Page 30 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
“You are correct,” I told her. “I wish to fathom whether a princess shares the unchanging fault of her king.” I set my goblet down. “Shall we see?”
Pawns hastened away from the despondent princess. She was despondent indeed. I had often seen her pretend such a feeling, and the difference of that pretend numbness tothiswas plain for all to witness. But could a princess feel the difference?
I pulled her single reason for existing from the walls of my queendom and gently eased it back into Princess Change.
She gulped in an enormous breath, and her chest rose as though tugged sharply upward with string. Color returned to her skin, as did the energy in her posture. She clutched at her head, and then her heart, and then she took in her surroundings for the first time. Princess Change looked first to the hellebores climbing here and there in the dining hall. Then she looked at the food.
Then she looked at monsters.
And then her king.
I said softly, “Princess, I have returned your single reason for existing. Tell me, and tell all, what do you breathe for?”
She looked away from her king and fixed her sights on my dinner plate before finding the strength to meet my gaze. The princess winced, then glanced at her king again. Her breath came rather fast, and she clawed at the table. I could not be the only one to notice how sweat beaded on her forehead, not how she was positioned to flee.
From whom?
No one could flee me.
Which she knew, for she did not try to do that. But she did try to resist the lesson that would break her if she did not remake herself with the knowledge gained.
I cast Candor a silencing look. This was a truth that had to come from the princess. Sure enough, Candor already had both bony hands clamped over her jaw and teeth.
“You can do it,” Unguis whimpered and whined to his princess. “Just tell us.”
The encouragement of pawns should never be underestimated.
The princess closed her eyes. “I breathe to grow.”
Her words rang through the dining hall and through me too. For the princess had not said, “I breathe to ruin.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks, and the changing princess did not meet the stinging and condemning gaze of her king.
She sobbed. “My single reason for existing is to grow, and when it was taken from me, there was no reason to go on.”
I stood and picked up my goblet. “You are correct, of course. In stating the truth of your self, you have taken the first step to remaking yourself. I commend you, Princess. Unlike your king, you are a monster capable of change.”
I sipped from my goblet, and other monsters followed suit.
I sat again. “Your reason for ruin is tied up in your union, that is all. You do not need to be the same as your king, Princess Change. Who you are is no betrayal to who he is, but through his own weaknesses, he has sought to convince you otherwise.”
She did not see the matter like this, not yet. Maybe she never would, but if that was so, then I did not understand how their union could be mended. If their union remained frayed, then their seam in the world would surely remain so too.
I could not see that part clearly, but I could clearly see that the making of a princess had been required as a first step.
King Change sneered, then said, “A queen is quick to point out all that other monsters deny while in denial herself.”
Candor stated, “He referred to the betrayal of King See.”
So I had garnered. “There is no denial in me, sir. The betrayal of King See holds no weight on the future of monsters, and we gain nothing from the discussion of it. By contrast, there is much to gain from the remaking of a princess.”
Candor was silent, and more than a few monsters were surprised by the truth in my words.
“Nothing to be gained?” King See spoke for the first time. “You require no clarity nor validation nor vengeance? I find that hard to believe.”
I wished that he had not, for I preferred his silence. “I imagine you do.”
Everyone looked at Candor, and she did speak this time. “Contrary to her assumption, King See found such things easier to believe by the hour.”
