Page 32 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

“Only if this is the end, Daughter. I might have happily existed with my daughter in deathly vigil, but I will be equally happy to die in truth now that I am healed in heart and at peace with my Yasmin.”

Tears flowed over my cheeks. “This is the end, Mother. I rejoice that you feel all that you do at your end. Thank you for all you have endured.”

Richalle stood from vigil, and in my body, I felt her stitch loosen from my shoulder.

She walked free of the mothers beside her.

“I endured it for myself. For my daughter. For respect of the mothers before and after me. Rejoice, but do not feel remorse. My heart is full, and how many might say that and mean it?”

There was a reason this mother had stitched my shoulder. “I will be with you, Richalle.”

“Yes, daughter, you will. And I with you. We show no mercy tonight.”

I reflected her smile. “None.”

There was a roar of noise and otherwise utter darkness. I was flat on my back, and my champions were in a crouch, savagely shouting and bellowing at the blackness pummeling from above.

The stitch from my shoulder wiggled free, and it exploded as surely as blackness had. Not into a feasting snake, as I had encountered until now. Richalle erupted into a giant version of herself. She glowed with an inner molten fire, and yielded a great shield.

That was exactly what she had been in life and living death—a shield. She had tried to shield her daughter from every hurt and pain in life. But now she used the shield for what it was designed for.

Against ruin.

Richalle filled the very sky.

My mouth hung ajar as she slammed the shield down and split the land. Ruin turned its focus from me and my champions to the greater threat, and my champions were quick to return to their feet.

As Richalle cut through the darkness, my champions directed the pieces to a yawning funnel in the sky that they had whirled into being.

The Raises, still locked hand in hand, were lifted high.

Richalle crashed her shield in a booming blow against a wall of sickness, and it careened back under the surface. The sky was clear night again, the stars and moon present once more.

I expected the shining and giant mother to dive into the black sea and into the heart of the frayed seam, but she switched direction.

She dove at the Raises.

Through the Raises.

The duke and duchess’s mouths locked in silent screams, and Richelle’s giant form enveloped them.

Their hands finally unlocked.

The duke’s eyes roll back in his head. The duchess was screaming .

They toppled into the black sea.

“Catch them,” I cried out, lashing forward my own power in a net.

They fell through it.

They fell through my net, and the net hurtled forth by my remaining champions.

I watched the Raises crash through the surface of the black sea, and I was barely aware of my knees crashing to the dirt.

But Richalle was surging after them, shield held before her.

She did not cut through the black and disappear beneath the surface.

No, she battered at the black, pressing down and down.

The dark water had nowhere to go. It attempted to curl around the sides of Richalle, but as it touched the night sky, it evaporated into screaming oblivion—for this mother had claimed the very air.

Richalle bore down, face determined and shouting behind her shield. She dug her shoulder behind it as the black started to press back.

She had to win. My monsters were in there.

I crawled to the edge of the sea, scanning for any hand or face or shout. Where were they?

A great crater was forming, and the crater was as enormous as weaker human eyes might see. The crater was a mythical country. The crater had once been thriving land until this powerful force of ruin had ulcerated the surface of the world.

Richalle turned her head and looked at me. She smiled, and then shoved one last time.

The last of the black evaporated, the last of the sickness in this frayed seam and artery was gone.

But my heart thudded in a dreadful way that it rarely had.

“Where are they?” whispered Princess Bring. “I did not hold onto them. Was I meant to hold on to them?”

Princess Take wrapped an arm around the princess, uncaring of her slime. “We were not meant to hold them. ”

I paced atop the jutting pedestal of land where we now were. Everything below us on all sides was a crater of dust and dirt. “They must be here. I need four champions.”

But did I? I could be certain of very little. Perhaps mothers were not the only ones meant to die.

Then what was the point of saving the world? What was the point if monsters must die? They must be alive.

“Here!” shouted Princess Change.

There were many times that I might have detested her, but I might have happily kissed her now.

I blurred across dirt to her, and located the red sparkle through the grassland steadily forming. The duke had always been fond of covering his fingers in jewels, and a sole ruby had remained uncovered by dirt to act as a survival beacon.

My monsters are safe.

Releasing my power, I forced the dirt down and away from them. Duke Raise’s limp form was quickly revealed.

“Where is the duchess?” I muttered.

I dug. They had fallen into the sea close to one another. She must be close by. The princesses were tending to the duke, pulling him out to the surface that was rapidly forming into a lush and green miracle that I could barely have imagined.

But I could not appreciate the miracle. Not when a monster was lost.

I readied my power to dig up the entire crater, but a hand on my arm made me pause.

Princess Change did not look at me. She stared out at the impossible and vibrant forest. As we watched, the trees and vines climbed high above us and obscured all sense of the vastness the crater had conveyed so effortlessly. This seam. This artery that had been hardly that any longer… was healed.

We would only confirm how much of the world was healed from the sky, but I imagined that our previous efforts had been nothing on this.

“We are meant to heal the world, not dig it apart,” said the princess.

“I must find my monster,” I replied, and even stepped to do so.

Princess Change hushed, “And how might ancients interpret that?”

I glanced back at her with unseeing eyes as my minds grasped her simple question. They would grasp that I was disrespecting their gift.

I would be disrespecting Richalle’s efforts. Not just of tonight but those of her life and death.

“The mother seemed certain when she poured through the duke and duchess,” murmured the princess next.

She had.

She had, no less.

“You wish me to realize that I was not meant to save Duchess Raise. You wish me to accept that she was a sacrifice. How shall I do that when I have the power to be sure my monster is not buried in dirt? How shall I answer the duke when he wakes and his wife is gone and lost?”

“I am not Queen” was the answer. “Yet the duchess tunneled through the world to get here, and if she is buried, I would fathom that she might tunnel back. To you, and certainly to him.”

I closed my eyes. “You are saying I must have faith in ancients.”

“And in your monsters, my queen. Nothing simple could have come of healing such a wound.”

I released my power at once and in defeat. I swallowed hard against my irrational instincts. My emotion. I had not expected that emotion could interfere with my queenly actions again. I had been caught off guard, already in grief from parting with Richalle.

I drew forth the numbness of the haze in my mind, and then released the anguish of my body into it. After that, I worked to release grief from my mind too. Soon enough, the clamor faded and the whirring of connection settled upon me again.

My power swept outward and my heart filled at the sight of the artery fixed. Strong. Pliable. Pumping with the world’s vitality. We had achieved something that had felt impossible.

Unreachable.

And Princess Change was right. The enormity of this… could not have come without a greater price.

Yet I could not believe that the duchess had been taken so suddenly from us. Without sight of her death. Without closure. Without even the true confirmation that she was really dead and not merely buried.

Even a queen could not face that cruelty.

I tuned back into my body and nodded at the princess. My gaze lifted to peer past her at the duke. “We must get him back to the queendom. Princess Change is right. Ancients will not take well to us disrespecting this miracle. I have dug enough and can dig no more.”

Princess Take surged to her feet. “She could be out there. Just like we found him.”

“And I have faith in her ability to return to us if she is designed to.” The words were hollow, and the princess, who tended to test the boundaries most often anyway, could hear that well enough.

She crossed her arms. “And what about when it is my turn? Will you leave me buried?”

Princess Bring squelched in alarm. Of all the princesses, only the one of change showed no alarm at the idea of a burial. That was likely her idea of bliss, to be so surrounded by soil.

“All seams must be mended, Princess Take. But I do not see the sense in a world without monsters. I cannot see why we would have been perfectly crafted to heal the world, but then never exist in it. If that was our fate, then that would be a heartless fate indeed.”

Her pouty lips twisted into a smirk. “So you would have me believe in the mercy of ancients? Ancients who placed my king in cold purpose to break him, and who have demanded so much of monsters.”

I approached her, drawing in my power enough that I could place a hand on her shoulder.

I looked at her. “You do not really know much of demand, Princess Take. The mother who battled back darkness with a shield, though, she knew of demand. Her entire life was lived in sacrifice, and her death in pain. Her living death in servitude, and then her final death in battle. I am sure, beyond reason, that you will meet the demands upon you as a monster of purpose. As I will. As we all will. For that is who we are.”

The princess’s defiance leached away.

She did not reply, and I did not demand one from her.

I stooped down and picked up the duke, uncaring of the mud and dirt that clung to my clothing and skin. His eyes were moving behind his eyelids. Soon he would awaken.

I sighed. “My champions, you have done monsters and the world a great service tonight. Thank you. And now we must do what we can. We return to my queendom.”