Page 128 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

I surged to my feet despite it and clawed out of the dirt grave. I whirled in a circle, rubbing at my skin as the tightness leeched away at last. “Where is he? Where is Change?”

Mother said wearily. “We held him as long as we could, but the circle is not closed. We could not keep him here.”

Cassandra replied, “He ran into the haze after several failed attempts to harm us.”

The haze?I turned shocked eyes on the barren emptiness. “I am relieved beyond measure that you are all safe. I could feel the tightness of your vigil and protection in my stitches. But why would he ever enter the haze?”

“He said that all kings are capable of further slumber. He chases more power to conquer you,” she answered.

My heart sank. Of course. I had not managed to conquer kings, and now at least two sought to conquer me.

I scanned the circle for Adalina. She was flat on her back.

I closed my eyes. “She is gone. I knew she was, but I hoped.”

“She is gone,” echoed mothers.

They did not hiss that I had waited too long. They did not reprimand me for ignoring their warning in favor of remaining with See while he eradicated our warm destiny. They did not need to. I felt every one of my failures tonight.

I walked to Adalina and bowed my head. She remained stitched to the mothers either side of her. Her eyes were wide and unseeing and set upon the swirling gray skies.

Adalina was frozen in the fullness of her life and death.

She was gone.

“I have failed,” I said. “The circle will remain incomplete.”

Richalle snarled, “Why did you stitch us here if you were going to give up?”

“I am not giving up,” I said calmly.

“You are,” said my mother.

I faced the three remaining unstitched mothers, who were unconscious at the base of my tower. “Perhaps I gave up on myself becauseyougave up on me, Mother, when you handed a glass vial to a princess.”

Her frail voice floated to me as I stitched the forty-eighth mother in place. “You were avoiding the haze,” she wheezed.

My focus darted to the haze. I did not reply as I returned to collect the forty-ninth mother. I stitched her in place, then said, “You did not trust me. If not my own mother, then who could possibly believe in a queen?”

I was not angry at her. I was not angry about anything. Or sad. Or disappointed.

A deep empty numbness sat atop the single truth burning in me—the truth in my soul that could not be extinguished. The truth where I belonged to monsters always and forever.

My mother extended her other hand, and I carried the fiftieth mother over, then stitched her in place.

Fifty mothers.

The circle was complete. But the circle would never be complete now one mother was gone.

There was no triumph. No success.

I had failed.

I was a queen of chaos, and she only reacted and was never in control.

I strode for the haze, for I had stitched fifty mothers in vigil and no longer possessed the weakness preventing me from entering the fog.

Love no longer weakened me.

---