Page 116 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
What reason was left?
But I had been here once
With another growling creature.
Has Been cleared his throat from the stairwell.
I arched a brow at Valetise, though she did not notice, so absorbed in the task of making my outfit look different from the night prior, and the night before that. The garment had morphed from voluminous dress of shimmering copper to a tailored jacket and voluminous skirt, and now to a tailored vest and wide-leg trousers.
“Has Been,” I called. “What news do you carry to the top of a tower?”
His voice was muffled. “Only the news that everyone is ready, and the carriage is prepared beyond the grave.”
“Thank you, Has Been.”
Pawns would be the only monsters to remain behind, along with my mother.
Valetise slipped a needle back into the calloused pad near her elbow. “I have done what I can, my queen.”
I had tried to tell her that wearing the same outfit three times at the end of the world was perfectly expected. I had only tried theonce.
“How do you fare, dear Valetise?” I asked.
The monster was as pragmatic and efficient as any wardrobe monster should be, but there was too much color in her cheeks.
“I will do what is required of me,” she said. “I have absolute trust in the monster who leads us to saving.”
Even a mighty queen could feel her stomach churn at such devotion and expectation, and I would never show fear to my monsters. “You should, for she will. We do not end here, Valetise, and neither do you and Picket. I see a long immortality for both of you.”
If this was The Real End, then I would have her walk into evil with hope and dreams filling her.
She curtsied, then walked to the trapdoor. She paused at the first step. “My queen, my power was drawn up to make another garment for you yesternight. You will find it wrapped in a box just over there. For when it is needed.”
I tilted my head to look where she had pointed. A carved, wooden dress box sat to the west. “However did you get the material?”
She smiled. “Prince Consort See helped, my queen.”
Valetise disappeared down the stairs, and I walked a few circles around the olden rock to survey the map of the world’s ruin. Most of it was a sound and flowing circulatory system now. Only two areas were warped and pulsating with ruin still—the area relating to the Change’s broken union, and then the heart.
We might succeed in mending the Change’s frayed union tonight.
But without the heart…
Without healing the heart, monsters would survive until thevillain regained strength to overrun us again. We would survive, fewer in number, and most of us without our loved ones, until such pain eroded our immortality to dust.
I faced the olden rock and wondered how so much black could still swirl in there. See and I had never been stronger and more united—there was not the innocence and blind trust nor expectation of a new romance, nor a romance between mere monsters. We held the tried and true romance between a queen and prince consort in our hands. That was rather a stronger and different thing than anything in existence.
Yet still so much black.
What had I not considered? If only time could eliminate all the black, then we were sorely out of good fortune.
“A matter for tomorrow night,” I murmured. If we made it there.
I descended through the tower to join the others.
Picket stood beside Valetise, a ropey arm draped over her shoulders.
Candor sat beside the slumbering Huckery. Her bones drooped, and I could easily understand that she would have preferred to face this moment with an awake baron. Unfortunately, the transfer had demanded an immediate slumber, and one that would last ten years.
