Page 42 of Stitches
He smiled with a fondness that again warmed Levi’s heart.
“What about you?” Grillo asked. “Your talent for the festival?”
“Oh! Klarent asked me not to tell anyone, since it’s part of his performance too, but I can say it involves my illusion magic. Ash said the crowd will be more focused on that than me. I hope he’s right.”
“I’m sure you’ll do splendidly, and Kenner will be pleased. Rest assured you’ll have a few friends in the crowd with my family.”
“You and Kenner, perhaps. I don’t know if Yentriss likes me very much.”
“Nonsense. She acts tough with everyone. Save me, of course. Just you wait. She’ll be a blushing mess after my performance.” Grillo laughed again, and Levi chuckled with him.
He wondered how a blush would present itself on green and gold scales.
“She’s always been serious-minded,” Grillo went on, his mirth lessening as he was drawn into memory, “but I suppose the curse enhanced that with the scales she grew like natural armor. When the curse first happened, there were many people who tried to flee. We lost dozens, and Yen was crucial in trying to prevent more, but she could only do so much. She saw more citizens… erased than anyone else. She and Ash.”
Levi had grown so used to the people here that he hadn’t considered how many more there might have been if history had gone differently. “That must have been very difficult.”
Grillo smiled again, never without one for long. “And that is why we celebrate what we have each year instead of mourning what we lost.”
They reached another edge of the barrier, and Levi set down the glowing crystal where there was a gap in the perimeter. He pulled out a second as they veered once more toward their destination. By the time they stopped and Grillo started felling trees, Levi had no crystals left, though there was a larger gap near them that made Levi wary.
There were no glider monkeys here. No jackalopes or gazellians either. There weren’t even tracks to indicate there ever had been animals near these trees. The stillness was eerie, but Levi tried to keep his mood light by thinking of the next time he would see Ashmedai.
The king would walk Levi home again once the day’s work was done, and Levi had every intention of stealing another kiss.
Grillo was onto a particularly large tree that, even for the minotaur, would take several minutes to topple. Levi knew better than to wander, content to organize the cart with the lumber they had so far, but when he looked up, scanning the nearby trees, he noticed an area close by with disturbed dirt. Perhaps there had been animals through here.
Curious, Levi moved toward it. The earth was definitely disturbed, dug into, maybe even freshly, or something had been recently buried there. By a rollhound perhaps? While mostly domesticated, there were some in the wild.
The area seemed distorted in a way. Levi knelt to better inspect the upturned dirt, reaching out to gently smooth some of it aside. Was that… cloth?
A boom startled Levi, and he looked back to see the large tree on the ground. Grillo was wiping the sweat from his brow and started to move toward Levi, heading slightly north and around the trees to come up parallel to him.
“Last one. I don’t know about you, but I am starved—” The sound cut off abruptly from Grillo’s lips, his body going rigid and eyes snapping wide as he looked to his left… and howled.
His arm up to his elbow had vanished.
“Grillo!” Levi rushed to him, not thinking of his own safety or how close he too might be to the barrier. He grasped Grillo’s still-whole arm and pulled with all his might to drag the sizable minotaur from where the barrier must be.
It was horrifying and fascinating to watch where Grillo’s arm had been, the wound seemingly frozen, not yet bleeding, only to suddenly gush and make Levi’s head feel woozy. Never had he been so grateful that Kenner wasn’t with them.
Struggling to not let the gory sight fell him like the trees, with nothing else to stop the bleeding, Levi tore his tunic off over his head and swiftly began to bind it around the stump.
Grillo stared in mute shock as if the pain had also been frozen—but then he howled far louder than before as that too caught up to him.
“Grillo.” Levi forced the minotaur to look at him and not the missing arm. “We must get you to Luccite. Can you make it?”
It was awful to see such pain and fear on the face of a man usually so strong. Grillo nodded, pulling on a brave face despite feeling what must be agony, and held a shaky hand to the already blood-soaked tunic, applying more pressure with a grimace.
Levi looped his arm through Grillo’s uninjured one, supporting the small of Grillo’s back to better catch him should he pass out or stumble, and swiftly led them back down the path, leaving everything else behind.
Chapter 6
Ashmedai
AshmedaistormedintoLuccite’sshop almost as explosively as he had Braxton’s tower the day before—only to stumble to a stop and stare.
Levi was pacing back and forth in front of the closed curtain, presumably with Grillo and Luccite behind it, and he wasn’t wearing a tunic.
