Her brow furrowed; Neve shot him a surprised, surreptitious glance. The King sounded almost… kind.
Those strange, faceted eyes closed as the Seamstress sighed. “I would be honored to give you the tale, if you consent to hold it.”
“I would be honored to hold the tale, if you consent to give it.” Cadences of ceremony, out of Neve’s depth. A mourning ritual she had no context for, Solmir offering the bereaved creature some kind of comfort.
It made her stomach twist.
The Seamstress picked up a strand of her dark hair, began absently braiding it. Neve did something similar when her thoughts were rampant and her hands needed a task.
“I wasn’t there,” the Seamstress began, with an undercurrent of guilt. “My Weaver didn’t live with me; it remained a wild creature. It roamed the trees, but always returned. Until it didn’t.” A shuddering breath. “Hours and days have no meaning here, where everything stays the same, but once it had been gone for long enough that my heart ached with absence, I knew something was wrong.”
Neve’s eyes flicked to Solmir. The former King still stood with his jaw tight and his arms crossed, but there was something more than cold in his blue eyes. Pity, maybe. Or guilt.
“I am no god,” the Seamstress continued. “Power pulls them, the gravity of it tugging them forward—no matter how they might resist—to the Sanctum, where so much magic lies, or to open doors between worlds. I couldn’t feel the pull, but my Weaver did. And it grew too strong to resist. My Weaver went to the Kings, went to their Sanctum, unable to stop itself.” Her breathing shuddered. “They cut my god with the bones of one of the others; the Dragon, maybe, or the Hawk, one of those that succumbed earliest. They drained its power into themselves. And now my Weaver is gone.”
A monstrous story in a monstrous place; a woman twisted for the love of a bestial god. But still, an answering grief stirred in Neve’s chest, human feelings for these inhuman things.
“I felt it happen,” the Seamstress said. “We were tied together so, my Weaver and I. For its love, I gave up my humanity. Part of me thought I would die once it did.” She paused. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”
She fell quiet; no one filled it. Strange, how the emotions felt by monstrous gods so echoed Neve’s own. How they didn’t seem so different at all.
The Seamstress thoughtfully curled a segmented leg against her teeth. “I cannot tell time anymore, but I know much has passed since they took my Weaver. Why do you only come now, once-King?”
“Trying out those other plans.” Solmir’s eyes glittered; the softness he’d shown her while she told the tale of her loss was gone, and now he was all chill and hard edges. “The ones you told me were pointless.”
Sharp teeth dimpled her lip as the Seamstress grinned. “I won’t say I told you so.”
Solmir grunted. “It might’ve worked, but there were… complications.”
Complications like Red, like her Wolf. Even now, Neve didn’t know how to feel about that. All these things she’d done to save a sister who didn’t want to be saved, who’d made a home of her sacrificial altar.
“It wouldn’t have,” the Seamstress said flatly. “Open ways between worlds draw gods toward them, yes, but only the Heart Tree can draw something as powerful as the Kings. They felt your doorway, and I’m sure they tried their best to get to it. But they could never have been fully pulled through. Not as they are now.”
Solmir’s eyes darted Neve’s way, a flash of blue too quick for her to try to read.
The Seamstress selected another insect piece from the pile of her offerings. “How busy you’ve been, once-King. I felt the rupture—all of us did, here on the fringes, though it was too small to draw the Old Ones—but I didn’t think it was you who went through. Only a shadow-creature, or some lesser beast. I should’ve sensed the passage of one with a soul.”
“I’m only about as important as some lesser beast now,” Solmir said. “And my soul is a small, mean thing.”
“Still remarkable you have one.” The Seamstress sat back, chewing thoughtfully. “Mine sank into this place long ago, melded with the dark and the muck and the rot as I pulled up magic and let it twist me. I don’t even remember what color my eyes were.”
“Yours was compromised long before you came here, I think, or you would never have fallen in love with the Weaver.” Teasing, it seemed, looked entirely different on Solmir than mocking did. There was a light in his eyes that wasn’t malice; he held himself more loosely.