Page 41 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Only a mother could

Provide the world

With a perfect remedy.

M y champions awaited me in the courtyard, and Marquis Take too. There were no suggestive expressions or laughter, so See and I had truly gotten away with our exchange. What wonder of hellebores.

Princess Change wiped at tears, leaving dirt streaks around her eyes.

“What is the matter, my champion?” I asked her.

She sniffed against fresh tears. “Naught but a king who will not change, my queen. Naught but a heart that hopes. I am sorry for leaving the ball early, but I could not cope with his silence all of a sudden.”

I blinked. Goodness. I had missed that entirely. “Do not apologize, Princess. I would not have you stuck in misery.”

“But what will I do?” she choked the words through agony. “ What will change him? I feel the rising call in me to nurture saved soil, but if he will not change, then all hope is lost. For all monsters.”

I had no answer. For his name was well earned. “This midnight we must focus on what we can do. If you can admit to the call in you, and fear the loss of monsters, then I am most proud of you, for there was a long time where neither would have been.”

She sniffed again and nodded. “Too late, I fear. Too late.”

Not if I had a say in matters.

The Takes stood hand in hand slightly apart from the rest of us, and I had never seen the princess so pale and drawn. Her pout was puffy; her full moon skin was pallid. Her seductress was a beggar.

I took their free hands. “This is no small thing that monsterdom asks of your union. But there is a reason that you existed as a king and a princess for so long—so that you might understand the sacrifice of serving your subjects. You serve them now, and I wish you were not asked to serve them in such a way that will bring you pain, but there is some reassurance in the temporary nature of this sacrifice.”

How glad I was that Candor was not present to correct me on the temporary part, for that was a denial that we all clung to. This could well be the last time that I would see Marquis Take. In fact… where were Candor and Huckery?

Marquis Take lifted his chin. “I am willing to do what is needed.”

His princess did not seem so accepting. But this was not an easy situation to accept.

I drew forth the map of the sick world in my mind’s eye, then touched a hand to the stitch connecting leg to torso. Partway around the world, the frayed seam wiggled weakly. This seam was closer than that of the Raises, but the brief glimpse of what lay in store for us was terrifying indeed .

I hissed from the grip of madness, “Marquis Take, I will take you.”

“My queen, I can manage him,” replied his marchioness in a voice that lacked her usual challenge and huff. “I w-would hold him for as long as possible.”

I nodded. “Do not fall behind.”

I shot into the air and let reckoning take hold. To clear my mind. To hone my thoughts and power and body to a single point and reason. Heal.

My laughter filled the sky, and my madness was echoed back by my cackle of champions.

“You’re all insane!” shouted Marquis Take.

And yes, perhaps we were insane. Just enough to fly to our possible doom. Just enough to numb fear so that a champion or queen would not turn from reckoning and purpose.

I did not land.

We hovered in the air before a sky of black flame. There was no visible way through, even with a queen’s eyes. I might need to travel a quarter of the world before finding a way around. No wonder Duchess Raise had felt the calling to use her staircase to get to the opposite side of the world.

I hovered in the air, and my champions flocked either side of me. Marquis Take was on his princess’s back.

“Why fire?” hushed Princess Change. Understandably, she was not eager to awaken our nemesis before the time was right.

Marquis Take answered, “Because fire claims life, as I do.”

I considered that, then said, “And the sea connects the world, as a stairway might. It seems that each union seam will be as unique as their monsters.”

Marchioness Take’s breath shuddered in and out of her. Not in fear of the black, but in fear of loss and pain and uncertainty. To have a loved one torn away in a blink was one thing. To walk toward that fate required choice .

In short, my monsters believed utterly in me and my ability to save.

Such pressure on a queen, and I would give everything I had to live up to their beliefs. “My dear Takes, the time has come for a farewell.”

“I cannot,” whispered the marchioness.

“My love,” her marquis replied. He could not have kept up with our flight here, but he could hover himself in the sky. He did so now to cup his marchioness’s face. “’Tis a temporary state.”

Tears squeezed from her eyes. She was a lost monster.

Though soil was Princess Change’s reason for being, Marchioness Take’s reason was her marquis, her husband.

I could only feel awe that the princess had found the strength to leave him and live in my queendom for a time. That was an incredible feat.

“But what if we never see each other again?” she blurted, a note of hysteria edging in.

Marquis Take’s stubbled face grew serious.

“Then we have a gift more than most, for we shall part truly believing in seeing one another again. And if that is not to be, then we shall not know before a great fist wipes us out in a blink. We will part in hope and love of a grand immortality shared, my marchioness.”

She was nodding with him, not in belief per se, but in desperation. “This will go as you say. We part in hope and love.”

“There is my strong princess,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to hers.

The marchioness’s exhale shook. “She is here. She will be here until our reunion. She will not rest until that time.”

The other champions witnessed the exchange with varying emotions.

Duke Raise with some bitterness because he never got time for a heartfelt goodbye.

Though, in hindsight, Duke Raise could not have managed foreknowledge of losing his duchess.

If Marquis Take was the one remaining behind, then he may not have gone so easily either.

But the marquis was prone to strong morals and self-punishment when morals could not be upheld.

I had to agree with See on this… a queen and her champions were never meant to fathom the sacrifice of healing a seam before first living it.

Princess Change, of course, looked on in trepidation of never managing to reach this point of goodbye. I imagined the goodbye part would be the easiest chapter in the book for the Changes.

Princess Bring perhaps felt robbed at the idea of being in this predicament, for she had only met King Bring one time and not had time to even know her true heart on the matter of love.

“Ready yourselves.” My voice floated in the dawn sky—for the time here was vastly different to the night we had left. The black flames closest twitched at my presence. Soon they would spread their warning to the heart of whatever force controlled them.

There was a roar of flame in the distance, the awakening of the beast.

“Champions, gather.”

I felt them obey behind me, though whether they obeyed me or ancient power was any queen’s guess.

They formed a circle around the marquis, each touching a hand or blob to him. The sobs of the marchioness were lost as flame, so evil in essence, raced toward us with impossible speed.

Champions threw out their shield, and they did so with savage shrieks. This was not their first time fighting this foe.

The same could be said for this black fire, for the flames behaved as they had never done, forming a battering ram in the sky.

The ram drew back, then swung heavily to hammer on the shield of champions, and they cried out, spinning backward through the air .

My own heart pounded, and I shook myself from the enormity of our doom to dive into the stitch connecting leg to torso.

I had formed a habit of linking each stitch and injured vein or artery to the mother who would fight the battle.

Adalina.

I understood this mother well. She was the most accepting of all mothers, and perhaps that was why I had first shackled King No Change’s chains with her stitch. She had died in death. Then been granted life in death again.

And now.

A lump drew high in my throat. “Adalina, dearest and kindest mother, I had hoped your battle would be easier. Your trials have been great. To only have returned to life in death…”

Her smile was gracious and warm. She was freshly baked bread with honey, and morning sunshine through a dusty window.

“Daughter, I was well aware of the terms of my return. I do this willingly as I have done all else. I have no regrets in life nor death, for I loved so much harder for knowing my time to do so was shorter. Each day I have felt grateful for the kind words and deeds and smiles that I could put into the world. Mine has been a brief life, but a full one. My death has been spent in the great company of my ancestors. There is so much to be thankful for, including this battle to keep our fiftieth daughter safe along with all living creatures. And in a vibrant new world. I fight willingly. I fight with everything I have, and every dream and hope in my heart.” She was in my mind, but she leaned closer.

“And that is something this villain does not have. That is why mothers and daughters shall win.”

Her wisdom could only overwhelm a queen, and I staggered with the emotion as the thick and neat stitch unraveled from my thigh.

The stitch’s transformation was fierce, much as Adalina’s love, and where the first battling mother had taken a snake-like form, and where Richalle had become a giant wielding a shield, I was not too surprised to see that Adalina remained exactly herself.

She floated forward to where the battering ram was starting another swing. Great cracks had formed in my champions’ shield, a concerning prospect indeed, for this sickness was capable of strategy, and that did not bode well for the battles that remained.

Adalina stood in the path of the battering ram, outside the shield, and as it contacted her, she did not try to stop the ram. She simply hugged the end, and allowed the ram to carry her forward.

I listened to the shrieks and bellows of my monsters as they dropped their shield to assist Adalina’s attack, if that was what her action could be called.

Adalina rested her head against the battering ram, stroking it. I watched her smiling lips move as she spoke to the blackness.

And our nemesis weakened as a flame covered by a blanket, the fire burning in the sky weakened and snuffed out in areas.

My champions hooked and dragged escaping tendrils of sooty smoke and black embers toward Adalina.

The battering ram swung back, and then the mother stopped the blackness in its tracks. Calmly and kindly. This mother was everything that humans struggled to be through their slavery to convention. This mother was the exact antidote to ruin.

Adalina turned to look back at my champions. Smiling, she extended a hand. For any other mother, perhaps Marchioness Take could not have found the strength to go. But this mother’s intention was undeniable, and so the Takes went, hand in hand.

They walked with Adalina into the last of the flames.

And then they, and the last of the black fire, were gone.

Champions toppled through the air, and I swept them up in a net of my power while waiting with bated breath .

I scanned the skies for her, for my princess. “Where are you?”

Monsters needed her.

I tuned out my power and mind to focus entirely on my eyes, fleecing the skies of the world for signs of her.

A streak of moonshine! “There,” I shouted.

I unfurled a great lasso through the vast skies, and the crack of my power rope was terrible and desperate, the lightning of lightning. The loop hurtled and blurred toward her, and only just hooked around my monster before she struck the ground.

A monster such as she would survive the impact, but if I could prevent the hurt of my loved ones, then I would.

I drew the marchioness back through the sun-lit skies, and the first tendrils of light beamed upon her changed body.

The fire had burned all away. Her clothing. Her hair—eyelashes, eyebrows, and her luxurious tresses. She was like a doll, half-made, or one destroyed by a human toddler. The burns over her would heal quickly.

Her hair… I had an inkling her altered appearance would sit right with the princess, for she was not the same without her marquis.

“Thank you, Mother,” I whispered to the healing sky and world below me. Green growth had exploded here, too, and this part of the world would be unrecognizable within minutes.

Two down.

Should a queen feel hope? A queen felt instead that the hardest battles remained.

I glanced at Marchioness Take, then at my unconscious champions. “Come, my monsters. Back to queendom, if queendom remains.”