“Pots and kettles.” The Seamstress flicked the ends of her spider legs like fingers. “I meant no offense. Long friendship tends to make tatters of manners.”
“I know it’s made tatters of mine.” In one smooth motion, like it was something he’d practiced, Solmir sank to one knee. His fist came up and hovered before his forehead, chin tilted to the Seamstress’s dusty floor.
Surprise made Neve’s brows climb; she looked to the Seamstress, expecting her confusion to be mirrored. But though the creature looked stricken, it seemed more as if she was touched, like Solmir kneeling was one more piece of a ritual between gods and monsters that Neve didn’t know.
Faceted arachnid eyes widened, the Seamstress’s legs twitching as she backed up a step, one hand coming to her chest. “Oh, once-King, no.” It was half a laugh and half a sob. “I’m not a god. I am not one to be shown deference, not beyond the words of welcome.”
“You were the Beloved of the Weaver.” Again, a sense of capitalization, as if Beloved was just as much a title as Shadow Queen. “And the Weaver is gone. I show you the deference I would’ve shown it.” Solmir looked up, face solemn, with none of the contempt Neve had grown to expect as his default. “Anyone who can make an Old One feel something like love is deserving of deference.”
The Seamstress quirked her mouth in a sorrowful smile. “You think love is so difficult,” she murmured. “Such a fraught thing. But sometimes, it can be simple, even when everything around it is not.”
Solmir said nothing. But when he straightened, his mouth was that thin line again, his expression arrogant and cold. Neve watched through narrowed eyes, unsure how to add up all these disparate parts into the whole of him. There was more to Solmir than cruelty and ambition, apparently, but she couldn’t trace the fractures in that armor to see what waited beyond it.
Shadow Queen.
Neve flinched. Her head turned, looking for a speaker, whoever had just whispered in her ear. But there was no one else in the cabin, and no one close enough—
The Seamstress. Her eyes were fixed on Neve, hypnotizing in their strangeness, and her mouth didn’t move. But it was her. Speaking, somehow, into Neve’s head.
I have learned the ways of this place, how sinking yourself into it allows you to speak mind to mind. She sounded bemused, as much as one could when their voice was disembodied. Swallowing shadow is swallowing a piece of this world, little queen, and then the things of this world can speak to you through it. You pulled us in when you pulled in the magic in your grove. And though the once-King carries that magic now, it still left its marks in you. Magic scars. Something like a sigh brushed through her head. I grow so weary of it. All of it.
Neve glanced at Solmir—all his attention was on the pieces of insects hanging from the rafters. The words of the Old One’s lover were for Neve alone, spoken only into her skull.
I was like you once, the Seamstress continued. A human girl, caught in webs beyond my imagining. The Weaver looked so different on the surface, but I loved it enough to follow it into exile. And by the time I saw its true form, it was beautiful to me, for I’d been changed, too. She paused. Monstrousness is a curious thing. In its barest form, its simplest definition, a monster is merely something different than you think it should be. And who gets to decide what should be, anyway?
Neve thought of black veins and ice, of thorns where flowers should be. She thought of Red, skin traced in green. Solmir held the magic because he knew how to keep it from changing him—at least, that’s the reason he claimed. But what if Neve took it back? Would she become something like the Seamstress?
Not one like me, the Seamstress answered. She chuckled. It was an extremely disconcerting thing to hear in one’s mind. And there will be time for taking magic, or taking something else. There is much to hold in this world. The two of you will have to decide who holds what, Shadow Queen.
What does that mean? Neve wasn’t versed in how one carried on a conversation in their head. To be the Shadow Queen?
A stretch of silence before the Seamstress answered. That, ultimately, is up to you.
“Neverah?”
Solmir’s voice startled her out of whatever trance the Seamstress had put her in. Neve shook her head, dispelling the ghost of the spider-woman’s giggle. “What?”
His eyes swung between her and the Seamstress, understanding in the arch of one brow. “Ah. So they can talk in your head, too.”
“Too?” Neve’s hand half rose to her forehead, like her thoughts were a physical thing she could shield. “So everyone here can read minds?”