Page 81 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
My marquis bowed deeply. “I am your marquis, my queen, and happily. Thank you for understanding the worst of me, so that I could find the best of me.”
“You are welcome, sir. Return to your previous kingdom, now known as your march. Go about in purpose. Heed my call. For there is something about the true nature of monsters that niggles at me more and more. If we can save the world, then the world will not look the same after.”
I stood aside as the marquis and marchioness strolled from the chamber, hand in hand. I peered over the balustrade to watch them pass across the courtyard and beyond.
From the dawn lit stairs drifted a musing voice. “So Take has forgiven himself.”
See lurked there, watching me as I watched monsters.
I joined him. “So he has, and dawn came and went long ago. ’Tis past time for rest.”
So much had almost happened between us in his princedom. So much of nothing. I should have spoken the three words.
I forgive you.
For those three simple words that could not be uttered on the stairwell. The feeling we had built in his bed chamber did not fill me now. Theknowledgeand choice, yes. But the feeling…
See gestured up the stairs. “A queen requires rest to connect all she must. There is still daylight to slumber away,” he said quietly.
Painfully.
For he had been so close to hearing three simple words.
I held out my hand. “I will be glad for it. I must make sense of the bizarre shifts in Marquis Take.”
My words had covered somewhat of See’s sharp inhale at me asking for his hand. He wrapped his large fingers around mine, and my hand was quickly lost in the enormity of his.
His thin lips curved. “Sense of the new version of Take? That will surely take longer to connect than a single day.”
Soft laughter startled from me, and See’s heart skipped a beat at the sound.
I replied, “Until dusk at least, sir. Perhaps longer.”
We walked to my private quarters in silence. We walked through the larger lounge in a tighter silence, and then entered the smaller one in the tightest silence of all.
In the doorway to my bedchamber, I paused with a hammering heart that he felt in his chest.
“The couch is terribly small for the largest monster in existence.” I looked into his milky gaze.
“Terribly,” he whispered. “But I will occupy it happily to exist by you.”
I swallowed hard against… everything. “I would have you exist by me in comfort when possible. You are welcome to pass the day in my bed.”
As the words passed my lips, I rather got the sense that the moisture in See’s ancient and milky gaze was the closest hewould ever come to tears. Such emotion in him stole me of breath.
“You honor me, my darkness,” he said hoarsely, bowing slightly. “May the impossibilities be few and far between so that I might often slumber at your side.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Nevermore truly adrift,
in fog and mist.
Iopened my eyes and stared into his. The experience was like staring into the haze, for I could glean naught from them.
“Yes, I have looked at you for a long while,” he answered the question I had not yet asked. He added, “What monster could not?”
The heat in his gaze stirred my body, and I could not control the hitch in my calm inhales while still half in slumber.
