Page 68 of Stitches
“You crossed the barrier,” Ashmedai said in astonishment.
Levi stared at his hands, terrified for a moment that he would vanish, but he was still whole. Where he had crossed, there was a haze in the air, like the blending of colors on a painting, like the rainbow of Levi’s own illusions before they formed, where the Shadow Lands and the rest of the world faded from one into the other.
He turned to look behind himself and saw…snowgently falling on normal winter trees.
“Did Brax… no, no….” Ashmedai muttered. “The crystals are still glowing, and I canfeelthe barrier. I know it’s there.”
Levi almost laughed, though he could tell Ashmedai was tense and frightened. He turned back, hoping to reassure Ashmedai but still curious. “How—?”
Levi’s words were torn from him as something crashed into his side.
The next thing Levi felt was pain, not only from whatever had struck him, but because he was thrown to the ground, landing hard on his side, with one of his daggers digging into his hip. Arms surrounded Levi, and he registered a body plastered against him.
The demon.
Stunned and terrified, Levi couldn’t think to fight right away as he was rolled onto his back, his body roughly pawed at, until his attacker found the buckle on his belt and began to unclasp it.
“Levi!” Ashmedai cried.
Themanatop Levi wasn’t from the Shadow Lands, but he was no demon. He was human, hair bedraggled and beard so bushy Levi could only just make out the glint of green in his eyes. He seemed so strange. So simple.
So ordinary.
The highwayman, for clearly that’s what he was, was already fitting Levi’s belt around his own waist, taking it for his own. Then he reached for the cuff on Levi’s ear.
“No!” Levi swatted his hand away.
The man snarled, glaring at Levi for daring to defy him, only to seemingly just that moment take in how Levi looked and gaping at Levi’s strangeness as Levi had gaped at him.
“What are you?” he asked hoarsely.
A roar sounded from inside the barrier like no beast Levi had ever heard, with both a reverberating depth and painful shrillness to its cry that rivaled Daedlys’s scream. Levi and the man both turned, taking in the monster before them like something only a nightmare could create.
It wasn’t only its shape that was frightening. It had wings and claws, a tail, jagged horns that spiraled upward from its head, and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. All those things Levi knew from people of the Shadow Lands—his neighbors and friends—but this creature was different. The feeling it evoked was a horror like no other, for it bothseemed to have its shape and didn’t. Its skin too was variable, like light and darkness warring for dominance, as if the beast was made of shadow.
The highwayman screamed, leapt off Levi, and took off in a frenzied run deeper into the snow-covered trees.
Thiswas the demon, and though the highwayman had been able to run, all Levi could do was shiver and close his eyes in terror.
“Levi!”
Levi opened his eyes again, berating himself for forgetting that Ashmedai was there too. He was right there—where the monster had been a moment ago. Ashmedai looked sad again, maybe more so than Levi had ever seen.
Slowly, having lost his weapons belt but otherwise fine, Levi got to his feet. Ashmedai couldn’t approach him, or else he would cross the barrier and not be as lucky as Levi had been. Yet, as Levi looked at the king, he had this odd sinking feeling overtake him that made it impossible to move forward himself.
“You… have illusion magic too?”
“It wasn’t an illusion.” Ashmedai’s sorrow deepened further. “That is the real me.”
“Then your secret, why the past haunts you so….” Levi swallowed low as he gathered his thoughts. “The prince didn’t summon the demon, did he?Youdid and took it into yourself.”
“No, Levi. I didn’t summon the demon,” Ashmedai said solemnly, and his eyes flashed in a way that made the whites of his irises turn black like the rest. “I am the demon.”
Chapter 9
Ashmedai
“Comeon,Ash,it’slate,” Cullen said, though he hardly portrayed any fatigue with the way he skipped onward, clearly enjoying being out in the square at night when most everyone else was preparing for bed or already asleep and the streets were empty. “What do you want to talk to me about that’s so important?”
