Page 127 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
Swallowing, I ripped my focus from the hellebore grave and strode to the box left by Valetise. I cast power forth to flip the heavy lid, and then wrenched to a halt at what lay within.
A bridal dress of cool, gray silk—the color of dusk winning over day. There was such a shimmering and chilling quality tothe fabric that chanted of midnight and the moon. The top half was sheer, but for the material hellebore petals stitched strategically to cover my breasts. The petals were stitched down the sheer sleeves that finished at the wrist.
Breathless, I picked up the gown, and turned to see the back. A neat row of buttons fastened the dress from the cool-gray skirt and to the nape of my neck.
Petals, stitched so carefully and lovingly to flow down the skirt and to the floor over their waterfall of moonlight. “This is unexpected.”
A black suit embroidered with copper thread sat in the bottom of the box.
A groom’s attire fitting for a union with a queen.
I turned to face See.
He was on both knees. “I had thought about our last moments, you see, or our first in a saved world. And I thought that in either, I would wish to know that I was yours, and that you were mine.”
My lips torsioned. “I do not believe that is in any doubt.”
See’s thin mouth quirked in a small grin that then faded. “I wondered if the ceremony might help with olden rock matters.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Which is now irrelevant. Perantiqua, I know that our union—done in this way—will not be a grand matter before all monsters that you love. Your champions will not be dressed in matching colors to you, nor my brother kings to me. Simple monsters will not shower you in hellebores.”
See looked up, and in his eye I saw devotion bordering on obsession, and desperation that bordered on fury. “But here is a gift of time where only we exist, and so our union might be just for us where so little in immortality will ever be.” He took a breath. “For us, and for your mother.”
My heart dropped, and so his did too. “That is what the two of you spoke about by the grave.”
He dipped his head. “I will not fight fair, asI have never done, my darkness. If I must use the idea of your mother at our union ceremony, then I will.”
The words were simply said, and very true. I would not hesitate to coerce him in such a way either. Vice, alas, was a beautiful thing of monsters.
I gripped the bridal gown to my chest. “So this will be my goodbye to my mother. A gift for me and us, and a gift for her.”
A tear trekked down my cheek.
My prince rose and walked to me to tip my chin higher. “Will you join your immortality with mine, Perantiqua?”
We had been joined since the first moment our hearts pounded together, and truthfully long before that. Ours was a shared destiny, and a love transcended.
“I will join my immortality with yours,” I replied.
See inhaled sharply as he set his lips to mine. His press was brutal, as though he wished to make us one person. My bridal gown crushed between us, and I released it to better clutch at his hair and shoulders.
A hiss rose in the air, and we broke apart, gasping for air that we did not need. Sometimes the soul just needed a breath too.
See kissed my cheek. “Get dressed, my immortality. We must depart.”
I did so, with his help. And he did so, too, in his three-piece suit and cravat, withmyhelp.
We strode to the olden rock, though we had never discussed the natural connection that this must be the exit if the grave was overrun by evil.
The olden rock plummeted out of sight when we set our hands upon it. Certainty dwelled in my heart that if we had not managed to leach the black from the rock, then passage would not have been granted. Our plight for a saved world would have ended now.
But more than ever, I believed that I could save this world. Me and my monsters too.
The tunnel widened to accommodate See, and he wasted no time leaping into the hole left by the olden rock’s departure.
I glanced back at the grave to find the hellebores dead and gone. This place had never been empty until tonight. Statues of mother and pawns.
And evil rising in a wave through the grave.
Our hideaway and retreat was invaded.
