Page 95 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

They would guide me back to…

I sucked in a breath at a single thought struck me in soul and mind.

Back to him.They would guide me back to him.

Back to my See.

He was my first thought, and that surely inched too close to undying love, which I could not feel. I had seen what happened to others who had not cared to transcend love. A queen did not have that liberty.Imust make choices without love of a king to influence them. To transcend love I must make choices with the wellbeing of all monsters in mind.

To transcend love, my first thought of returning from the haze should be to return tothem.To monsters, to humans, to mothers, to queendom.

How clearly I saw the barrier of loving him now. How certainly. And how murky was the solution, for how was a creature meant to undo or surpass the feeling? Ever was I trapped in the matter of transcending love.

Perhaps the haze would teach this to me also.

I stepped into the haze, and my breath choked in my throat. The air cloyed and clung, as if the fog was sentient. To be lost in its midst… what hopeless and despair. At least I could hold to the hope of simply reversing a single step.

Except mothers had mentioned hearing my heartbeat. The beating of a drum that never grew louder. I tried to suck in a breath and noticed the whole monstrous truth.

My senses were gone. I could not feel air entering my lungs. I could not hear the rush of breath coming in and going out. I could hear nothing—not forty-four mothers back at the tower. Nor could I taste or smell or see.

My heart must beat wildly in my fear, but the numbness controlling my body would give me no sign to confirm it—no opening and closing of my mouth. No feeling of thunder in my chest. No rush of blood in my ears.

I was numb but for the thoughts in my head and the power in my veins. Why did the haze numb me so in body and sense? Why did I have less to help me in here than mothers?

“Their circle is incomplete,” I announced in the haze. Or perhaps I did not, for I could not hear my voice, nor confirm whether my mouth had opened to vocalize.

That must be the answer. When the remaining six mothers were stitched into place, their heart would beat for me in the haze.

I stepped deeper into the haze. One step. Another terrifying, panic-inducing step.

What if I turned slightly when leaving and accidentally circled into the haze? What if I had doomed monsters by submitting to pressure from ancestral mothers to enter this place?

One more step.

“One more and then a mother must find her own way.” I should not talk when I could not hear myself.

I stepped one more step, then nearly screamed when a hand gripped my ankle.Goodness,I liked frights as much as the next monster, but a fright on top of sheer terror was a lot to enjoy at once. I kept my body straight, trying not to twist in a way that might get me eternally lost.

My heart thumped like a lead weight in my ribs. “Mother?”

If the woman clutching my ankle answered, then I could not hear her.

I crouched down and scooped her up, then held her tightly as she thrashed and clawed at me. I reversed one step.

Taking another breath, I took another.

I took a third.

The third step did not reveal a clearing of haze or a mostly complete circle of ancestral mothers. Panic clouded the many of my minds until the brightest and fastest of them reminded me that my step length had altered for the weight of the mother I carried.

I hoped.

For I felt a quailing queen in this haze.

I stepped again.

Senses were returned in awhoosh, including the agonized screams of the mother in my arms. The chant of the other mothers was a keen, and they swayed with it, dipping forward in a circle at intervals.

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