Page 100 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
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 requireeffort. 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 whenseeingdoes 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 bewith each other but notforeach 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.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Would that the world
Might
Could die alongside ruin.
“We 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.
