Page 129 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
“Here they are in immortality.” Mother’s words were barely audible.
I inhaled, andSee—everything he was and would be and had been—pulled in to fill my lungs and blood. His hand still covered my eyes, and my hand covered his, as our mouths met and clashed.
He freed my sight to crush me to his body, and I kept my eyes closed to return the depth and passion and desperation of his kiss.
After all this, a union between us. Laughter rumbled in me, and I opened my eyes at last.
See quirked a brow. “What is it, my immortality?”
“I am just thinking how much easier things would have gone if you had agreed to princedom at the start.”
His thin lips spread to a wide grin, and Mother chuckled between coughs from across the hole fillingwith sand.
My focus dropped to the hole, and I sucked in a breath. “The time is upon us.”
What I felt for See was greater than love. But if monsters had done everything required to save the world, then I would see my prince again and forever.
I left him to clasp my mother to me. “I am not ready.”
She stroked my cheek, resting her head against my chest. The union had weakened her. Why had we done it? What if she could not summon enough strength for the battle.
“We must be ready, Patch, and this is nothing you were not strong enough to do before.”
To have her die once did not make me more ready for a second time. “I slept through that.”
Laughter hacked from her. “So you did. Not this time, my love and life and reason. This time, you must set me free.”
My arms trembled around her. “I will. I will.”
But just one more conversation.
One more embrace.
I kissed her forehead and her cheek. “Mother, you have been everything for me in life and death. I am so grateful for all you are. I love you, and I will always love you. Forever.”
Sobs racked me, and tears flowed down my cheeks. There would never be enough time to utter all that I felt for her. “Immortality seems an unbearable prospect without you there.”
“Shh, my Patch,” she said. And there was no rasp in her voice.
I pulled back as Mother wiped my eyes… then I gaped at the appearance of her.
Vibrant and returned to the fullness of her life. Even my memories would have failed to carve her so well, for my human memories so centered around how she had been in withering. My heart stuttered from the joy in her smile.
“I had forsaken this vibrancy to provide for you in death, Daughter,” she said, her voice so rich and strong. My soul wasbroken and remade for hearing it, her voice as it had been in times of lullaby and hair stroking.
She said, “Now I return to it to meet my last. The time is now, Perantiqua. You must set me free, for monsters are waiting to return to their queen, and a prince consort stands beside you to help a queen during her hardest times.”
See supported me with a grip under my elbow.
I pulled my mother close again. “You were the mother who made a queen.”
She kissed my lips. “You made yourself, my Patch. Being your mother has been my incredible honor. I love you, Perantiqua.”
There was great relief in leaving my sobbing, tear-drenched body to step into her stitch.
My mother was there already, and as I stared at her, so vibrant and strong, the black room around us morphed to a meadow.
Animals I could not name leaped and bounded in the lush field. Flowers of every color erupted in the tall grass, as if someone had not even needed to plant them.Life.So much of it. My mother broke into a joyous grin at the sight of birds high above. The sky blue. The sun beaming. No sand, or dust, or walls.
