Page 43 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Would that the world

Might

Could die alongside ruin.

“ W e are ready,” snarled a voice.

I finished my conversation with Is, then faced the hairless marchioness.

She was interrupting the surprising calm and peace of a queen.

I had awoken from slumber with the heavy weight of See’s arm across my middle.

We had fallen asleep on the teetering edge of my tower as only immortals would dare to do.

Marchioness Take stood before me, her eyes flashing. There lurked a deep fear in them. “We are ready to go.”

“Go where, Marchioness?” I asked.

“To heal the Brings’ artery or seam or whatever it is!” She pressed her pouty lips to a thinner line, and I was struck by how much expression her eyebrows usually lent the princess. Her hairlessness would take time to adjust to .

I said, “You cannot rest until you do everything possible to see your love again.”

“I would think you would feel the same about saving the world,” she snapped.

In close quarters as we were amid mothers in vigil, all monsters must hear in her words. “I understand your pain and frenzy, and the Brings require time. Time that you and Marquis Take received.”

She deflated somewhat. “We do not have time. You keep saying so. Why are we exchanging pleasantries and passing the night or day with meaningless conversation when some of our monsters are lost?”

She dashed away a tear.

“We do not have time,” I admitted. “Yet much could be lost from premature action.”

The princess clenched her fists. “Or is it that you would rather cuddle See a while longer than do anything?”

“No,” I said very certainly. “My champion, when your marquis returns, let the history of monsters state that you spent your time apart driven to be reunited with him. Let it speak of your dignity in heartache, instead of the rapid frothing at your mouth and the sparks of bitterness in your heart.”

She stiffened, and—wisely—opted for silence. She stormed away as far as possible, which was not very far.

I scanned the area between my tower and the hellebore grave.

My ancestral mothers appeared harassed to say the least. Pawns had charmed some with their lovable thoughts for a time, but the charm had worn off quickly.

These women were used to the company of silence, extraordinary connection, and themselves.

Aside from the Brings, only my mother seemed engaged.

In her discussion with See.

The thought to listen in had occurred to me many times, but of course pawns had wished to converse with me too. One by one .

And then the marchioness. But now I would eavesdrop in peace a time. Why did they lean so close? Such expression on See’s face. Such like I had rarely witnessed.

A throat cleared. “My queen.”

I allowed myself a moment to close my eyes and hold a breath— oof— then I glanced aside at the Brings.

Earl Bring swept in a low bow, and his countess dropped into a magnificent curtsey.

“We could not help but overhear,” she started, then grimaced in the direction of the fuming Marchioness Take.

Earl Bring took hold of the countess’s hand and held her knuckles to his lips. “My queen, neither of us would have monsterdom and the world wait for us. We ask that you take us to our frayed seam without further delay.”

“No,” I replied.

He blinked. “But no.”

“But no, Earl Bring. My knowledge on the matter is clear; a healing must take place in those unions which are frayed. What occurs at the frayed seam is simply the healing ritual. Without the proper ingredients, I am sure that the ritual will not prove successful.”

The countess sighed. “Our haste could undo all the good done.”

I dipped my head. “Two of our monsters are lost. I will not risk their return on a union in its infancy.”

Marchioness Take lifted her head. Our gazes locked across the circle, and she nodded, sighing heavily.

“I was an infant not too long ago,” declared Countess Bring. “Now I am fully grown.”

From the look of the heat in her earl’s eyes, he was well aware of the fact.

“We must accelerate the process,” she went on to announce. The very top of her highest blob rippled with her musing frown. “Oh! We must plug each other, Earl Bring. ”

His crimson blob deepened to near-black. “P-plug?”

She nodded eagerly. “That is the only word I can think of to describe my fantasies of your body, sir. That you shall plug up all the spaces between my blobs with your blobs. I wish to be like two gelatinous puzzle pieces slotting together.”

Goodness.

The earl secreted slime. His breaths came quicker.

“What is happening?” he gargled.

The countess slimed forward, then purred damply, “You’re getting wet for me, my earl. You are priming for your sliding passage through my gaps.”

He started panting, and when his countess slipped past him, the earl hastened after her. To the only semblance of privacy in this place that was not the sacred tower top—the opposite side of the tower.

The pawns who had been chatting to mothers in that direction appeared shortly after. At a run. Moments later, squelching and suction sounds arose.

A wet wobbling sound vibrated in the air.

Apparently the Brings did not consider my stitched mothers as a proper audience, though I seemed to recollect that I rode See’s face at a ball recently, so who was I to judge?

When would they get to the gelatinous puzzle piece part?

Cassandra’s voice floated over sliming slides and soggy pops. “The vigil of monsters is upon us, Daughter.”

I whipped my head to look at her. “All monsters?”

She boomed, “ A ball to Bring,

A reversal to Raise,

A trip to Take,

A change to Change,

A forgiveness for her fate.”

I considered her chant while walking to sit by my tower.

Cassandra warned of vigil, which meant that soon I would be sitting, whether having decided to or not.

“You speak of the actions I have taken, Mother. I switched the Raises about, so a princess became duchess. The Takes took a trip into the haze to discover all they were not. The Brings were reunited at the ball. My forgiveness has restored the possibility of my fate with See.”

A change to Change.

My chest rose with sudden hope. King Change would change? My, how greatly reassuring. I pressed a hand against my cheek as my smile spread wide. “Thank you, Mother.”

See was the only monster wise enough to copy my position on the ground.

My mother rasped, “Your champion and countess is right, you cannot delay healing the ruin that the Brings represent. But you are also right, Daughter. Their union is not strong enough, and it will not be strong enough by the time it is needed without help. Their history has been lost to one, and the other wishes to forget all that has been. Their shared memories are too few. Their union is fresh and untested by millennia, and so their union is fragile and easily broken.”

They had not built resilience. I could immediately fathom what Cassandra meant.

She continued, “Only vigil might heighten all that the Brings share. A vigil with us might ready them, might be enough. Might.”

Might. I stared into her blue eyes—my eyes, and like only a mother and daughter could, I read her unstated message.

Time is too short. That was what she warned of. Might. She was warning that despite our best vigil intervention, the frayed seam would be difficult to mend.

I was golden fate. I had already deemed this union fit to mend.

Tuning out the sensations and distractions of body, I allowed my mind to connect all that it uniquely and exquisitely could. A wisp arose, but it had naught to do with this matter .

Which was to say that my connection on the Brings and vigil was already sound.

My connection on another matter had not been. King Change would not change. A change would occur to him, to them , which assumedly would arise from my actions.

How deflating after a sudden and sharp hope.

The countess screamed, “Plug me!”

I calmly said to mothers, “We enter vigil together.”

What I really meant was “ We enter vigil together for the last time. ”

No sooner had the words passed my lips than my body was locked in the immobility of horror. A horror of mind, for that was the feeling of knowing too much while alive. Too much of the undead. Too much of what lay beyond the toothed beast’s yawn.

Screams and cries and moans rang around me, for my monsters had never experienced vigil. In my last vigil, where lightning pinned me to the ground, I had been rendered to a childlike state beforehand that made this experience easier.

I wagered that mothers no longer had the strength and numbers to do so.

My body began to sway, and then to circle. The circles started small and smooth, and over minutes or hours, the circles grew in size and in jerkiness.

Words of the undead poured from my uneven lips, and I let them slip away into the grayscale world without making the mistake of memorizing them. I was not meant to speak this language beyond this vigil.

I was not meant to understand.

A moan rose above the undead chant of mothers, a deep groan that did not stop when the body should have demanded its maker take a breath. The never ending groan arose from Earl Bring .

A whispered scream rose to sit atop his groan. Her scream was just as endless and without need of breath.

The whispered scream and groan swelled until they were a bellow and a terrified shrieking wail.

Unending. Locked in horror. Through vigil, we forced resilience into the Brings’ union.

We shattered them with every imaginable fear and doubt and loneliness that a couple might ever endure.

We splintered their beings with centuries of trial and tested loyalty.

The Brings’ new union had been untested, and so now they screamed and bellowed their pain through millennia of agony and uncertainty that would tear at their very souls.

And all to gift them with surety of their love, earned and upheld and supported.

Tested. And triumphed in.

Power whipped at dirt, spraying and pelting monsters with its grains. Tears trekked over my cheeks as the Brings’ bellow and shriek lightened back to a groan and whispered scream.

I could feel that mothers were still unleashing agony and pain upon the Brings, but they no longer made a sound.

Resilience.

A smile trembled on my lips.

The circling of my body was arrested.

An eerie silence hovered in the air like smoke, but for the slow and damp lovemaking of the Brings. So slow and with no frenzy, only an eagerness to draw out the connection a while longer—to remain always in one another’s embrace. Such surety and history between them.

They were truly making love.

All monsters and mothers listened to her small cry of satisfaction, and his hushed reassurances after. His sweet words.

And when my body was unlocked from vigil, I remained in place and only opened my eyes to stare up at the gray sky of this world .

“Thank you, Mothers,” I whispered. “That was a great gift indeed.”

Enough, perhaps, to save the world. Though as Cassandra had so clearly warned, the vigil only might have readied the Brings. The vigil only might have been enough.

Might.