Page 42 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
“Respect,” said Princess Take.
Princess Raise said, “Understanding and appreciation.”
I added, “Honesty.”
No one in this room could say that their romance possessed all of these qualities. Certainly not me.
“Honesty.” The changing princess lowered her head into her hands. “I have never been honest with him in union, nor even with myself. I still do not wish to tell myself the truth either. How is he meant to trust me when he does not know me… when I do not know myself?”
I tuned out my senses at the subtle feeling of a wisp of connection awaiting me. I cradled the wisp and returned to the conversation at hand. “You must talk frankly with him of themonster you are uncovering. He knows himself, and you know him, but the key to healing him and your union must reside in who he is with you. There has been no you. There must be. This is what you must undertake, Princess.”
Fear filled her eyes, and I could surmise that no monster would relish enlisting in this battle with King No Change.
“I do not feel brave. In myself or in this,” she mumbled, breath hitching. “If I do not, then I will have no reason to exist. Nothing will grow. Beauty will die.”
“How can I help you?” I asked.
The other princesses echoed me. Of all the unions of princesses, hers was most difficult. Indifference might be reversed—and power too. Love of one aspect might be expanded to love of more.
Yet I quailed within for Princess Change was merely building a trust that had never existed. She had not truly betrayed her king by revealing the nature of his ruin on other monsters. I had used my power to drag this from her, and no king would fool himself into believing a monster could withstand one such as me. Her king did not feel much of anything about her confession beyond annoyance that I had learned the truth. Resentment that I had conquered him. Anticipation of my crushing downfall.
But my romance?
Trusthadbeen broken. Trust had once existed between us, and so that trust must be mendedbeforeany building could begin.
Yet sand trickled steadily to fill the hourglass of The Real End. Trust between monsters might take decades or centuries. Unless I was mistaken, which I was not, then we had weeks.
“I do not wish for an audience when I must be vulnerable,” whispered Princess Change. “I know that I have broken trust with you, too, Queen Perantiqua, but I do not have anyintentions to free my king now. Might I speak somewhere private with him each night?”
My pawns could simply move his copper panel to the rooftop garden. “I can grant you private surroundings, though monsters who wish to will hear you. This is difficult to avoid.”
“I understand,” she said. “Perhaps all other monsters must get to know me too.”
“There is the matter of your frequency,” I told her. “Once nightly will not do. I suggest once hourly.”
Her eyes boggled and likely her mind did too. “But hourly?”
“Hourly. I realize this will impact your growing capacity. This is necessary. And King No Change is not busy, shackled as he is.”
Her face worked, and she gripped her gardening apron. “It will be done.”
Three princesses set on the task of healing their unions, and King Bring was deep in his inner journey. I would speak with him, too, to accelerate what I could.
And then.
And then.
There was a temptation to sneak away and not speak of my romance… my heart.
Three princesses inhaled the reckoning in the air, and the way they suddenly looked at me, in perfect unison, reminded me of the owlish looks of Is, Has Been, and Will Be, when I first met them at Hotel Vitale.
Hotel Vitale at the heart of the City of Vitale. The center of the main pulse.
Goodness,such signs had always surrounded me.
“I will not shy away, dear monsters. Do not look at me so.”
“You must heal the feeling between you and King See?” asked Princess Change. There was awe in her voice, and not the good kind. She was awed by the impossibility of the task, even in relation to her own.
