Page 61 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
Agitation filled me, and I had occasionally submitted to petulance as a queen. I understood that this was one of those times.
I marched up to my conservatory and stomped my foot. “Duke of the raising kingdom. Present yourself!”
A distant yell grew louder and louder. The copper panel barely pivoted in time to admit the panicked duke.
“What is it?” he shouted, then bowed hastily.
I stomped my foot again, and the way my queendom buckled and rolled had naught to do with this duke, but he did not need to know that. “What has occupied your immortality?”
“I-I,” he stammered. “What do you mean?”
“What. Has. Occupied. Your. Immortality?” I hissed, then circled him.
He straightened. “My purpose, Your Majesty.”
King Change chuckled darkly. King Bring sucked in a breath.
“Lie,”I thought, and my voice brushed against the duke.
He fell to his knees. “Freedom is fresh, my queen. My princess and I have not had such freedom of feeling in an age. Once the novelty wears off, we will?—”
“There is no freedom,”I boomed, and thunder clapped to applaud my show of fury.
“That is not what I meant,” he said shrilly. “I misspoke.”
King Change laughed louder.
I stood over the duke, and I pitied him and I understood him. He was not meant to rule, and this would be more palatable to him than the alternative. “You are undeserving of dukedom. You are undeserving of freedom.” I laughed. “I have aninkling to shackle your princess here instead of you. Perhaps then you will have enough time to pursue your purpose tosave the world.”
“I beg you, no. Not my princess. My faults and mistakes are my own.”
I turned from him. “They are, sir. Indeed they are. And yet you threaten monsterkind and humankind, too, with your mistake. I cannot allow you to do that.”
He hung his head. “I beg that you will not. I could not bear that either.”
Raise was truly a stuck and trapped monster.
I returned to him. “Sir, do you trust yourself in purpose?”
A long while passed before he mumbled, “I do not.”
“Who do you trust?”
“My wife.”
“It strikes me that she has always done what is needed.”
“She always has,” he said sadly. “She will be heartbroken. What will you do to me, my queen?”
I raised his chin with my finger. “The solution is simple, sir. We will both place our trust in someone else. I no longer trust you in purpose, even if I understand why you drift so. I do not resent you, for you have tried and tried, and there is great merit in that. Idotrust you to love your wife beyond everything else, including your own reason.”
“We would never?—”
I kept speaking. “Here is the only solution I will grant you, sir. This is the only solution where you will remain with your wife.”
Duchess Raise walked into the conservatory. I had tugged her here at the beginning of the conversation, and she had heard all.
“My queen.” She bowed in her suit that never showed a wrinkle. “How might I serve you?”
