Page 50 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Thirty-Three

A queen brought to her knees.

O n two knees, I stared at the place where monsters last were.

Now there was me.

If I had known the cost of healing this seam, perhaps I would not have paid it.

“We must go. Evil is rising up through the world to claim you.”

I glanced up at See. He lurked behind me. He was alive.

His tone was mild. His feeling was not.

One side of his face was as I had known it.

The other side was an empty socket, and blood streaked his face beneath.

A stitch for an unchanging king to bind him to deathly fate, an empty socket for his brother, who had tried to stop me.

I felt no humor, but still remarked, “Of sockets, of stitches.”

The air charged, and his mild tone grew milder yet. Deep fury.

I said, “Why are you here when I killed your brother, sir?”

“Because I cannot do other. Because you are you, and I am me. So though disgust and fury fill me, I will help you to go on, but you must stand for monsters if you wish to save the world. I cannot bring myself to lift you or assist you that much after what you have done.”

I should help him to understand, I supposed. There was just no energy in me to do so. To do anything. “Monsters are gone.”

“And they will not come back if you kneel here,” he snapped. “What of pawns?”

My head lifted. Pawns! Simple and beloved pawns.

I surged to my feet, then staggered to the ground again. “Ending an immortality has robbed me of strength.”

My gaze trailed up to See.

His face was cold—colder than I had seen it. Even when he had betrayed me, that coldness was contrived. This was not, for I had killed See’s brother.

Despite his prior declaration, my prince consort stooped to pick me up. His neck and arms strained with the desire to be as far from me as possible. “You are lucky that three of my brothers might still return if I help you now.”

I did not answer. Luck did not factor much into fate. Rather, I got the sense that all futures had been decided at the beginning of time, and we were merely wandering through a maze choosing as best as we could.

See returned me to the carriage and set me within, slamming the door after.

The carriage was unnecessary and harder for him to tow to my queendom. Yet perhaps the carriage was necessary for a prince who could not bear to touch his queen.

I rested my head against the cushion. And though a hissing and a roar rumbled in the distance, my mind took me in and out of consciousness .

Ending an immortal existence had drained me of strength indeed.

The carriage thumped against the ground, and the door was ripped open. See dragged me out. “Ruin is almost upon us.”

I could fathom that utter pandemonium filled the world now that King Change was gone forever. All manner of beastliness would have been unlocked in humans, and I expected they would currently be chasing extinction harder than ever.

See blurred us to the grave, and a hissing filled my ears before the frantic rustle of hellebores replaced it.

Still holding me in his arms, See backed away from the grave, tense with the anticipation of evil collapsing this last defense.

My mother’s grave held true.

See set me on my feet, and I dropped to a knee. Not two, of course, that had only happened on the brink of despair.

I glanced in Mother’s direction. I sucked in a sharp inhale and surged to my feet. “Mother?”

No answer.

Gone?

Mother had left this place. I glanced to her grave and thought of the sickness that lay beyond. But my mother had promised we would have our goodbye. I must hold to that.

“Look what you have achieved,” See sneered.

I turned and my stomach dropped at the sight of fourteen pawn statues. They had been turned to stone in the middle of engaging conversation. All of their faces were etched with worry, but they had been doing their best to keep matters cheerful until our return.

Were they terrified in their last breaths? My heartache was a vise. I had not even felt them leave me in the raging hiss and lightning of Cassandra and Niyna’s battle.

My mother was gone.

Every monster in the world was lost or gone except me, and the monster who hated me .

I inhaled, then pushed to stand. “If this is how matters are, then this is how matters are meant to be. You surely knew of what must occur. You who whispered encouragement in my ears for any solution to the problem of King Change that did not include harming him. You who begged for a conversation with your brother to change his mind. You who joined monsters tonight to help me escape but also attempted to destroy them.” I walked up to him. “ Destroy monsters, See.”

He turned away. “That was not a surety.”

My voice boomed. “That was surely a surety. You fool yourself truly. You saw the evil claiming Cassandra. You saw that we could not win. The unchanging king was a poison to her—an entry point for ruin. As he would have continued to be for monsters always.”

“No!” See roared. He whirled to face me.

“There was a way. You killed him for nothing. A monster who you claimed to love despite his faults. Monsters are your reason for being, Perantiqua, your very soul, and you murdered one in cold blood. He was defenseless to protect himself. His princess was forced to watch him die. I was so sure that you would not do it. That you would search for another way where all monsters were well, as you always do. But at last I see that no one is allowed to stand in the way of the mighty queen’s ambition. I have never known you until now.”

See stormed away to the tower.

To be with our olden rock, and to see the black swirling there.

The black that existed because See had still been intending to betray me again, and he had seen that I would betray him by killing his brother.

So we had both betrayed each other. But how, then, could we ever be more healed than we were?

I would need to make queenly choices without regard for our romance, and he would feel compelled to interfere in matters regarding his brothers—clearly. We would never not need to do this .

So how could a romance between queen and prince consort ever be better than it was?

How could the heart of monsters and the world heal?

I sat where my mother had sat for so long beside her hellebore grave.

How long ago it seemed when I was digging her grave in the courtyard of Hotel Vitale.

I had rested her in the hole and had felt so averse to covering her face with dirt.

I had laid next to the grave to stare at the night sky, and then had a visit from Is.

That was the first night I had transformed into a monster of stitch and patch. And now the night no longer existed, and only a single stitch remained on me.

Mother’s stitch remained, attaching my pelvis to legs and torso at the front and back.

Now I was a queen and one of two monsters left in the world.

My focus lifted to the top of the tower where See paced. I had hurt him greatly. If I had not killed King Change, then we would not be here now to hopefully go on. But I had hurt him. Someone that he had loved was no longer here because of me.

Though knowing that my own mother must depart, how would I feel if See’s hands ended her undead existence?

How would I wash that from my mind to keep loving him?

I sighed, and settled to watch See. The air crackled with his rage and upset, and his pacing did not relent for an age.

The hellebores beside me rustled in warning of the foe they were fighting on the other side. We could not sit here endlessly.

See’s pacing abated, and I lost sight of him when he sat. Tension remained in the air, but the crackling subsided.

I stood and walked to the tower. I climbed and climbed, and exited through the trapdoor. See sat staring out at the haze so filled with the map of our success, his back leaning against our olden rock.

I leaned my back against the other side of it. The black within was bizarrely weaker—ironic considering the state of us. There only remained a gray swirl.

There was hope.

“For so long there were only your brothers to understand you. See, I am sorry that saving the world demanded the immortality of King Change. I am very sorry.”

He did not answer.

So I kept going. “I have sat beside my mother’s grave and thought about my first night as a monster.

I have contemplated how often in monsterdom, I have felt as if I am simply running on a hamster wheel—a rat in a maze with set paths that I might only choose the best of.

Just now, I have reflected on what you said about there being another way.

I feel firmly that there was not. For if there was not, then you are right, my soul would have demanded that I take that path.

I hear the pain in the words you uttered to me.

I hear your loss. I hear that you feel I have betrayed you, and I have.

I betrayed the love you felt for another. ”

See dragged in a painful inhale, as though his agony had no escape.

I walked around the olden rock. His head was in his hands.

“Why do you plague me?” he said in a guttural voice.

I lowered onto his lap and looked into the milky gaze that detested me in this moment. But I had forgiven him—trusted in him. I had set the tone for our future.

I set my lips upon his. See hissed and tightly gripped my upper arms.

When he did nothing further, I moved my lips against his, probing with my tongue. He groaned a curse. “I would not have you near me right now.”

I whispered in his ear. “I know, and yet evil wins in its efforts to enter the grave. I would rather have soundness and good feeling between us at the end, but I will have you in fury and hate and betrayal too. I know what my heart demands of us in this last breath. What does it demand of you?”

His furious, milky gaze dropped to my lips, then to my jacket. “I am in a rage, Perantiqua. Even though vice whispers at me, I will not take your body that way.”