Page 47 of Stitches
Levi blinked at Klarent for several moments before he realized what that meant. “You’refrom Emerald? But I thought you were an original inhabitant when the curse struck.”
“Close enough.” Klarent moved to a small sofa against the wall and slumped onto it, prompting Levi to push through his nausea and join him. “The curse had only been active for about a year when I came exploring to see if the tales were true.”
“You’re one of the people who crossed the barrier and was changed?”
“Indeed. I was always a scholar, so I wasn’t afraid. I was… fascinated, especially when I began to take on my new form.” As Klarent lifted his fingerlike hand tendrils, Levi could see the honest pride in Klarent’s eyes for what he had become.
Which made Levi even more curious. “May I ask…?”
“What did I look like before? Very strapping.” Klarent sat up taller. “Same height, mind you, and similar frame. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Proud, square jaw. I prefer the tendrils.” He winked. Klarent had no hair anymore, but his eyes did retain a certain navy hue, though they were large without pupils, almost like Daedlys’s black pits.
“Did you leave family behind?” Levi asked.
“Parents, siblings, friends. I still miss them, but they’re long gone now. I think that’s why my focus became history. I had a large family once, all of us quite close, and I wonder sometimes what their descendants might be like.”
“You must have been so lonely when you learned you couldn’t leave here.”
“Meeting Lyssy helped,” Klarent said with a wriggle of his face tendrils, which Levi knew was his way of smiling.
It made sense why Klarent had appointed himself the kingdom’s chronicler if he was an outside scholar wanting to learn all he could. In Levi’s few weeks of life, he had only heard the tale of the demon from the mouth of a child. He’d been too anxious to ask it of anyone else, let alone one of the most knowledgeable, but now he felt compelled to understand.
“What really happened the night of the curse?”
Klarent sagged lower into the sofa, though this time, almost wistfully. “The old king had passed away, and Prince Cullen longed for direction. No one can truly say they know his state of mind at the time, not even Ash, a newcomer to Amethyst, who had befriended Cullen.”
“Did Cullen summon the demon?”
“No one truly knows that either. Perhaps. Perhaps the demon simplywas. All anyone can be sure of is that Ash was there when the people needed someone to lead after Cullen vanished. Without him, everything might have fallen into chaos.”
“I didn’t realize Ash wasn’t originally from here,” Levi said, finally relaxing into the sofa.
“Diamond, I believe, in a valley beyond the Sapphire Kingdom, which is nearest to us. Diamond is the primary land of the elves. Or was once. Who knows now, a thousand years since?”
Levi frowned at the map those words created. “Sapphire is closest? Then why do the carriages only go to Emerald?”
“They used to go to Sapphire too, but a couple hundred years ago, their people stopped loading them. No one knows why. So, Brax stopped sending it there.” Klarent sighed, seeming far away despite being able to recite anything about the history of the kingdoms with nary a pause for pondering.
“Klarent?” Levi broached softly. “What made you sing that song today?”
“I was thinking of home,” Klarent said, followed by another deep sigh, and then he closed his eyes. “I’m pregnant.”
“What?” Levi leapt to the edge of his seat. “Truly?”
A slightly more agitated flurry of mouth tendrils preceded Klarent’s response. “Daedlys doesn’t know. It was an accident. We’d discussed it, planned it for years, though we hadn’t told anyone we were finally going to go through with it. When it was revealed that a good dozen or more people were already pregnant, we decided to wait… only it seems we made that decision too late.”
There was no visible distention of Klarent’s belly, and honestly, Levi wasn’t sure how pregnancies worked between the various species and genders, but it still seemed such a miracle to look upon his friend and know that a new life was growing inside him. “This is wonderful!”
“Is it?” Klarent scoffed. “So much is unknown right now, and wedecided to wait. What if Lyssy is angry?”
“With you? Over this?” Levi couldn’t help but smile, because he knew Klarent and Daedlys better than he knew almost anyone in the Shadow Lands, and their devotion to each other was unconditional. “Never.”
The orange hue of Klarent’s skin seemed to darken a few shades at the apples of his cheeks and partway down his tendrils. “What if Ash is angry?”
“How could he be? Ash said at the council meeting that he never wants anyone to think that way again or to keep such things from him. This is good news.” Levi took Klarent’s hand, and the tendrils of his fingers coiled up Levi’s forearm to wrap tight. “It’s you and Daedlys, one of the most inspiring couples in all the Dark Kingdom. I am sure your child will be miraculous, and soon there will be no worries over barriers or lacking space. Unknown though the future may be, Braxton has assured it.”
One thing Levi never doubted was that if Braxton put his mind to something, he was certain to achieve it.
“Thank you.” Klarent took Levi’s other hand to wrap it in tendrils too. “I think I needed to hear that. All that mess with Grillo had me returning to old fears. But then our sweet Stitches saved the day, didn’t you? And now you have again.”
