Page 34 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

I glanced around the chamber. “To think of all that might have remained unfelt if I had agreed to princessdom. I imagine that the world would have slid to ruin long ago.”

See’s face darkened. “The arrival of your queendom could not have come soon enough. That is when I started to awaken to what I must do. That is when I saw the foolishness of my dream.”

“Yet you were always clear on the matter of love. That existed even when you clung to the dream of possessing a princess.”

His milky gaze washed over me. “I like to think that I am adaptable when new knowledge presents itself. You were not a queen, and then you were. Dreams must sometimes die.”

I jerked, and looked at him. What did he know of my dreams? “But dreams cannot always die.”

He tilted his head. “One would hope not. For then there would be no sense to hope at all.”

I did not relish this discussion of hope and dreams.

“As for love,” See continued, “when a monster requires another to live and breathe. Then the matter is rather greater than love, it becomes a matter of?—”

“Desperation?” I arched a brow.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Just that, my darkness. Of survival.”

My stomach churned at his warm surety, which felt too soon and just right at the same time. I turned away.

There was one more place. One more room.

Stairs.

There remained a hall on this landing, though See’s reduction to princedom had shortened its length.

I entered his bed chamber soon after. A hand clenched my insides and rendered me short in breath and feeling and thought. Here was where I last believed him.

Here was where I had said goodbye.

I stared at the painting of the Perantiqua who was first undone by him.

She was lost in lust and in confusion of the watchful silence of a king.

She was untouched by the knowledge of ruin.

She had not thought past goodness of deed and goodness of self.

This Perantiqua would not have accepted that an ancient force might render a king desperate and blind and hopeless in romance so that her mere arrival would undo him thoroughly and forever.

She would not have understood that at all.

But this version of me? “I knew.”

“Of what did you know?” See murmured from the doorway.

He, too, must have felt the sadness of our last time here.

I had whirled from the window to drag words of love from his cruel mouth.

And then…. Was he remembering sliding in and out of my ass?

He certainly could not be thinking of how innocent and pure our lovemaking had been.

Because he had known what lay ahead. As See always did. And even if he might not know a particular future, then he was very practiced in the feeling and flow of past, present, and future, so could guess well enough.

That was why he lingered in the doorway. Because of his betrayal of that exchange and that moment.

I inhaled. “When I traveled to your gala, I understood that our time together was a goodbye to what we had been. I had connected that you felt this too.”

“I felt it. I feared it.”

I drew forth the memories of a trembling queen in a carriage. “You feared the moment you must betray me, and I feared the loss of our simple and innocent romance.”

“I feared the limits of my strength to betray you. I feared failing us and so failing to deserve you. But I yearned for the end of our simple romance. I wished for what lay beyond. ”

I floated in my queenly version of a walk to the bed. I traced a hand over the last place we had rested with See curved around me, and still inside me. “When you woke, you were stronger.”

“Such relief in greater strength. I was hurtled to such confident heights that I strode forward to betraying you as I never could have. For the first time, I felt sure that I could provide all that we needed. The surge in power quietened uncertainties clamoring in me. You do not know that many futures existed where I proved an undeserving match. Far more of those than the futures where I succeeded. All futures where I failed led to the end of the world. When I woke from that brief slumber, I knew at last that my part in the play was complete. Before that slumber—before what we shared that night—I had little confidence, and ample fear and uncertainty. When you first entered the haze, I was not granted enough time to see the exact details of our time in this room, so I was blind except to the dooming consequences that would ensue if I did not say or do the right thing. A monster has never felt more in the declaration of his love because uttering those three words could just as easily have ended the world as saved it.” His lips curved.

“The greatest irony of my existence is that transcending love forced me to surrender in love and confess to it also. How I agonized over the right path in those minutes, but in the end, you were about to leave the chamber, and though I had not seen the details of that night, I had seen that our bodies must intertwine.”

I toyed with the heavy blanket. “For you to gain enough power to betray me with confidence. ”

See cupped a hand under my chin, and I let him.

The touch obliterated my thoughts for a single moment where our hearts thumped in joyous unison.

See bent his head to peer into my eyes. “There was a fate to be realized that night. But I was still a weaker king in those hours, Perantiqua. That weaker king did not yet deserve you, for he collapsed under the addiction and allure of all you were. In those final seconds before I surrendered and confessed to love, I had no care for the world’s ruin nor betrayal nor power.

I was starved for you and choked at the most hopeless and blindest peak of desperation.

I simply did not have the strength to stand against my feelings and thoughts and dire knowledge for I was irrational with you.

A weaker king, as I have said, which I am not any longer.

But perhaps the timing of ancients is as perfect as necessary. ”

They had kept him weak to behave weakly in that instance.

There was sense in that.

There was a warm balm spreading over some wounds. As towering in queendom as I was, simple hurts had remained. The child in me had wished to be loved for the sake of being loved, even though the woman in me fathomed such love was not what she wished for.

I wet my lips, and See’s gaze shadowed at the action. I said, “You make me sound like a curse.”

“My curse. My cure. They are the same, depending on which way you observe them.”

“And what of betrayal and loyalty, sir?”

A wariness entered his expression. “Of them also. So I believe. Of love and hate. Of foe and friend.”

I hummed. “But you did not betray me, as such. You betrayed me for good reason. Is that not the tale we have decided upon?”

His gaze roamed my face. “A queen will believe what she will.”

I lifted my chin. “You mean to say that if you betrayed me, then I could interpret your actions as loyalty. And if you did not betray me, then I could choose to believe that was loyalty—or betrayal of our future. But could I not simply see your loyalty to uphold our future as betrayal too?”

There was triumph in his gaze. “I can easily understand how a queen might prefer a lie for fear of what comes with the truth .

My, those words were a blow to the stomach. Goodness, but that was exactly what a queen feared.

How I detested his ability to know.

To see.

To see so much of me.

I said flatly, “That is the point of all your swirling words. You are telling me that I have formed your loyalty into a betrayal to protect myself.”

“The lens we peer through alters our perception of all. We are learning a hard and painful and great lesson in these weeks, Perantiqua. You may betray me, and I may betray you. I cannot say this with certainty as I am near the limits of the futures I memorized, but we are learning to exist in a romance where betrayal is necessary. We are learning to view betrayal as a form of loyalty through a lens never used. Our understanding and resilience in romance and respect and acceptance and trust must expand, and protecting ourselves from the discomfort of that is instinctive.”

I glanced away to the opening. “We do not have time to obey instincts.”

He did not answer. He did not need to.

Love transcended. “Monsters must come first.”

“And perhaps we can come second.” His focus dipped to my lips.

As much as See had meant to my mind, heart, and body, he was not at the center of my soul, so protected by the child and woman of me.

See quirked a brow. “If it is of any solace, I would imagine you will need to betray me far more than the opposite.”

I frowned at that idea because a sudden image of See’s hurt and anger and emotional distance struck me with force. If I had to betray him, then I would wish him to understand the futility of my choice to do so. If he did not? If he pulled away or treated me with ice and aloofness ?

Goodness.

My.

I understood him.

I understood what he had done. I understood that I could never know the hard truth. Just as he would never know the hard truth when I must betray him.

Our future together required irrational belief in one another’s loyalty.

Radical forgiveness.

I might call those qualities foolishness. I might call them hopeless yearnings of a betrayed heart.

But that was not what I felt. I felt, again and at last, that our hearts beat in unison for a reason. I fathomed again what I had connected before our audience not many days prior.

That I must choose to believe See.

Or not.

There would never be confirmation one way or another. I must give in to my heart on the matter. The heart that pulsed with his. There was the simple answer, so shrouded in my fear of relenting to what I could interpret as weakness and my own desperation not to be alone for eternity.

But I was not the weak king confessing to love.