Page 40 of Stitches
“Any other suggestions you might—”
“Your help, please!” someone interrupted Dreya’s rambling. It looked as though two half-built stalls were encroaching on the same corner, and their owners didn’t look happy about it.
Dreya’s ears flattened to her head. “Sorry, Lucc. If you’ll excuse me.” She almost forgot to acknowledge Levi, looking much more forlornly at Luccite as she left.
Luccite stared just as longingly after her.
“You and Dreya have known each other for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Hm?” Luccite turned to Levi, and a ripple seemed to run from her shoulders down her spine with a shifting of muscle and fur beneath her robes. “Your point?”
“Well… you’re not courting. Why? You’re clearly interested in each other.”
“Pfft.”
The way Luccite looked away with an accompanying squirm made it so obvious that Levi had guessed right, he had a sudden feeling of dread drop deep in his stomach, wondering if he was that obvious around Ashmedai.
“I was here in the beginning, you know, a dwarf once,” Luccite said. “I’m an old woman compared to anyone born of this place, and Dreya is barely thirty.”
“No offense, Madame Healer,” Levi said with a brewing smile, “but I hardly think age matters when everyone here is unaging once they reach adulthood. I myself am less than a month old. Do you think me less of a man?”
Whether a defensive comment or a telling one, whatever Luccitewas about to say stalled on her tongue—and she smirked as she spotted something behind Levi. “Others certainly don’t.”
Levi turned to see where she was looking and found Ashmedai. For a strange, wonderful moment, Levi wondered what the king would look like in sunlight. Moonlight still framed him beautifully, making him almost shimmer like the glittering trees.
“Roped into anything new?” Ashmedai asked when he reached them.
“Hm?” Levi looked around, remembering that he had been talking with Dreya—and Luccite, who seemed to have disappeared. He spotted her heading back down the market steps, though she wasn’t at all subtle in the way she glanced toward Dreya before departing. “I don’t think so. Dreya was mentioning something, but it seemed more a ruse to talk to Luccite than to employ either of us.”
“You noticed too?” Ashmedai’s smile seemed more somber than usual as he looked at Luccite descending the steps, and then at Dreya across the festival grounds. “I hadn’t realized, but it seems so obvious now that there’s an attraction there.”
Being in Ashmedai’s presence again, Levi couldn’t take his eyes off him, not even when white-on-black captured his own inferior violet. Perhaps it was the curve of Ashmedai’s white cheek, the silkiness of his black hair, his long neck, or the fangs in his smile. It was all those things, Levi supposed—pieces making up a radiant whole.
“I asked Luccite why she’s never pursued anything with Dreya,” Levi said.
“And?”
“She said she’s too old.”
Ashmedai released a quiet huff. “I’d say that’s fear talking more than belief in those words. Plenty of couples here have already proven that age means nothing if two grown people are of the same mind.”
“Exactly. What a blessing that I do not think, act, or lookmyage.” Levi smiled.
A similar flash of a wider smile stretched Ashmedai’s face, but he seemed distracted, his mirth only fleetingly genuine before it strained. “It is rare for new love to blossom. Perhaps my advisors need a helping hand. Maybe at the festival.”
“A subtle steering in the right direction, you mean?”
“My shadows can steer as well as any guiding hand. They’d never even know,” he finished in a whisper.
The clandestine proposal seemed equally devious and delightful to Levi, just like Ashmedai’s smile—before it faded again. “I’d say that is a worthy cause to assist you in, my king, but is everything all right? You seem… sad. Is it something Luccite said?” Levi had almost forgotten what they had been up to earlier. “Is it about me?”
Ashmedai looked ageless, without the hint of a smile. He always looked ageless, but like this he seemed frozen in time.
After a swift look around at the mild bustle of workers, Ashmedai suddenly seized Levi by the shoulders and dragged him behind one of the finished stalls, pressing him up against the wall and causing Levi’s pulse to quicken. Levi had rarely if ever seen Ashmedai use force before. He was always one to be gentle, even when agitated. To feel such force used on him didn’t frighten Levi, even seeing that he and Ashmedai were completely hidden from prying eyes.
The close quarters, the firm grip on his arms, the flash of Ashmedai’s white-on-black eyes catching the light from the moon above, only made Levi feel more blissfully captivated.
“You, Levi, are very special,” Ashmedai began quietly, like a furtive echo on the wind. “Never doubt that. I spoke with Braxton and….”
