Page 59 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
I showed the kinghimself, so desperate from lack of bodily satisfaction. I showed him the conversation with his princess where she despaired over their fate.
King Take’s face slackened in shock.
He, a man so drowning in morals, could only feel guilt andshame for such images, but that was not why I had shown them to him.
That was the truth. Without any of his feelings or mine, that was the truth.
“If you are brave enough to look at it, then you will help to save the world,” I said quietly, also looking at his princess. She would have her own journey in the haze, though a lesser one than her king.
“If I am not?” he asked.
“Then the world ends. You will end the world. You have straddled the line between ruin and saving for centuries, King Take. So decide in this haze, are you a saving king or the opposite? And if you are a saving king, then you must face all that is needed for you to be so. For you to heal yourself and your union.”
He was breathing hard. “If I am a ruining king?”
“Then it has been an honor to know you. You have often improved my tolerance.”
Some amusement returned to him. “You are calling me annoying.”
I lassoed power around their ankles and jerked them over my head and into the haze. Their screams disappeared.
But my nerves did not. This was a drastic move, and a risk and a gamble.
Odds were, they could not succeed. But if the haze robbed them of bodily sensations, then they could only be faced with what remained. Which had always and forever been very little.
This plan was madness.
I blew out a breath. “Such is reckoning.”
Chapter Nineteen
Give me the torture
Of Princess Take
Over this.
Valetise paused in the brushing of my hair.
I had heard him too. Felt him. Smelled him. And, of course, experienced the thump of his heart with mine.
A pounding heart, but not originating frommynerves.
“Queen Perantiqua,” See said from the doorway of my private chambers.
Valetise curtsied and left us alone. Me, in my nightgown, blonde tresses brushed and gleaming and hanging about my shoulders.
I did not rise. “I suppose you will explain your presence in my private chambers in your own time.”
“You asked me to consider a solution night and day. I do not believe our destiny gains anythingfrom banishment to my princedom. We must be in each other’s company.”
For better or for worse.
I looked into the mirror and at his face—so handsome and unique in every way. “Do you expect that I will drop this nightgown so that you might have your way with me?”
His lips twitched. “A monster can hope.”
I rose, then, and turned. “You may sleep out in the lounge. I will not share my bed with you.”
