting better and better. Were his words cruel, or had there been no kind way to deliver his reasons for usurping me?

Sometimes a spoken truth was cruel but true, nevertheless.

Was I so lacking in every way?

Was I ever enough for him ?

The creature stopped snarling. One of my minds noticed the interruption.

I could not believe that King See had loved me despite those scathing views, but I had believed his declaration of love.

I wept in soul and mind and power. Such dreams he had ignited with three simple words.

Yet he had known that entering my body would place him in a slumber where ancients would grant him more power. Enough power to become king.

He had declared love for that purpose. I love you.

I love power.

I love the idea of kingdom.

I love the idea of you as princess.

I love the idea of a harem.

I had believed him so completely, and how could I trust a belief again? Belief in myself. Belief in my capability. Belief in my fate.

“I have been the greatest fool.” And the added cruelty was that King See had warned me. So many times he had told me not to love him. That he would never love me.

Fool.

The creature huffed and sat back on its haunches. When a creature was all a person could sense any longer, then a person became rather attuned to its various noises.

Have I fooled myself in queendom and monsters and self too? If I had been a fool in love, then perhaps I was a fool in all aspects.

In this haze I felt no surety in myself. But no, the haze was not to blame. Mother had appeared fearful because she could not see surety in me before I entered this place.

I no longer felt worthy of love, even love of myself, because I had been convinced of his love, and convinced of the rightness of mine toward him. Lies and schemes had crushed any notion of the sentiment .

So I have no trust in myself.

In my mind and power, I searched for such trust. No answer rose in me. Death of trust . A gaping hole where dreams had once existed. The haze amplified all emptiness in my heart and soul, but at least fear could not exist amid this exhaustion and clamor of thought.

So weary and wrung.

Exhausted and crawling in mind.

Perhaps that was the only reason I felt the tiny cog spin in my skull. The cog spun as if rusted and flaking. As it creaked around, a curious idea rose in me, a mere wisp that I inhaled for worry that snatching at it would only see the wisp flee.

I inhaled the wisp of an idea.

You have monsters. Monsters need you.

I smiled, and there was a surge of energy in me. Enough that I thought to lift my head and tell the creature what I had recalled.

But how strange to find…

The creature was gone.