Page 49 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

See’s milky gaze flashed in my mind, and just as I was retreating from my minds, a wisp floated forward. Ulterior motive.

I wrenched to a halt in my thoughts. What is See here for?

He was here to help us escape afterward. Candor would have sensed the lie. But he was here for another purpose too. My brow cleared. Brotherhood.

See wished to ensure that King No Change was okay. Though he had not joined me on the healing journeys for Bring, Raise, nor Take.

So why one brother, and not the others?

No further wisp arose, and I stepped back into my flying body to find we were nearly there.

I slowed to allow champions to catch up as I studied the hissing and steaming ground.

Black, of course. Black dirt. Lifeless and sick dirt.

Hissing and spitting as though boiling. Steaming with the heat of darkness.

My champions arrived quietly, and I nodded at them. See helped them to release King No Change’s panel from the back of the carriage, and the champions hurried to circle the Changes. The two other couples watched from within the carriage, barring Huckery who would have no awareness of this battle.

A violent hissing erupted in a wave of countries of old and continents too. The hissing was deafening and mind-robbing. I called back the stitch from the panel of King No Change. His shackles fell, but I could not hear the clang of them over the villain’s hissing welcome.

Snakes formed of black, lifeless dirt blurred upward, and my champions erupted in response. Their barrier erected before me right as the fastest snakes lunged at my face.

I stared at a snake inches from my eyes.

“You will not win. Be gone from this world,” I told it.

The hissing masses rattled with laughter.

Silence was my reply as I dove into the stitch up my spine and the stitch in my thigh. The one so deeply and functionally stitched so that it would always hold me together.

I walked into a dark room in my mind, and though I had expected two mothers to greet me, only Cassandra was waiting.

“Niyna gave all to me, Daughter. She has passed to death, but wished you to know that she died filled with pride of what she leaves behind in you.”

Cassandra opened her arms, and I fell into them.

Cassandra was the first mother and the first reason why I might win immortality by the side of my monsters.

“The loss of you feels great,” I murmured into her shoulder.

She answered, “Life is not meant to be easy, Fiftieth Daughter. Life is meant to be possible. So this loss, like all other losses you have borne, will be borne too.”

I pulled back and scanned her face one last time to memorize it.

Cassandra smiled, and leaned closer to whisper.

“And you will rejoice just as much. The losses you bear will only push moments of celebration and happiness to their fullest potential. Never forget that diamonds sparkle best when set upon the darkest pedestal. Do not be afraid of life. Never be afraid of life.”

My voice shook. “I will not.”

Cassandra kissed my forehead, then strode past me. Her body started to shimmer as she neared the cusp of leaving this mental space we occupied. “Daughter, you must not fail monsters. Be warned, there is one who must not remain.”

I was jolted back into my body, and reeled back as Cassandra’s enormous stitch began to whip and writhe.

Cassandra exploded and white blinded me as I was thrown through the air and against the carriage.

“My queen!” screamed Valetise.

I wrenched my head to look at Cassandra, and my heart stopped. She had become a gigantic hand in the sky, and a hole existed where her stitch had once been.

No sooner was her transformation done than the stitch on my thigh snapped into the air and shot toward the first mother.

Niyna’s power shot toward Cassandra’s hand and white light flared.

Lightning now crackled in the stitch hole in the first mother’s hand.

Niyna’s energy was gathering and building.

In a cacophony of crackling and whipping, Cassandra unleashed a gigantic bolt of lightning from her hand. And how poetic, how right that she should fight with lightning at her last battle when ancients first used lightning to force their purpose into her.

Hisses became shrieks.

My champions dropped their barrier to form a defense in rhythm and accordance with Cassandra’s unique form of fighting.

Between each lightning strike, my champions shoved their power downward in an enormous wall.

The lightning was forming enormous craters in the steaming continent of evil below, and the pushes of champions were forcing the villain out of the air and against the surface.

The world shook and whined, and the millions of snakes of lifeless dirt joined into thousands of larger beasts. Cassandra hit one with her lightning, then batted one back with her huge hand.

The snakes turned in unison to face me, and then blurred toward me next. Champions threw forth a barrier, and I shouted wordless challenge at the snake, whose fangs were so close to nearly latching about my throat.

A ringing noise stilled my heart with its hope and strength. The snakes battering at the defenses around me paused to glance back.

The circle of mothers in vigil was here, overlayed in this world from where they sat mostly as statues around my tower. But that still meant something—it must—or why would the first mother have brought them here?

The snakes left me to return to the siege on Cassandra. She threw lightning and slammed the snakes back. She snapped them in two and whipped their fanged heads against the surface. The world shook with her fury and menace.

The black was nearly to the ground, and though I had anticipated that the battle would stall, I had hoped against odds that it would not.

The carriage door pushed open, and I held out a hand for Valetise and Picket. They were taken to the other champions by Duke Raise.

Candor stepped out and into her armchair, and waited for Marchioness Take to free Huckery from the carriage top. Candor held out her arms for Huckery, and buried in the masses of his fur, she joined the champions.

Cassandra beckoned first to the Changes. The black gained in the absence of her lightning. Princess Change gripped her king’s arm to wrench him forward until they stood upon Cassandra’s palm.

Princess Change rose up and kissed her king. In what could be their final moment. And her king kissed her back, perhaps pretending for what could be his final moments, that he was a different creature who could change.

I waited for Cassandra to throw them, or encase them in lightning. Instead, to my horror, black veins extended through her palm and fingers from the Changes’ feet.

Cassandra screamed, and the princess held the king upright as the mother’s fingers twitched and leaped in pain. Cassandra clamped tight on the Changes, and I choked on my inhale as it was the Changes’ turn to scream and shout.

Something was wrong.

Fate was not in line.

An ingredient was wrong.

There is one who must not remain.

But who?

I blurred to the Changes, and as I blurred, I turned off my bodily sensations. In my mind, I crouched before the rustiest of cogs. The cog that had informed me of See’s ulterior motive. Please do not be See.

I would lose another monster today. The balance of fate demanded it. Please not See.

“Please spin,” I whispered to the cogs. “Monsters need us. Please. ”

A wisp. Not a mere mist, but a hearty wisp that was formed and unafraid. And as I inhaled the wisp, I already knew its truth and connection. I had just feared acknowledging it so.

Because he was a monster.

He was still a monster.

But he could not stay.

Coming back to my body, I was only first aware of my hand reaching into my trouser pocket to retrieve the needle there. Though my mind had slowed everything so painfully, my actual movements were a savage, queenly blur.

I was standing upon Cassandra’s fingers before King No Change.

The king who could not change.

The king who could not stay.

My needle was descending, and so removed from my body as I had been, and now so locked in the ruthless blow that I must deliver, I had not noticed See move .

He stood between me and his brother.

Brotherhood.

That was why my prince had come. To prevent me stitching his brother to the fate of the world. Where other monsters, except Life, would all return, this unchanging king never would. Because his very existence would always grant an entry point for ruin.

My face twisted in horror because it was too late to change the course of my needle. The point of it gleamed in the moonlight as it pierced into See’s right eye.

My heart screamed, and some force rose in me to hurtle See away. The needle’s descent continued to its mark, and King Change’s gaze lifted to mine. A smirking gaze, for I had perhaps just killed the creature sharing my immortal romance, and this king was a ruining king indeed.

Princess Change was screaming from the pain of Cassandra’s tight grip as she held the king in place for my death blow.

I was about to kill a monster.

Life is not meant to be easy, Fiftieth Daughter. Life is meant to be possible.

I shoved the needle through King Change’s forehead, and his bone and flesh were nothing against my fate-filled weapon. I drove the needle in, and twisted, then leaped to ram the heel of my boot upon the needle’s end to bury its length for good.

The light trickled from his eyes.

Princess Change sensed the shift and pulled back to gape at her dying king.

There was an intake of breath across evil and monsters and the world where King Change’s dark chuckle was so audible to all. And then this trickled away, too, as an immortal left the toothed beast’s yawn.

My awareness of the world slammed back into my senses. Black filled the air, though none remained in Cassandra’s hand any longer. She encased the sobbing princess and her dead king in lightning and threw them at her nemesis.

Champions cried and screamed, but were unable to stop in their purpose as they ushered Candor and Huckery forward.

Cassandra took them up in her palm and threw them into evil too.

My monsters.

I wailed for the loss of them, staggering back through the air and only just refraining from dropping to my knees. I could never do that. I must remain standing.

The black retreated to the ground again, and Cassandra banished the circle of mothers, then spread her hand wide to press against the sick surface. Rock and mineral and crust cracked and cratered as the first mother shoved at the black.

Champions ushered a trembling Valetise and noble Picket to Cassandra. Valetise glanced up at me and smiled, and I found the courage to nod in reply. Gone in lightning.

The black shrunk.

It shrunk.

It must go, I begged ancients. Or fate. Or destiny. Who was left to hear me and protect us?

My champions fought beside Cassandra, and when the first mother flipped her palm up, I did not fathom what she meant.

Then champions climbed onto her hand.

“No,” I bellowed.

The bellow of a queen was no small thing, but in this fated second, no one took notice.

With my four champions in tow, Cassandra’s hand melted down through the surface to disappear, and all evil drained from the world like water through a plug hole.

And all monsters were sucked away too.

Drained away.

Away from me.