Page 21 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
Seal grunted. “Though… King See’s threats did not seem to worry Huckery much.”
Neither had mine, once upon a dusk.
Gangrel circled his spear a few times while humming. “I just thought he was giving up like usual.”
Huckery swung his werebeast head to glower at the fanged pawn. Gangrel stopped circling his spear, but smirked.
Vassal had resumed his sobbing. “Six months, liegess.Six monthswithout your magnificence and wonder to gaze upon. How dark the nights have been. How frail the dawns.”
Deliver patted the fanged pawn, one of my most sensitive monsters, on the shoulder.
Six months.I had not thought to ask what the length of my absence had been. Time had been of no matter, really, because only my return and the uncorking of olden stone had started the slide of the world toward The Real End.
Now time mattered where it never had.
“Dear pawns, your loyalty has held fast through the betrayal of King See. This warms my soul.” As did the lack of division between them. As did their reference to me as leigess. I had been their queen for a long time, but they had never vocalized their allegiance when kings remained unconquered.
I interrupted loud and flowery flattery from Toiland Seal. “Report the happenings of my queendom and the world since my departure.”
There was a telling silence after.Drat.That was a rather broad question for a pawn.
“Tell me of humans in the last six months,” I asked.
Hex drew his blob taller. “My queen, humans hover on the brink of extinction. Food supplies dwindle to nothing. Small numbers of them die nightly. They have mostly overrun and contained pulse leaders, including the leader of this pulse.”
The president of Vitale.Goodness.I wished to commend them on the one hand, on the other hand, though, humans were scatterbrained creatures, more likely to fight each other to death than anything else. Perhaps monsters had not been so different until my monstrous arrival. Both needed order.
“How fares our newest monster?” I thought.
My pawns shivered at the breeze of my voice.
Huckery snickered with Unguis and Loup, then he said, “Candor has placed herself on the bad side of Princess Take.”
I raised a brow. I could easily believe that Princess Take would not enjoy the vocal and public uncovering of her true thought and motive. “An angry princess is a formidable foe.”
He replied, “Candor shows no fear.”
Did I detect a smidgen of respect in Huckery’s tone?
“What of princesses?” I asked next.
My werebeasts quietened, and that was telling in itself.
Has Been grimaced, shooting an apologetic look their way. “Princess Change has not stopped her digging, my queen, though she has continued to work on the gardens per your previous order. She has tried to convince King See many times to collect King Change from beyond the grave, and she has tried to enter your mother’s grave every dawn too. Hellebores choke the breath from her each time.”
A defiant princess. One willing to be choked by hellebores nightly. This was clearly a form of self-punishment, for it wasPrincess Change who had confessed her king’s ingenious strategy to me, under duress. With that information, I had gone on to conquer him, which she would never forgive herself for until King Change was free once more.
Or so she had fooled herself into believing.
I threw out a tendril of power and tugged sharply.
The doors of my throne room blasted open, and Princess Change sprinted in at a blurring run, both hands clutched over her heart as though trying to keep the organ within her body.
“Stop,” she screamed.
She was here now, so I would. The monster gasped for breath after.
The princess of King Change wore her black bridal dress, as ever. Over the top was her gardening apron. The two garments were the perfect indication of the princess herself, for the loophole of her was plain for all to see.
