Page 106 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
I wrenched my gaze from the black for precious seconds to see the sweat dripping from their brows. My heart stopped altogether as Princess Change toppled in a dead faint from the sky. Her, and then my marchioness, and lastly my duke.
No.
My gaze was forced back by pending doom to the black grains of sand remaining. There was a glee to the dance of the sickness as it sensed a queen undefended and powerless to protect herself.
I could run, I supposed. Forever.
Yet this seam was only mostly healed, so I could not run. Because I loved monsters most of all.
Life shook his tasseled mane, snorting. In slow shock, I dragged my focus to my steed.
“Life?” I whispered as the black sand formed shards and splinters and daggers. “Life, I am sorry.”
The mount snorted again, as if in derision. He, my first unwelcome and then cherished gift from my mother.
Life cantered forward in a blur, charging down the center of the sands’ attack. I cried out as his splinters were sliced off by the enemy. His tassels were cut to stubs by dagger. I screamed against my hand as shard and splinter did their best to stop him.
Life disappeared in the sickness far below.
And I screamed, then, for the sands of black had finally reached a queen. The grains ate away at my skin, and the muscle beneath. They wished to reach my mind, and soul, and power.
My jaw locked in endless scream, in fear of an immortality as ruin’s slave.
And as the black started to once against shrink, to shrink into nothing because of the sacrifice of a steed and a mother, I was lost to the victory.
Because darkness had found me.
Here was The End.
The Real End.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lessons of Life
“Not The Real End,” I murmured into the black.
“Not The Real End,” a voice replied.
I hummed, “And I had so thought it was.”
“Not yet, my darkness.”
I sighed. “I should open my eyes now.”
“Whenever you should wish to. You have been healing from dawn to dusk, and the chunks of flesh taken by the sick sands have mostly reappeared.”
The details of my last moments of consciousness hurtled into their seats at the table. My eyes popped open, and I stared up at a gray sky.
Pain. Ruin. Loss.
“You came for us,” I said after a beat, then turned my head to look at See.
We were atop my tower andbeside the olden rock.
See nodded. “I left after you. I am rather slower than a queen and champions locked in reckoning, but I got there in time.”
“You saw that you must.”
