Page 85 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
Empty bottles were strewn through the chamber, and the duke gripped a partially filled one in his bejeweled hand.
I nudged a bottle aside with my foot. “Sir, how long since you awakened?”
Marchioness Take and Princess Change lurked within the doorway.
Marchioness Take said drily, “Twenty minutes.”
I considered the bottles again. “Your speed is commendable, sir.”
He whirled from the wall, apparently noticing me for thefirst time. “You.”
The duke threw his bottle at me, and I cast it aside calmly. “Duke Raise, I am very sorry for your heartache.”
The monster clutched at his chest and staggered to one knee, and then the next. “Heartache? There is no reason to be. I am turned inside out, the points of my ribs exposed and picked at by vermin. I am shattered bone. I am pulverized flesh and pointless fate. I am dead. I must be dead. I cannot go on without her.”
The idea seized him, and the duke lifted his head, gaze wild. “Kill me, Queen. For all that you have done. For all that you pushed me to do that stole her from me… Kill me.” He crawled toward me. “Kill me!”
Such was love.
I said very clearly, “The duchess will return.”
If Duke Raise’s screams for me to kill him were the black sea, then my words were Duchess Raise lost in them.
I whipped power around his throat and squeezed. His eyes bulged.
I said again, “Your duchess will return, sir. She is lost but not gone.”
His drunken mind was slow to process this. I watched the information pass from his ear to his brain, and then watched it paddle there for a time before awareness sparked in his eyes.
“But not gone?” he asked hoarsely.
“Not gone,” I repeated.
Quite simply, Duke Raise cradled his head in his hands, and then pressed them against the cold, stone floor. Sobs racked his body. Sobs of relief that she lived so he could live.
Marchioness Take asked, “How can you know this? You were as flummoxed as the rest of us.”
I nodded. “Prince Consort See knows this.”
She was not young in connection. “If he knows that, then he knew what would happen in the first place.”
“Yes, he did.”
Duke Raise lifted his head. “He knew?” Fury twisted his features. “I will?—”
I thundered, “You will do nothing that does not serve your queen!”
My queendom squeezed and shook, and appeared to rattle the intoxication from the duke too.
He rose onto his knees, working to school his fury. “Yes, my queen. I am undone.”
His duchess was lost, and he had believed her gone. I could well understand his undoing. “Sir, the only way we find your duchess is to succeed in saving the world.”
The color in his face drained. “If we fail, then I will never see her again.” Relief made him sag. “If we fail, then I will be dead too.”
His face firmed. “Where do we go next?”
“There is good news,” I said, walking further into the room, picking my way between bottles. The duke hastily started to pick them up, opening up his stairway to drop them into the duchy. In a flash, he had straightened his tie, put on his shirt, and located his jacket. Wrinkled, but a good sign.
