1. Chapter 1 #5
It was a new mother, Ashmedai recalled, someone who had, in turn, been born here within the curse, never having known something different. She resembled a Gorgon with blank white eyes and a head of snakes, though her bottom half was that of a spider.
Ashmedai gestured her forward to take Grillo’s place in front of him.
“What happens after these trees are taken?” she continued. “What of the next time we need to build or expand? What of the rumors that we have not only reached our limit, but that the barrier is shrinking in on us?”
A murmur tittered through the crowd.
“Hold on now!” Dreya stomped one of her hooves to regain the room. “Are we a people of discussion or hearsay? A rumor is merely a rumor, Shevah. The barrier is not shrinking. You’ll recall Braxton disproved that months ago.”
That was true—the barrier wasn’t shrinking—but the rumors weren’t wrong that they were running out of resources, and Ashmedai had tasked Braxton with solving that quandary above all else. He didn’t want his people to panic until he knew for sure what might be done.
“Calm yourselves,” added Luccite, their healer and the final advisor, seated beside Dreya. “If Brax’s crystals ever fail or do not warn someone in time, I have perfected many ways to adapt after disintegration.”
Luccite was like a panther on two legs, with a very humanoid body but a feline head, and a cat’s sly smile to match.
She was shorter than most, however, and quite stout, often wearing robes that hung off her body, like today’s, in deep emerald.
Her fur was a rich gray but with brown at its roots, giving her shimmering dimension, and her eyes were slitted gold.
She lounged like a cat too, practically leaning on Dreya, who didn’t seem to mind.
“There is nothing to adapt if someone disintegrates entirely,” Shevah hissed back.
It wounded Ashmedai to hear such things, but he understood his people’s fear. He had kept them mostly safe for nearly a thousand years. The limited space was bound to catch up to them eventually.
“Your words are heard, Shevah,” Yentriss said, “and rest assured that concerns over the barrier are our top priority. Do you doubt the resolve of your king to keep you as safe as he is capable?”
Shevah’s stony expression wavered, her white eyes turning to Ashmedai, which caused her to look immediately cowed. “No. Never. Surely the demon would have killed us all by now without your guidance.” She bowed.
That wounded Ashmedai more, because his people loved him without question. No one knew what really happened that night.
Other than Ashmedai and Braxton.
“Shall we move on to the Emerald shipment and call it an evening?” Dreya broke in with a chipper tone, ever vigilant to the shifting mood of the room.
Shevah returned to her seat, and Ashmedai listened with only half an ear as various other citizens came forward to make requests of items that would likely be on the monthly caravan from the Emerald Kingdom or made suggestions for new things to send.
The other half of Ashmedai’s attention was on the hooded figure of Levi.
He wished he could see Levi’s face.
“Another note? It’s a waste of time!” a louder voice brought Ashmedai back again. It was Lauffy, a naga woman in the crowd, whereas Gordoc stood before the table.
“There’s no harm in trying,” Gordoc argued. “I’ll pen the note myself. If they ignore it again, so be it. One day, they might finally take to heart specific trade requests.”
Ashmedai remembered soon after the curse befell them when he had penned the first note.
He’d explained what had happened and warned the people of Emerald to stay away for fear that they might be taken by the curse too should they cross into Amethyst. There was never a response, but occasionally people would venture close, and Ashmedai’s fears were realized.
If anyone crossed into the barrier, they couldn’t leave. They would morph into monsters, and if they tried to escape afterward, they’d disintegrate as soon as they were out again.
For a while Ashmedai had set up sentries to warn people away, but when they saw the monsters the citizens of Amethyst had become, they’d run in fear as if they had gone mad.
It was from the shrieks of those escaping, and from the few outsiders claimed by the curse in its early years, that they learned of the kingdom’s new name.
The Shadow Lands, they were called now, forever cloaked in darkness.
People who had crossed over and stayed never recalled being told of notes with the caravan.
It was assumed that someone, either royalty or a guard, must have been snatching them up and tossing them aside.
These days, only a small few still called the lands Amethyst, like it had been when Ashmedai fell in love with it—and its people.
And….
“Perhaps not this time, Gordoc,” Ashmedai said.
“While I appreciate your willingness to try, with the festival soon upon us and so much else on everyone’s minds, I ask that you wait until at least the shipment afterward.
Is that all?” He looked to his advisors for anything forgotten, then to the crowd for other voices, but all was quiet. “Good evening, then, and thank you.”
There was a bustle as the crowd began to disperse. Yentriss and Luccite left with little more than brief good nights, but after watching them leave, Dreya turned to Ashmedai, immediately starting in on something or another to keep his attention.
She meant well and could rarely contain her excitement about this or that to keep things running and the people happy.
Ashmedai had added her as an advisor for that very reason—because she’d done the same even before she had the position—but as he noticed that a sole figure lingered at the back while everyone else continued to leave, he spoke over Dreya.
“It seems someone else needs my ear tonight. May we reconvene tomorrow morning?”
Dreya’s drooping ears sank lower to her shoulders, but then perked back up as she smiled, never one to be glum for long. “Of course! Have a pleasant evening, Ash. I’ll come by the castle nice and early.”
She always did.
After Dreya left, Ashmedai moved around the table toward the robed figure, who had set a basket against the wall and stood to wait until everyone else had gone.
Then Levi dropped his hood.
“G-good evening, sire. M-m-may I… um…. F-forgive me.” He paused to collect himself and took a heavy breath. “I have some things for you from Master Braxton,” he said more slowly.
Ashmedai had only ever seen Levi lurking or in passing on the street, never full-on before, but he saw now that it wasn’t only Levi’s eyes that made him look like Cullen.
Levi resembled the lost prince nearly as much as he resembled Braxton.
Besides the almost mix of Braxton and Cullen’s faces, all that kept Levi from being Cullen’s twin was that his hair was red, not brown, and his skin blue instead of cream .
Ashmedai had also noticed the lines across Levi’s face, assuming they might be scars, or maybe markings he was created with, but each line was actually very fine stitches.
They were on his hands too, and around his neck.
He must be like that everywhere, not a singularly created homunculus but pieces stitched together.
“M-Master Braxton made me,” Levi stuttered again, gaze drifting downward. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Apologies for staring, I… I never noticed how he made you before.”
“H-he’s… tried to create a construct many times, but they were all failures, s-so he stitched the best parts of each together and got me. Sometimes, when I disappoint him, he says I’m a failure too, that he’ll cut my stitches so I fall apart.”
A crack of possession raged through Ashmedai, which must have been very visible in his expression, because when Levi glanced up, he was quick to correct himself.
“He doesn’t mean it! He just gets angry when I’m not good enough or don’t listen.”
The instinct in Ashmedai to protect this young man didn’t dwindle, but even as ruler of their small kingdom, he couldn’t overstep, especially with a friend as dear to him as Braxton.
There were no laws around a creature like Levi.
“You don’t quite look like him,” Ashmedai said. “Younger, certainly, and you look as though you could be related, but not identical like his other constructs.”
“Th-that’s because of being made from pieces.
” Levi kept looking away, only glancing at Ashmedai briefly as he spoke, like he wasn’t used to eye contact with anyone outside of Braxton.
“He says being reanimated that way is why I have a soul. Why I’m…
wrong sometimes and not as obedient as I should be. ”
“He doesn’t want you to have independence? ”
“He does.” Levi frowned. “But… he gave me life. I am his. I attend to everything he wants of me, as I should.”
“ Everything he wants of you?”
“Not like that!” A flush filled Levi’s face, like deep purple in his azure cheeks.
At least Brax isn’t a complete narcissist , Ashmedai thought, filled with relief as strong as his possessive anger. “You could look even more your own man without those.” He gestured at the stitches. “I could fix them for you.”
“What?” Levi gaped at him.
Ashmedai took Levi’s hand, which made Levi flinch at first, but he soon relaxed and looked on with rapt attention as Ashmedai delicately moved his thumb and middle finger around Levi’s wrist in slow strokes, careful not to catch the skin with his claws.
The visible stitches started to pulse with an inversion of light like the deepest of shadows.
When the shadows faded, there was just smooth, connected skin.
“See?”
Levi stared with something between awe and horror.
“It’s all right. I can fix the others too. I’m surprised Brax never—”
“I need to go.” Levi jerked away before Ashmedai could take his other wrist.
“Levi—”
“Please accept our offering.” Levi shuffled back faster, leaving the basket by the wall. “It was nice to finally meet you, Master Ashmedai.”
“Just—” Ashmedai tried to correct him, but before he could finish, Levi was already out the door. “—Ash.”
He hadn’t meant to upset Levi. Selfishly, however, he had wanted an excuse to touch him.
It seemed it was Ashmedai’s true curse to be left to emptiness like the now vacant hall, with only the shadows that flocked to him and the faintest light from the crystals to keep him company .
He was cursed to keep watching that same face leave him….
Tomorrow, Ashmedai would see Braxton.