Page 42 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Twenty-Six

I could not care

Then I had not cared to

Now I cared

And cared what to do.

T he minions of Marquis Take had overrun the queendom. They wrestled with humans, and so now the clamoring humans were also locked in nightmare where impossible creatures existed.

Surprisingly, the minions were led by the gateman and herald of their master.

“They were the first that he took,” Marchioness Take said in a flat voice.

I had not sensed her waking. “They are strongest?”

“They are a product of a horrified king who could not bear to take, and so he gave them some of his life force. That is why a gateman can create verse. That is why a herald can fathom subtle politics between monsters. My husband liked to keep them close.”

I pulsed power over my queendom and minions screeched and toppled from the walls. “No monsters remain in the queendom. They all escaped through hellebores.”

I threw minions and humans from the courtyard as I descended with my champions. Hellebores rustled their greeting and soothed the frown from my face as I passed through their midst into a grave.

We emerged in a grayscale world, and if my only remaining quibble with this place was its lack of monsters, then that problem was solved.

I lay my champions at the base of my tower where King Bring and King No Change were positioned on their copper panels. See was atop the tower and peering down. Pawns were chatting with undead mothers. Life pawed at the ground, eating dirt here and there. I had not thought the steed ate.

My eyes shifted to the statue of Adalina, and I knelt beside my mother. “She was…”

There were no words for how she had fought. With love. With smiles and strokes.

“We are very proud of a daughter,” wheezed my mother.

I looked at her, and she looked at me, and I saw everything in her gaze that I did not wish to. Her acceptance. Her sacrifice for a daughter. Her rage at my enemy.

“Mother,” I said. How did I put such feeling and dread into words? How did I speak everything to her that I must? There was no time, for I would go on talking for immortality if it meant keeping her by my side a little longer.

A queen must say goodbye to her mother while knowing they would never meet again. Of all monsters the most was demanded of me, and this made sense while also drawing up resentment and despair in this minute.

My mother replied, “Daughter. ”

The word rang, and there was a realization in my mind that only two words needed to be exchanged between us—those we just had. Mother. Daughter.

So much filled those words. Every memory and “I love you” and struggle.

I kissed her cheek, remaining there for longer than usual.

Then I walked amongst other mothers. “Greetings, Mothers. How do you all fare with the sudden company of monsters?”

Cassandra grumbled, “They are noisy indeed, Daughter.”

While some mothers were enjoying the cheeriness of pawns, some were not. Hard to vigil with so much distraction. “Pawns, kindly tend to champions. They have fought a hard battle this night.”

Pawns left mothers. For now.

I walked to King Bring, calling back my stitch. His shackles gradually released from his slime with a loud and suctioning squelch before clattering to the ground.

“My queen?” he asked in a wet gargle.

I smiled at the king. “Tell me, sir, have you answered the last questions that you were wise to ask?”

Emotion filled his voice so damply. “I have. I have.”

“Does confidence fill you at the idea of a future with a princess?”

“Never, my queen, and that is how it must be.”

Warmth filled me. “I sense no vanity in you, Bring, and I am a proud queen to witness the immense acknowledgment and accountability of a monster who was king. Whatever your failings, you have admitted them. Whatever your mistakes, you have learned from them. There are not many creatures who could achieve one of those, let alone both. I am proud indeed, and proud to free you of shackles.”

He bowed his blobs. “You will never regret it.”

“No,” I said. “I will not. Bring, you were king, and henceforth you will be known as Earl. Always and forever, you will serve me in the growth of your power and in the management of your earldom. Stray from this at your shackling peril.”

“I will not stray,” he said fervently. “I have always served monsters, and you are monsters.”

That was the exact truth of him; he was right. That was why I had always shared a vision with this king. Our reasons for being were the same. What great connection in that.

“As for Princess Bring,” I said next. “She, if she should choose, will be formally known as Countess Bring. Believe always in her pure heart, sir. Believe always that she is revered by monsters and utterly worthy of the greatest love.”

“She is more than me,” he said simply, and I did not agree with him aloud. This was a monster who must put matters on a pedestal to believe in them, whether his purpose, his princess, or kingdom.

I shifted my focus to King No Change.

His eyes glinted at my attention and a dark chuckle rumbled from him.

“The greatest pleasure of my immortality will be thwarting your plans to save the world by simply refusing to heal my union. I am awake to your ploys, and I will stand in the way of them, though shackled in place, until ruin feasts on our flesh.”

And he would. That was the ever-growing concern. We all blindly stumbled toward saving, focusing on what was possible. But there was an impossibility, or a thing close to it.

A never-changing king must change.

Could I muscle him into change with my power? I expected not if the haze had been unsuccessful in altering him. Yet the moment of reckoning for the Changes drew nearer, and there must come a time of battling this king into submission for the fate of all monsters and creatures.

See’s mild voice drifted down from high above. “Brother Change, you will choose rightly in the end. I have faith in you.”

That made one monster. Even his princess despaired of him.

I opted for silence and entered the tower, climbing and climbing to the flat top of it where the gifts of princesses were stored and where white lightning displayed a map of the world’s sickness through the haze.

See stared out across the haze, and I studied his posture for signs of his thoughts. I should have known better than to waste my time.

“I felt the hammering of your heart in battle,” he mused. “Minions attacked at the calming of your pulse, and I managed to get everyone to the courtyard in time. Holding minions back was no small feat. There are so many of them.”

Indeed there were. “Thank you for keeping my monsters safe.”

He dipped his head. “And this is all that is wrong with the world.”

I joined him and stared out. “All that remains. This looked rather worse at the beginning.”

“Then there is much to be celebrated.”

There was something off. So mild and reserved. “Last we were together, I rode your face to such heights. Where is the mischief of a prince consort gone?”

See inhaled, then reached out. Surprised, I did not pull away as he took my hand in his.

He said, “We arrived and took in the sight of fifty mothers, some statues. Naturally the lack of color was alarming at first, but eventually, pawns chatted and a king lurked, shackled, in front of this tower. I thought to explore, and so I climbed. The size of haze and this map of ruin occupied me greatly. I considered the bridal gifts set around this platform, and rejoiced in the lack of push in me to steal them. And then I considered that .”

I followed his glance to the olden rock at the heart of the tower. The olden rock so sick and plagued with our feeling.

See faced me, and pain twisted his face. “That is us. How can that be us?”

I untangled from him and approached our heart. Black swirled within it, less than before, but still so very much. “I understood its plague once, but I have no answer for you now.”

“I had thought that we were in a better place. I am in your bed, and there was such healing between us at my palace. Perantiqua, have I been incorrect in deciphering the feeling between us?”

I set my hands upon the olden rock and heard his sharp inhale.

“My immortality flashes before my eyes when you do that,” he said darkly.

“The olden rock is not what it was, in a sense,” I said.

See stood beside me but did not touch the rock. “In what sense?”

“In the sense where the olden rock was always the core of monsterdom and the cork to ruin. There is no need for it to place soldiers in slumber any longer. All is as it was going to be.”

He stopped breathing while extending his fingertips to the rock. The black swirled tighter and faster.

See touched the rock, then shuddered a moan. “This memory has haunted me so. I feel many things at once, all of them swirling.”

I could easily understand why. “Prince Consort? See?”

His milky gaze was shadowed as he focused on me. “My darkness, what is it?”

I took his free hand in mine. “I forgive you.”

The stone heated under my hand, and assumedly his.

See’s face softened, and there was so much shared between us, discovery and regrets and pains and acceptance too. “I know. Thank you, my queen.”

We peered back at the stone together. The black had lightened in hue somewhat. Still so much.

“What remains after forgiveness?” I murmured.

“What concerns remain in your heart?” he asked.

I leaned against the olden rock, and See stiffened, then drew me away with a gentle tug on my hand. He led me to the edge of the tower platform, then sat. I sat beside him.

I gazed out at the haze. “There is always the mystery of you. I can rarely tell what you are about. The things I do know have been earned over time, and time is not what we have now.”

“You would know my mind,” he replied, then hummed. “We share this mystery. You are the most mysterious monster to ever exist. I am driven mad by wishing to know all of you, while calmly accepting that I never can.”

“We are meant to be intrigued.” I pushed my hair off my face.

See wrapped a strand around his forefinger.

“We are. We will be. But shall I tell you of how my power plays with me? Imagine this map of the world’s demise and then place another map on top, and another below.

Past, present, future. Each monster has a set of three.

Humankind too. Then there is a master set of the maps containing all of these individual and collecting maps.

As each individual moves and decides, the maps are changed.

Except I can no longer see all of these maps, and so I must do the best I can to follow the physical and vocal signs of the decisions of monsters and humans and adjust all of the maps manually where my power did this without conscious thought and in real-time before. ”

To possess his power was to possess a hundred minds. “Your mind can only be everfull.”

“An apt description. I have sensed this busyness of mind in you since your return. I cannot claim the busyness of a queen’s mind, but I can understand in a small sense.”

I was occupied with past, present, and future in a different fashion.

“I value the insight into your power, sir. Thank you for a wonderful gift. Thank you for the sacrifice of tending manually to your sight, for I can imagine how difficult such a feat would be. My own works with the inputs of my mind and body and power to offer up connections that mostly do not require effort. In times of difficult connection, I must cut off my connection to body and awareness of others in order to inhale what wisps arise from the rustiest cogs in my mind. But my mind and power have never failed me. They will not.”

I looked at See to find his mouth ajar.

He drew in a great breath. “I consider myself fortunate indeed to have witnessed the moon explain her moonlight. My darkness… you are untold.”

See kissed the back of my hand, and we stared out at the haze anew. Anew in connection too.

“You mentioned that humankind contains its own set of maps,” I said after a long while of companionable silence. “That is surely proof of the relationship between monster and humans.”

“Surely,” he said. “Another great mystery. Indeed I feel most curious about the answer. It is one of the two ideas that occupy me when seeing does not.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. “The other?”

“Wellness and unity of monsters. I have always sought that, through saving, then through impartiality. Always through brotherhood, and most recently through transcending love with a queen.”

Monsters were very important to my prince consort. We had that in common. We had much in common, really.

Champions were waking below. There was no sense of time in this version of my queendom. I supposed that we would enter reckoning again as soon as they were recovered.

See said, “There must be shared secrets between a prince consort and his queen.”

I blinked away considerations of saving the world to look at him. “Which of my secrets would you know first?”

“Not your secrets, nor mine, but ours. My seat will sit next to yours. My place at the table is opposite you. You will protect monsters, and so will I. So much of what we must do will be with each other but not for each other. We must not become lost in that. We must create secrets to share.”

A smile torsioned my lips. “What do you suggest, sir?”

“A gesture, my queen. A simple movement of hand or body or face that conveys our destiny.”

I wet my lips. “How would you describe our destiny, See?”

He leaned over and set his lips to mine. His hand gripped my jaw to press harder against my mouth, and I pressed further into the depth of our kiss. A simple kiss, nevertheless filled of everything we had not yet shared again—filled with our want. Fragile hope. Fear of failure.

“Complex but utterly shared,” See whispered against my mouth.

“And so I would have a gesture to share with you for those times when monsters surround us, all of them whose needs must go before those of our romance. A gesture to remind us of what we have earned and claimed and understood. A reminder of our destiny through whatever fate might throw at us from one moment to the next.”

I rested my forehead on his chest. “A gesture sounds wonderful.”

And I did not need to glimpse at an olden rock to know that the blackness swirling in its depths would be even lighter than before.