Page 2 of Stitches
Or the tragic loss of Prince Cullen.
Ashmedai cleared his throat to cover the sting of memory and gestured Dreya toward his sitting room. “Whatever you’d prefer.”
Levi
Levi hid his face with the hood of his cloak before entering the market. He didn’t think himself ugly, but compared to everyone else in the Shadow Lands, surely he was almost….
Ordinary.
He crept down the stone steps into the market square. Behind him was the entrance archway, covered in a glittering black awning with two glowing crystals in silver sconces on either side. These crystals were warm orangey-red, though light sources throughout the Dark Kingdom could be many colors. Crystals in lampposts along the market path were green, blue, even violet, like the Source Crystal in the town square at the center of the market.
Instead of heading down the market steps, farther behind where Levi had come from, one could have turned right toward the residential area, with its long road eventually leading to the Shadow King’s castle, or left, toward Braxton’s tower at the edge of the wood, where Levi lived.
Braxton Leviathan was Levi’s master. His creator. It was difficultsometimes being only a few weeks old, but Braxton insisted that Levi’s shyness would fade. That’s why Braxton had tasked Levi with doing the shopping, and because using steps was difficult for the enigmatic inventor.
As Levi descended the long stone staircase, the voices of the people below were welcoming, as if it were a midday bazar. But there was no day in the Shadow Lands. Eternal night shone above, with ever-present stars and a never-waning full moon.
Levi didn’t know what day looked like. Many people who lived in the Dark Kingdom had never seen it, and those who existed before the curse barely remembered what the warmth of the sun felt like. Levi only knew “sun” and “day” existed because he had been told.
“Newest silks from Emerald!” a man at one of the first stalls shouted as soon as Levi reached the bottom. The merchant had the appearance of a fish, with bulging eyes, though his fins were still shaped into something like webbed fingers, and he had legs, as well as gills on his neck to prove he could leap right into the Black Lake and not resurface until he wished it. “Who knows if the next caravan will contain more! Get it while you can!”
Levi pulled his hood lower and scurried away. He was meant to engage the sellers, for how else could he conquer his shyness, but did they have to be so loud?
“Careful!” a woman with a forked tongue hissed at Levi when he nearly ran into her. Unlike the fish-man, she had no legs but moved like an upright snake, a naga with slitted eyes and hair plaited as though made of scales like the rest of her.
“S-sorry!” Levi hurried onward, trying to keep his face hidden while taking more care with where he was going. He liked the people, the swarm of them here, all so different, never two exactly alike, but it was also overwhelming when any of them paid attention to him.
He’d start with Daedlys’s shop like usual to calm himself. Daedlysspoke in a naturally pleasant whisper—as long as he wasn’t screaming, but he didn’t scream often since it could be painful to others, being a banshee. Plus, Daedlys was friendly and had doted on Levi ever since he first ventured out of the tower.
“If it isn’t our sweet Stitches,” Daedlys said like an echo on the wind when Levi entered the shop. As a general store with various wares, it was one of the few businesses inside a building rather than a stall.
Levi threw his hood back when he saw that no one else was inside, revealing his red hair, wavy and messy, curling around his slightly pointed ears.
Daedlys could see through things anyway, with his pitlike black eyes. The banshee had long white hair, his face gaunt and body thin, fading where feet should have been to a wisp almost like the tail of the naga woman outside, though Daedlys floated, transparent like a phantom, wearing an equally diaphanous black robe. Daedlys could wear anything, but whatever he put on his body became as see-through as he was.
“Hello, Sir Daedlys. I have a list today,” Levi said, carefully pulling it from his cloak. Usually he kept his hands hidden too, while trekking through the market, afraid that someone might find his blue skin or the stitches holding his parts together off-putting, but Daedlys had called him “Stitches” with a smile ever since they met. It made Levi less self-conscious of his appearance while in this shop.
“Lyssy, my love?” Daedlys’s husband, Klarent, called before entering from the back.
Klarent almost seemed to float too, though that was because his tentacles carried him across the floor. His skin was orange, and his arms were also made of tentacles, three each that worked in tandem like large fingers. Tentacles made up what might have been hair as well and covered his face like a beard. Levi distinctly heard a voice, however, and not one in his mind, so he knew a mouth had to existbeneath the tendrils somewhere.
“Levi!” Klarent exclaimed when he saw him, loud, perhaps, but cordial, and not so loud that Levi shrank back or regretted removing his hood.
Levi remembered how surprised he’d been to discover the two were married, given their vast differences in species, but then, everyone in the Dark Kingdom was a different species.
“Perhaps you can offer your opinion as one untainted by too much life experience.” Klarent approached Levi, holding out a beautifully bound tome edged in gold with a depiction of the Source Crystal on the front.
“Tainted, he calls me,” Daedlys scoffed.
Klarent waved at him in dismissal, focusing on Levi. “What do you think?” He coiled a tentacle toward the cover, and the painted picture of the crystal glowed with violet light like the real thing. “Too ostentatious?”
Not everyone in the Dark Kingdom could cast magic. Klarent could only minimally, with small tricks like the light, and Levi’s magic wasn’t much stronger, since he was a construct. Even fewer people understood alchemy the way Braxton did, but enough were attuned to magic to keep the crystals glowing so that, even without torches, it was never dark in the land of night.
Levi might have guessed that the Source Crystal itself gave illumination to the other crystals, but the Amethyst gemstone was the source of the kingdom’s curse, not its magic or light.
That was another reason why Levi kept his face hidden—because his eyes glowed violet like the Amethyst.
“It’s lovely, Sir Klarent,” Levi said. “What does this one chronicle?”
