Page 46 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
“Yours and ours, yes. I considered the ‘how’ of what had happened for a long while before I realized the better question was ‘Where did she go to allow my sight again?’. Your absence for the last six months answered that question. For I have been able to look at all future paths for the last six months, and now that you are back, I no longer see anything to do with you.”
My brow cleared.The haze.
I had entered the haze to save a screaming mother once. I had walked three steps in, then three steps out. “When I entered the haze the first time, you saw how to best betray me.”
“Yes,” he said.
At least See did not deny it, but there was a tiny sinking in me still.
Candor reversed the cross of her legs.
“Yes, with a caveat,” I said in a bored tone. “How many times must I bid you to speak what you wished to speak?”
“I was blinded by the suddenness of seeing all, and seeing all thatyoucould be and do for the first time. At the same time, I was shocked by the difference of what I could see in comparison to the map of possible and impossible futures that had once existed. I had slowly been going blind, though I had never told you such. You were becoming ingrained in all futures, of course you were, but as I could not see anything involving you, there was less and less to see. The difference, though… before you rose to monsterdom, there were so many paths to save the world—not quite half, but nearly. What I saw in those five minutes… every path led to destruction and ruin. Every possibility catapulted monsters to The Real End.”
Every path.That could not be. I wanted to ask him for more, yet I did not wish to show intrigue that may allow him to weave a believable tale.
I tilted my head. “Which is when you decided to betray me.”
“Not for the reason I led you to believe.”
I had let him lead me many places as a weaker queen.
He exhaled, then met my gaze. “I told you how blinded and shocked I was at the sudden sight of all futures. Old habits had me memorize as much of the map as I could, but five minutes was over too soon. Or just soon enough. Later, when I followed each possible future, my despair and belief in ruin towered higher and higher. Until, hidden under such thick and glowing futures, I found a thin trail, no more than a grassland track for a shepherd and his flock. There was a way to save the world. There was a way you could save the world.”
This was the carefully crafted lie I had expected. I detested him for intriguing me. I loathed that he possessed this gift for authenticity, for his words could well be truth—Candor certainly had not interrupted—but this king had convinced me of betrayal.
So how could I believe the opposite?
This king of omissions and half-truths, that even my monster of truth found difficult to decipher. How did a queen trustthatkind of king?
I did not know how, and yet monsters needed me to. So I uttered hard words that I did not want to. “Go on.”
“I had only had five minutes to memorize the future,” he said quickly. Low and heated. As if in a fever. “I could only see that you were gone for a long time. That you returned in a different form. I could see hundreds of branches from this thin path that all led to the ruin of the world. I watched the futures during your absence. I existed in a tortured state of hope as younavigated each fork in the future. I did not know what you did in the haze to succeed in each obstacle or decision, but I witnessed as you whittled away the futures leading to ruin. I rejoiced in each success, and I feared in each breath that you would fail.”
My breaths were shallow. I deepened them. “You did not believe in a queen. You had known me as a weaker one.”
“I knew you as you ever were and are,” he said harshly. “As the only queen. The queen we need. The queen who will save the world. But I feared, yes. For I had led you to betrayal, and I could not bear The Real End where you continued to believe that of me.”
There were two obvious holes in his fantastical narration. “You could see how I whittled ruining futures away, but you still required proof of the shift in me before calling this audience. You feared The Real End where I thought the worst of you, yet you waited to call this audience until you had such proof.”
He winced. “The time of your absence was drawing to a close. I had accepted that the world might end while you thought the worst of me, and I had started to fear a saved world where you thought the worst of me despite my best efforts. I spoke true about my inner need for proof. I could not see the details of your trials in the haze, and perhaps I have learned to trust my physical eyes more when it comes to you and us. I have rarely had the luxury of magical sight in your company, after all. I meant what I said. I could not betray you a second time. I had to be sure. I had to find my courage to face the growing fear in me that you might never forgive me.”
Candor said, “The urgent timeline of ruin gave a king hope, for he knew that a queen served monsters above all else.”
King See’s eyes glinted. “That too. I am weak enough to need such hope when it comes to an all-powerful queen, though I would prefer otherwise.”
I did not respond. Even with Candor’s presence, I did notwant to believe anything he said. Though I could certainly withstand a second betrayal, my being shied from pain, as any creature must.
But I was not any being.
King See exhaled in a rush. “I would fall to my knees before you if I could. I would tell you how I loathed myself in that moment where you were so weakened and under siege from another king. What I did was despicable, though justified. I have never felt more relief to have found the ability to betray you, and I have never felt more relief for a betrayal to be done. But I hated the act, and I hated myself. I hated our destiny, too, and for all the burdens and demands it places upon me. I have resented that simple concepts are lost to us. Simplicity has filled my dreams in my weaker moments.”
I had shared his yearning for simplicity. I had hated the hardship of our destiny.
His milky eyes had never seemed so timeless as he said, “I cannot fathom how to forgive myself for hurting you so deeply that you threw yourself in a place to be lost from monsters.”
I turned my head, unable to look at him with those words spoken and out.
