Page 31 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
What did that mean?
“Is it true that he fucked you to gain power?” King Change asked, determined to make matters worse.
“Yes,” I answered. “He had guessed that the delights of my body would prove too much for him, and that ancients would send him into slumber. This was always his design.”
King Take grinned. “I always wondered why he did not mentor or support you in queendom. I expected that the pair of you had a deal.”
“No deal, sir,” I said. “Just a long-held ploy to overthrow a queen.”
My words were truth, and King See did not dispute them, nor did Candor.
“I believe he felt for you at times,” King Raise mused, and his was a perception that I would not entertain.
“In time, once the world is saved, then I may ponder your words, sir,” I answered. “My rise to queendom awakened See’s betraying purpose. Perhaps there were prior interactions that were not artificial, but I am not inclinedto consider those during the world’s reckoning.” Despite my lack of inclination, my minds carried the thought onward. There were the times King See had gone to war for me. The times he had rushed to save me from other kings. The times he had watched over me in slumber. The first times I had seduced him.
Will Be blurted, “His proposals were real. His rage and despair after your rejections were powerful and vulnerable.”
I chuckled. “You must refer to his first proposals, dear pawn, and not his last where I was to merely be one princess in his harem of female monsters.”
Still, King See remained silent.
King Take did not. “A harem? How could he ever have a harem when no princess can touch him? Since his rise in power, even my princess cannot get within three feet of him.”
In my soul and minds, I sucked in a pained inhale, as if a giant had punched me in the chest. There was a stutter of shock as I heard King Take’s words that muted everything in me and blanketed all thought. Just a stutter before my minds resumed their toil, but that spoke of the magnitude of my shock, for erasing thought from a queen even for a stutter of time was an enormous feat.
Princesses cannot touch him.
Only Princess Take had been able to touch him, and Candor had not corrected King Take’s comment just now, so he spoke truth about King See’s new power.
King See could never have kept a harem, and I—in my agony of heart and self—had forgotten that simple truth.
No princess can touch him.
As if privy to my thoughts, Candor stated, “No princess would ever touch King See again.”
Such a simple statement, but the power of it… that simple truth threatened to undo everything learned and accepted.
King See had woven such betrayal against me in my most vulnerable moment. He had convinced me entirely of hisplotting subterfuge. Yet here was one part that could not be true. King See could never have kept a harem, so I never would have needed to share him, even if I had been reduced to princess. Yet he had been so eager and determined to convince me otherwise.
There was a sudden loose thread in the usurpation of a king.
And there was now a threat that his entire betrayal would unravel. And a fear that would happen too.
Never since uncovering my self in the haze had I been so hard pressed to put all of my learning into practice. I tuned out my senses instinctively, and my mind was slow to offer the wisp of connection needed.
This was surely as undone as a queen could be. I had not anticipated that Icouldbe this undone now.
Yet here I was again, and over King See, no less.Again.
Monsters are my reason for being.
My minds sought the calm I had learned in the haze, but where the sensations of my body had distracted me from proper queenly connection for so long, now thoughts of See were the culprit.
I engaged in my bodily senses and dialed them high to overwhelm the shouting of my minds.Ah.Calm spread through me once more. How curious that I could now dial the various parts of me whenever I wished.
Monsters watched me, though not in a curious or concerned way. Only a blink and a second had passed.
King See still adhered to silence as he watched me through milky eyes that could not see my past nor future, but which hadalwaysand always seen the present of me.
