Page 27 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Nineteen

Give me the torture

Of Princess Take

Over this.

V aletise paused in the brushing of my hair.

I had heard him too. Felt him. Smelled him. And, of course, experienced the thump of his heart with mine.

A pounding heart, but not originating from my nerves.

“Queen Perantiqua,” See said from the doorway of my private chambers.

Valetise curtsied and left us alone. Me, in my nightgown, blonde tresses brushed and gleaming and hanging about my shoulders.

I did not rise. “I suppose you will explain your presence in my private chambers in your own time.”

“You asked me to consider a solution night and day. I do not believe our destiny gains anything from banishment to my princedom. We must be in each other’s company.”

For better or for worse.

I looked into the mirror and at his face—so handsome and unique in every way. “Do you expect that I will drop this nightgown so that you might have your way with me?”

His lips twitched. “A monster can hope.”

I rose, then, and turned. “You may sleep out in the lounge. I will not share my bed with you.”

“You uttered words of forgiveness and acceptance, even if you did not believe them. You freed me despite wishing to keep me shackled,” See spoke quickly. “You know that we must do things that you are not ready for. Sharing a bed will have greater effect than sharing a space.”

A chill entered me, and I crossed the room to stand before him. “You have considered a solution, which I acknowledge. But ultimately, the choice between us is mine.”

“I did all I could do to save you. To give us immortality, and save monsters too,” he said, a bite of anger in his voice.

My lips torsioned. “So you say. ’Tis my job to believe you, I suppose.”

“So we must dive into everything uncomfortable and awkward,” he pressed.

I placed a hand on his chest, and See stopped speaking. His chest rose sharply under my touch.

I said, “ You must do nothing but consider. I must do everything impossible. So only I will do any diving. Only I must be uncomfortable while you must only be uncertain and hopeful of avoiding a lonely and painful existence.”

See sighed. “I wish that I could make you believe.”

“I wish that too.”

I rose on tiptoe and set my lips to his. Then I put distance between us so that I could view his horror—that I had already felt the heartbeat of.

A chaste kiss. An icy kiss .

That was what we just shared.

I told him, “I will not share a bed with you because you must hope there is a possibility of our happy destiny. If you share a bed with me, you will be convinced of the exact opposite. Yours is the easier role to play, See. So play it, and cease arguing with a queen who is very capable of weighing most of everything.”

He stumbled back, the horror not leaving his face.

See was being confronted with all he had lost—our kiss had been as our heart beating between our lips. And now he had felt all our kiss was not.

Despair was painted upon him.

He turned from me, and strode away. He returned all the way to the door of my private quarters but strode no further than setting his hand upon the door handle.

See retreated to the small lounge adjoining my bedchamber. He sat on the couch. I had straddled his lap on that couch. He had ravished me there. We had shared dizzying pleasure.

How was I meant to connect to that again?

Sharing my body felt like a culmination of my thoughts and feelings. I could only enjoy such pleasure again once I truly forgave him.

And how to forgive him?

I had to understand him. Believe him. Trust him.

I pushed back my bedcovers and climbed into bed. I did not often sleep these days, no more than an hour or two in the day. But my minds used the time to whir in peace.

In peace.

They did not whir and offer wisps today.

I stared at the ceiling and felt his wakefulness as he would feel mine. I wished to sink into the deepest and most peaceful of sleeps to spite him.

Toss. Turn.

Another creak—what felt like the thousandth—arose from the couch King See slumbered upon, and I threw off the bed covers.

Grabbing the robe from the bottom of the bed, I shrugged into it as I charged from my private quarters.

I left—the irony of it all.

Agitation filled me, and I had occasionally submitted to petulance as a queen. I understood that this was one of those times.

I marched up to my conservatory and stomped my foot. “Duke of the raising kingdom. Present yourself!”

A distant yell grew louder and louder. The copper panel barely pivoted in time to admit the panicked duke.

“What is it?” he shouted, then bowed hastily.

I stomped my foot again, and the way my queendom buckled and rolled had naught to do with this duke, but he did not need to know that. “What has occupied your immortality?”

“I-I,” he stammered. “What do you mean?”

“What. Has. Occupied. Your. Immortality?” I hissed, then circled him.

He straightened. “My purpose, Your Majesty.”

King Change chuckled darkly. King Bring sucked in a breath.

“ Lie,” I thought, and my voice brushed against the duke.

He fell to his knees. “Freedom is fresh, my queen. My princess and I have not had such freedom of feeling in an age. Once the novelty wears off, we will?—”

“ There is no freedom,” I boomed, and thunder clapped to applaud my show of fury.

“That is not what I meant,” he said shrilly. “I misspoke.”

King Change laughed louder.

I stood over the duke, and I pitied him and I understood him.

He was not meant to rule, and this would be more palatable to him than the alternative.

“You are undeserving of dukedom. You are undeserving of freedom.” I laughed.

“I have an inkling to shackle your princess here instead of you. Perhaps then you will have enough time to pursue your purpose to save the world. ”

“I beg you, no. Not my princess. My faults and mistakes are my own.”

I turned from him. “They are, sir. Indeed they are. And yet you threaten monsterkind and humankind, too, with your mistake. I cannot allow you to do that.”

He hung his head. “I beg that you will not. I could not bear that either.”

Raise was truly a stuck and trapped monster.

I returned to him. “Sir, do you trust yourself in purpose?”

A long while passed before he mumbled, “I do not.”

“Who do you trust?”

“My wife.”

“It strikes me that she has always done what is needed.”

“She always has,” he said sadly. “She will be heartbroken. What will you do to me, my queen?”

I raised his chin with my finger. “The solution is simple, sir. We will both place our trust in someone else. I no longer trust you in purpose, even if I understand why you drift so. I do not resent you, for you have tried and tried, and there is great merit in that. I do trust you to love your wife beyond everything else, including your own reason.”

“We would never?—”

I kept speaking. “Here is the only solution I will grant you, sir. This is the only solution where you will remain with your wife.”

Duchess Raise walked into the conservatory. I had tugged her here at the beginning of the conversation, and she had heard all.

“My queen.” She bowed in her suit that never showed a wrinkle. “How might I serve you?”

“I am glad you have asked.” The princess already knew what she was to become, but for the benefit of other monsters, I declared, “You will henceforth be known as the Grand Duchess Regnant, and you will remain Duchess Raise informally. The Raising Duchy is now yours to rule. The raising purpose is yours to bear. Your union will always come second to that. Do this, Duchess, and I will allow your husband to remain free, though under your strict control. Refuse this power, and watch him bound in shackles from afar for as many centuries as it might take him to convince me to mercy again.”

The duchess trembled, but not for the reason her husband might suppose. Her husband who was spluttering and gasping.

“ What ?” he choked out.

“My love,” whispered Duchess Raise. “Did you drift from purpose again? You said that you would not.”

He bowed his head. “I am greatly ashamed, my moonlight and breath. I have wished to be everything for you, and I have failed.”

“You are everything to me,” she said. “I will happily carry this burden of purpose so that you might go on free.”

“Yet carrying that burden means no freedom for you,” he said darkly. “I cannot allow it.”

She knelt before him. “You do not need to. I accept the burden willingly.”

“I forbid?—”

Duchess Raise smiled. “I am the Grand Duchess Regnant now, husband. You cannot tell me what to do. Save your breath for our kiss.”

She kissed him, then, which was an excellent strategy. His anger melted like butter in a pan.

Best to keep the momentum going. “Princess Raise, you are now the Grand Duchess Regnant, and now you must pay the price.”

That ended their kiss, and she whirled to face me, uncertainty clear in the tightness of her shoulders. “The price? ”

“But the price.” I had an inkling of what the price would be.

Now I just had to switch them about, which could surely not be too hard, though not as simple as removing a crown and creating a tiara.

I reached into the Raises and gripped their souls in my power. They were my creatures now, and there was no possibility for them to resist. I had my fangs to their necks, so to speak.

But where was the essence of a king and a princess? Where was such a thing to be found? I could imagine it permeating through every aspect of a monster, but I could also appreciate its presence as a glowing ball linked to mind, body, and soul.

“And that is what it is,” I murmured, feeling my lips torsion.