Page 21 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

I had shared his yearning for simplicity. I had hated the hardship of our destiny.

His milky eyes had never seemed so timeless as he said, “I cannot fathom how to forgive myself for hurting you so deeply that you threw yourself in a place to be lost from monsters.”

I turned my head, unable to look at him with those words spoken and out.

See whispered, “I cannot fathom how you might forgive me for doing so, even if you choose to believe my intentions were pure.”

Why did Candor not interrupt him? I had not expected to feel pain. Pain from uncertainty. Must I be exposed to this turmoil on top of queenly fates too?

King See inhaled sharply. “I cannot fathom how to absorb the greatest blow of all—that we have succeeded. That we might forgive one another, and in doing so we will be victorious in transcending love. Forevermore, for immortality, you will never place me above your duty again, and I must bear it—and you must bear it—time and again. That is the greatest blow of all. That is hardest to fathom of everything. ”

I stood suddenly. My breaths were not as even and queenly as I would have liked. “You call that the hardest part, sir? I call it the most ironic. You have succeeded in chasing away the very love that you ridiculed from the start. You should congratulate yourself.”

I walked down the shallow steps and stopped before him. I looked up into See’s milky gaze. “Did you mean those three simple words?”

I love you.

His gaze shuttered. “I did.”

Candor said, “ He meant three words, but they were not so simple. Three words were also uttered with the design of breaking her. ”

I arched a brow. “As expected. You’re dismissed.”

A tugging pulse summoned my seeing pawns, who set to wheeling King See out of the throne room. His voice carried back. I could not have the last word, apparently.

“Your crown fits perfectly on your head, Perantiqua.”

My crown? The crown I no longer felt pressed to wear because my queendom was so irrefutable? That crown?

I returned to my throne and sat heavily and not at all regally. Perhaps hellebores would bury me entirely for a time.

Candor did not break my reverie.

Such swirling of thought. I had believed myself free of the trappings of such swirling. I tuned out my bodily senses to exist in mind and power. There, I could not feel the rapidness of my breath, nor the pain in my chest, nor the weight in my stomach.

I could observe the whirring of my minds from afar, but not be consumed by them.

A wisp. I needed a wisp. Any wisp.

A rusty cog turned, and I barely saw the mist that drifted upward. When I did see it, grasping the offered wisp was difficult.

But I managed.

He speaks truth.

Growling, I shook the wisp free of my grip. If that was all my minds had to offer, then I was not prepared and ready for such a thing.

Prepared and ready, though. A queen did not get such luxuries. She could not even love. I was not prepared nor ready to believe and forgive King See.

Though I was ready to transcend love.

I tuned back into my body. Candor was waiting. For how long, I could not say.

I said, “He presents an explanation that only a single future existed, a tenuous one, where he had to force me into a haze to undergo hundreds of trials, then emerge having transcended love. What lies did he speak?”

“None that I did not interrupt.” She hesitated.

She hesitated. I steeled myself. “What is it?”

“Do you wish to know the lies you uttered, my queen?” she squeaked, so often timid when not uttering the truth.

I stilled. My lies? I had not considered my lies. “Yes, I do.”

“You lied when you said that there was no reason to transcend a love that no longer existed. You still love the Seeing king.”

I blinked. “How so?”

“Your love is hate, but hate is soured love. You might unsour it at any time.”

That thought echoed my own conclusions, though doing so was a far harder task, especially when I was only doing it to save monsterkind. “What else?”

“When you informed King See that he was only enough for a weaker queen, you did not believe it.”

I withheld a sigh. I had known as much. “Anything else?”

“One more thing, my queen. You told him that he had successfully chased away love. You do not believe that either. You believe that he injured your love, and that you then chased away and stomped out the notion of love for good. Which as I said, is also a lie, as you remain in love, though it is soured.”

I had done these things. In self-preservation at first, and then from a sense of allocating my time and energy and heart to those who were more deserving. “There only remains the question of what to do about soured love. What to do quickly?”

Candor dipped her head. “And that is a choice that only you can make.”

Yes. And the answer was in the very question I had asked. What to do quickly? The choice had to be quick.

Forgiveness had to be quick.

That I did not want to forgive was neither here nor there for a queen in general.

But I must believe the forgiveness, too, or it was no forgiveness at all, and that would not have any healing effect on the world’s heart.

A queen facing her reckoning and the ruin of the world must forgive entirely and quickly.

I did not bother to hold back my sigh this time.

“Thank you, Candor,” I said. “Thank you for revealing his truth. Thank you for revealing mine.”