Page 53 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Only as we had ever done.

I was ripped savagely back into the cave of five soldiers.

“Perantiqua!” See was shaking me.

I stilled him with a hand on his forearm, then took a precious blink to absorb the change of things. Evil was nearly through the door. I cast my power wide.

Nearly through the olden rock from where we had come too.

I circled the hole on the ground, and sand was spilling out of it now. Time was up. Our battle was overdue.

The world screamed and writhed, and I lost contact with See. He lunged for me, and I pushed my power outward to force my body toward him.

His arms wrapped around me, and then all the sand that had filled the hole to the center of the world was gone.

We fell.

Evil slickened the walls, surrounding us, and though my power was no direct defense against ruin, I could still save us for another breath. I blasted my power past my feet and gripped See with iron hands.

We shot down to the infected heart of the world. Black clawed at our feet, and I screamed as it ate at my toes.

See added his power to mine, and we surged faster still. I could only fathom that our battle awaited us at the world’s core, but getting there felt steadily less possible.

I choked as black ate away at my legs, and my gaze locked with See’s.

We stared at each other, and the fullness of our union and everything we were and had been to one another was so tangible. With that force, I summoned every shred of my power and released it in a soundwave and a boom.

My mind could not fathom the speed.

Our movement arrested, and there was no pain. I peered around and over my shoulder, and nothing more or less than a pure and shining light had caught us.

Blackness hissed and clawed at the light, but inside the bubble of my mother’s vibrancy, there was only softness and warmth.

A candle burned at the center of the world, and its light flickered, then grew stronger. The candle itself did not grow, but there was no need for that when the flame curling upward radiated such impossible warmth.

Warmth in my heart.

Warmth in my mind and soul.

Mother.

She started to whisper, in her strong and joyful voice, and to my ears, she recited every memory of us. There were our held hands and our cuddles under worn blankets. There were our talks of a different world, and all of our utterings of “I love you.”

My heart swelled so.

With See’s hand in mine, I walked to the candle, and sat before it. Such warmth, and here I had thought that warmth like this was not possible in monsterdom. See sat behind me, his arms around my middle and his head bent over my shoulder.

Mother’s voice swelled.

Her warmth radiated out.

And though I knew that black evil battered at her with all its might, I could only hear the muffled sounds of her plight.

Because the battle of my mother was as unique as all other battles before hers.

Fifty mothers knew that kings could not win, and so they had made me, and the fiftieth daughter had walked into the toothed beast’s yawn.

But though the histories of monsters may claim differently, the daughter knew the truth of matters.

She knew that a queen would never have conquered ruin without the women who had gone before her.

My chest was arched forward by a sharp tug from Mother’s candlelight. See grunted in my ear, dragged with me in answer to a twin tugging on him.

I gasped as Mother yanked, and that intangible thing shared between my prince and I was wrenched out of us.

A heart.

Just one—the heart we shared. The beauty of it , like glass and diamond. A mineral unknown. Impossible with all its angles that caught at the candlelight to reflect and refract it in trillions of directions. An amplifier, the candlelight was suddenly undeniable when shone through our shared heart.

So many lights from everywhere, all different speeds and directions.

And this is how mothers used monsters to crush ruin.

Here at last was the experience of what other monsters had gone through.

Through the force of our various unions and romances, the power of fifty mothers became near infinite. Amplifiers, indeed.

Our shared heart hovered above the candle, and its flame was eternal.

No fear remained in me, whether this would be our end or otherwise. I leaned back onto See, and he tightened his hold around me.

And, as we’d always done in monsterdom.

We awaited our fate.