Page 26 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

I entered the conservatory, and King Take’s panel was already turned to face me. Black flooded out in a mask around his eyes at the sight of his scantily clad princess. I rather feared that his trousers may not be strong enough to contain all they were designed to contain.

“King Take, I call back my stitch and release your shackles. For now.”

He staggered free of his panel, rubbing his wrists. As soon as his mind caught up, Take beelined for his princess. I stopped him with a push of power.

“Sir,” I said. “Your first thought should be of your queen. Of what your title now is. Of how you can support me. Of what you return to.”

“My first thought is of her,” he growled.

“That cannot be,” his princess whispered back.

I agreed. “No, it cannot. That is a problem indeed.”

I latched my power around their wrists and strode for the balustrade overlooking the courtyard. “Which is why you are both going to trip through the grave with me.”

Princess Take screamed. “We cannot go there.”

“You cannot without my permission.”

“What do you intend for us?” King Take demanded.

He was finally asking the right question.

I whipped my power forward and jerked both of them over the balustrade. He yelled and she shrieked as they whirled and twirled in a crashing descent through Mother’s hellebore grave.

“Easy as that.” I clambered atop the balustrade and then turned my back on the courtyard. I pressed a hand against my forehead, then fell back as if in a dead faint.

I toppled and fell, then clawed and climbed out the other side.

Into a grayscale world.

“Mothers,” I greeted.

The Takes were shouting and screaming, trying to find an exit point in the circle of my mothers.

“Goodness,” muttered Cassandra.

“Goodness,” I echoed.

I knelt beside my gaunt mother and could not summon the right words. I looked to where the statue of Danya was just visible across the circle.

“We knew, Daughter,” wheezed my mother.

I looked at her, and she looked at me.

“Since lightning poured through you and into this place, we have known.”

Cassandra added, “Each of us felt ourselves in part of the world. We knew what was required of us.”

I closed my eyes. “Danya was… so fierce and beautiful. Savage. The sickness was no thing against her.”

“Danya is free in death,” said my mother.

I looked up. “Free in death.”

My heart skipped a beat, and I peered immediately to the mothers sitting in vigil who had never wished to be here. “I had not expected that ancients would allow death for our line.”

“They will not allow death for you,” said Cassandra.

Mothers stared at me.

They chanted, “ You will free us.”

Yasmin—who had never wished to wither—hissed, “ You must not fail us. ”

My mother snapped back, “She will not fail us.”

I cupped my mother’s cheek. “But Mother… how can I free you? You were meant to be with me always.”

“I had thought so, too, my Patch.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “And that was a lovely existence while we believed in it. We are not bigger than the world. So much life awaits all, more than that of my wildest dreams. We cannot work against that.”

There must be a way. There was always a way. Ancients had returned Adalina to life. And Princess Bring too. I would not lose fifty mothers, and if I lost forty-nine, then I would not lose my mother.

Ancients could show mercy when they liked.

“There is much work to be done before our goodbye,” Mother said.

I cocked a brow at the yells and screams behind me. “I had not realized what terror this place would hold for other monsters.”

I supposed that they saw fifty undead mothers sitting in a circle, their hands stitched together, and one of them a rock statue. I supposed the Takes could not understand the lack of color in the place either.

I lashed power around their wrists again, then dragged the Takes after me. The princess had sparked this idea when she had mentioned breaking .

A queen knew of a place where monsters could not feel their body.

Well, I should say that the haze presented differently to all monsters.

For me, my bodily sensations had been removed so that I might know my mind and soul.

While King Change had not received the same experience from the haze, I had come to wonder if the haze had recognized the lack of the king’s ability to change.

The haze had trapped the king for me, but otherwise had left him alone.

I stopped just before the haze, and then smiled when my copper-furred creature brushed against my legs. “Hello, beautiful creature. I have missed you.”

It stalked off into the haze.

“What is that thing?” Princess Take shrieked.

I told her true. “’Tis the creature that will feast upon your flesh if you should not succeed in this place.”

King Take dragged his princess behind him. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I will tell you something that might help you in the haze, sir. Listen well, for this is more than I knew.” I glanced over my shoulder.

“This haze is a gift, if you choose to see it that way. You see, your union is very frayed, sir. The saving of the world depends on you accepting the lessons to be learned in here.” I did something I had never done and pressed images into his mind.

An image of what I had seen of his union—the artery so frayed it was like two halves instead of a whole structure. I showed him the black sickness and the life that had sprung up once Danya healed it.

I showed the king himself , so desperate from lack of bodily satisfaction. I showed him the conversation with his princess where she despaired over their fate.

King Take’s face slackened in shock.

He, a man so drowning in morals, could only feel guilt and shame for such images, but that was not why I had shown them to him.

That was the truth. Without any of his feelings or mine, that was the truth.

“If you are brave enough to look at it, then you will help to save the world,” I said quietly, also looking at his princess. She would have her own journey in the haze, though a lesser one than her king.

“If I am not?” he asked.

“Then the world ends. You will end the world. You have straddled the line between ruin and saving for centuries, King Take. So decide in this haze, are you a saving king or the opposite? And if you are a saving king, then you must face all that is needed for you to be so. For you to heal yourself and your union.”

He was breathing hard. “If I am a ruining king?”

“Then it has been an honor to know you. You have often improved my tolerance.”

Some amusement returned to him. “You are calling me annoying.”

I lassoed power around their ankles and jerked them over my head and into the haze. Their screams disappeared.

But my nerves did not. This was a drastic move, and a risk and a gamble.

Odds were, they could not succeed. But if the haze robbed them of bodily sensations, then they could only be faced with what remained. Which had always and forever been very little.

This plan was madness.

I blew out a breath. “Such is reckoning.”