Midnight Soul

by Kristen Ashley

  “That’s ludicrous.”

  A small grin flirted at his lips as he shook his head again. “It’s the truth.”

  “Odd,” I murmured, looking back to his…phone.

  He shook it side to side in a coaxing way. “Take it, babe. You can’t hurt it. It can’t hurt you. There’s games on it if you want me to show you how they work.”

  I again caught his eyes. “Games?”

  This time, he nodded. “Solitaire. Tetris. Trivia Crack. Think there might be Fruit Ninja on there still.”

  “Fruit…ninja?” I asked the question like I was trying out the words.

  He simply chuckled at that, but he did it in a way I knew he was being gracious for he appeared to be fighting roaring with laughter.

  I ignored this and told him, “I don’t know these games.”

  He again smiled. “That would be me showin’ you how they work.”

  I took in his smile.

  I looked in his eyes.

  There was amusement there (as there seemed to be since he entered the room, something I’d never encountered in my life, such good humor).

  There was also intelligence, a great deal that could not be hidden even if, for some reason, he were to wish to try.

  And there was kindness, so much, there was more than enough to exploit should one have that in mind.

  But there was no guile.

  Even Antoine had an agenda when it came to me. To anyone. That was how one lived in my world. Not just my universe, the world I lived in due to the status I carried.

  Noctorno Hawthorne of the world of magical gadgets had none.

  And staring in his eyes, I felt a sensation gathering behind mine I hadn’t felt since I was a young child.

  “You should not be kind to me,” I whispered.

  His expression changed.

  It did not go wary.

  It warmed with a gentleness that made it feel my insides were unravelling.

  “Franka,” he whispered back.

  “You should not be kind to me,” I repeated.

  “Babe—”

  “I’ve done terrible things.”

  He said nothing, just stared right into my eyes, unafraid, without judgement, holding my gaze steady.

  “I love my frosted country,” the whiskey (or the wine) made me whisper. “They don’t think so. They don’t know. I can’t…” I shook my head, enough of my faculties still intact not to give him that. “I don’t let that be known. I’ve traveled the Northlands extensively. But there’s nothing like the air in Lunwyn. I prefer it in the many months it’s covered in snow. I prefer the chill. I prefer the cold air carving through your innards, washing them clean.”

  Something flickered in his gaze.

  Curiosity.

  “Franka—”

  “I would do nothing…nothing…to betray my country.” My voice dropped beyond a whisper to nearly nothing. “But for him.”

  “I get it.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t.” I lifted a hand weakly then dropped it in my lap. “They don’t.”

  I was referring to Queen Aurora. Frey and his Finnie. King Lahn and his Circe. Prince Noctorno and his Cora. Apollo and his Madeleine. The green witch Valentine. Lavinia.

  Everybody.

  “They get it,” he returned.

  “No, they don’t.”

  “They get it, sweetheart. You don’t think if those men had the same choice as you, their women taken, tortured, living in the pits of hell every day for weeks, fucking months…or those women had that choice with their men…they wouldn’t make the same choice as you?”

  “I shared this exact sentiment with them and they—”

  He leaned deeply across the seat over the table that separated us, very close to me, and his voice was the lash of a whip when he interrupted me to state, “Lied.”

  He did not move away as he continued, and when he did his voice was no less strong.

  “They fuckin’ lied, Franka. I know those are good men who have done remarkable things for their countries. I also know they wouldn’t hesitate to do anything in their power to keep their women safe and free from harm. So, since they weren’t in your position, they can say whatever the fuck they wanna say. But today, when Cora and Circe and Maddie and Finnie were taken, if they weren’t made safe as quickly as they were, if you think for one fuckin’ second each one of those men wouldn’t make a deal with the goddamned devil to make that so, you…are…wrong.”

  He jerked a finger at his chest and didn’t cease talking.

  “I know, ’cause I’m a man like that. And if I had a woman I loved like those men love their women, I’d do it and I wouldn’t fuckin’ blink.”

  That sensation behind my eyes became stronger as I asked, “You would?”

  “Fuck yes,” he stated inflexibly. “And I wouldn’t even blink.”

  It had started, and for the first time in decades I could stop the flow of words coming out of my mouth.

  “I’m a traitor,” I admitted.

  “You were and you aren’t the first to make the decision you made for someone you loved. Worse has happened when people made that same decision. And what you did, in the end, no one got hurt. But today, even if that’s the case, you made up for it. Those bitches could have cut you down with a snap.” He lifted his hand and made that noise with his fingers, the sound so loud I jumped. “You knew it. You still walked in there. I know vengeance, I get the need for that. I know that’s what pushed you to make the decision you made. But there was more. Loyalty. To the country you think you betrayed, to your family, ’cause I know you and Frey are blood. I get with the way he looks at you, the others do, that there’s no love lost and I don’t give a fuck why. You changed the course of history, baby, and every citizen of this nation should be grateful.”

  “I walked into a room and cast a spell,” I reminded him. “I hardly wielded swords, and it wasn’t even my magic.”

  “And saved lives doin’ that. A lot of them.”

  “You make me sound like a hero,” I scoffed.

  He edged slightly back, a cloud coming over his expression.

  “There is no such thing as a hero. Just a person doing the right thing in more than the usual, extreme circumstances.”

  It was my turn to consider him curiously.

  Once I’d taken long moments to do this, I asked quietly, “Why do I think that declaration is self-effacing?”

  “I’d answer that, if I knew what the fuck ‘self-effacing’ meant.”

  I felt my lips curl slightly up at the edges.

  “Modest,” I explained.

  “It isn’t,” he stated. “It just is what it is.”

  As he would say, bullshit.

  I did not share this sentiment.

  I also did not share my immense gratitude at the relief his words made me feel.

  I simply continued to look into his remarkable eyes.

  “You’re good at it,” he said softly, tipping his head my way. “That game you got goin’ on. Those walls you built that you hide behind. The distance you keep with every look, every word, every fuckin’ breath.” His gaze tipped down to the table then back to me. “When you aren’t drinking whiskey, that is.”

  “Noctorno—”

  “No one calls me Noctorno,” he stated flatly and leaned toward me again. “It’s Noc. Especially to friends, and Franka, I help save a universe with a woman then down a coupla bottles of wine and a whatever this is called…” he motioned with a flick of his wrist to the nearly depleted whiskey, “of hooch.”

  “A decanter,” I shared.

  “Whatever,” he muttered then spoke up when he spoke on. “You’re a friend. So call me Noc.”

  I pressed my lips together.

  He let that go and continued.

  “So now I’m a friend. I’m also the man who sees you for what you are, sugarlips. You don’t fool me. And those other men,” his eyes flicked to the door briefly, his indication of Frey, Lahn, the other Noctorno and Apo
llo, “if they didn’t have the end of the world as they knew it breathing down their necks and took the time to see, you wouldn’t fool them either.”

  I drew in a breath, burying his words, words I’d heard (of a sort) from another man, in fact, from the only other person I’d come across in my years on this earth who’d expended the energy to see.

  However.

  He’d called me sugarlips.

  I felt my brows snap together and I couldn’t control the sneer in my, “Sugarlips?”

  It was then his gaze dropped to my mouth before it came back to my eyes and he whispered, “Baby, you got the prettiest mouth I’ve ever seen.”

  This flirtation after that very evening he’d succeeded in bedding a woman who had been repeatedly violated for over two decades.

  The gall.

  “Cease flirting with me,” I clipped.

  He blinked, again looking perplexed, before he stated, “I’m not. I’m just sayin’ it like it is.”

  I stared at him angrily.

  And again saw no guile.

  This was not a man who would flirt with a woman who he knew had just lost the only man she’d ever loved in a heinous, drawn-out way, the pain of which would never die.

  Gods.

  How mortifying.

  “I…I, well…” By the gods, I was stammering! “I apologize.” And apologizing! Gods, what had become of me? I finished it quickly, “I mistook your words.”

  “I like lookin’ at you, Franka, and you’re cute when you stop tryin’ so hard to be a hard-ass bitch. But no decent man would make a play on a woman in your situation.” He grinned, “He succeeds in getting her shitfaced drunk or not.”

  Shitfaced?

  I did not ask.

  “I am not drunk,” I lied haughtily on a toss of my head.

  “Bullshit.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him declaring, “I dislike this word.”

  He continued to appear amused. “I get it you think you can rule the world with a flash of those gorgeous blues, a pout on that pretty mouth and a pissed-off look, baby, and there are men who’d likely break their backs to cater to your every whim. I’m just not one of those who falls for that shit.” He leaned in mock-suggestively. “I do it the other way around, minus the pouting and pissed off parts.”

  I pressed his way. “You do flirt.”

  He shrugged, clearly continuing to be entertained—by me—and not hiding it.

  “It’s just me.”

  There was a time when I’d wish he would. When I would play with Noctorno Hawthorne in ways we’d both like.

  Those times were dead for me.

  Forever.

  I wrapped my fingers around my mostly-drunk glass of whiskey on the table, turned to face the fire, sat back and emptied its contents down my throat.

  “Hey,” he called.

  I allowed only my eyes to slide his way.

  “Just messin’ with you, sweetheart,” he explained.

  I looked back to the fire and decided, with all that I’d already given him, there was no reason to stop doing it.

  With this man, one of only two I’d ever met, it would cause no harm.

  Therefore, I shared, “I miss him.”

  “Bet you do,” he said gently.

  “Their deaths were too quick,” I declared, speaking of Minerva, Edith, Helda, the witches who had all deservedly perished that day.

  The witches who had taken my Antoine from me and then treated him to a slow, agonizing death.

  “Mm-hmm,” he murmured soothingly.

  “But it’s over,” I concluded.

  “That’s the rub, am I right?”

  I turned my head to give my attention to Noctorno. “The rub?”

  “Without vengeance to concentrate on…”

  I understood him even if he left it at that, and I shifted my gaze back to the fire.

  “Got all night, Franka,” he told me. “Goin’ to Apollo and Maddie’s wedding in a few days, hangin’ here, taking some time to be in a place not a lot of people from my world could hit for a vacation. So if you want me to pull the cord and get us more whiskey, just say the word.”

  He was kind.

  Too kind.

  “I wish for the bread and lovely cheese I consumed earlier to remain in my stomach, not be expressed onto the carpet,” I told him.

  “Think that’s a good plan,” he muttered.

  I set my glass on the table and pushed out of my seat, looking down at him.

  “I should find my bed and allow you to find yours.”

  He stood too, putting him nearly toe to toe with me.

  I was a tall woman, unusually tall for this world, and I found myself wondering if it was the same in his.

  But he towered over me.

  Suddenly, and in a strange way I found oddly enjoyable, I felt delicate.

  Vulnerable.

  He was closer than he’d been to Circe in the doorway to her bedchamber.

  Thus he could easily lift his hand and sweep his thumb along my jaw.

  “You gonna sleep?” he asked quietly, and I tore thoughts of his thumb on my jaw out of my mind, now feeling no joy but deep guilt for a disloyal thought so soon after I’d lost Antoine.

  “Since I haven’t done that well since he was taken, I doubt tonight will be any different, regardless of the whiskey,” I answered.

  “They got things you can take here, you know, that help you with that?” he asked.

  “Are you referring to sleeping draughts?” I inquired.

  “Probably,” he answered.

  “Yes,” I said on a succinct nod. “However, I avoid them. There are those who use them who become dependent on them. I don’t wish to hazard that.”

  “Good call, Franka. But one night? A couple?” He leaned infinitesimally closer. “I can see it in your eyes, babe, the shadows under them. I can see exactly how much you haven’t been sleeping. Pull the cord, sweetheart. Get someone to bring you some. Get some good sleep. Yeah?”

  Why he ended his statement with a “Yeah?” (another form of “yes” from his world) as if he was asking for my agreement when he’d uttered a command right before that (I gentle one, but one nonetheless), I had no idea.

  What I did know was that my head was swimming from the drink, lack of sleep, the activities of the day, and regardless that I knew I wouldn’t sleep, I was exhausted and had been exhausted, down to my bones, for months.

  Further, I’d spent far too long in his intoxicating company already.

  So I agreed by lying, “I’ll pull the cord, Noctorno.”

  “Noc, babe,” he corrected.

  “Of course,” I murmured.

  “You want, I’m around, you’re still around the next couple of days, I’ll teach you Tetris,” he offered.

  I wanted to learn Tetris even though I had no idea what it was. I wanted him to show me everything his gadget could do.

  I wanted to be in his soothing company where no games were played.

  Where it was just him and me.

  “I’ll be leaving imminently.”

  He studied my face, sobered and nodded.

  Inebriated or not, my mask was back in place, and Noctorno didn’t miss it.

  “I’ll bid you goodnight,” I said crisply, stepping back, dipping my chin into my neck and buckling my knees in a slight curtsy.

  A slight curtsy.

  To a commoner.

  What was becoming of me?

  “’Night, Franka.”

  I should thank him for the evening. Thank him for the words he said. Thank him for spending time with me when he could be with others that were better company.

  I didn’t do that.

  I rose to my full height, gave myself the gift of one last look in his eyes, turned and swept from the room.

  * * * * *

  Once in the bed in said room I tossed.

  And I turned.

  Leaving my trusted lady’s maid to her own slumber, I eventually got up and pulled the cord.


  A servant brought me a sleeping draught.

  It took some time to work.

  But once I fell asleep, I slept for twelve hours.

  Chapter Two

  There Are No Such Things as Heroes

  Franka

  The next afternoon, following one of the royal guards, I strode sedately down the halls toward the queen’s study.

  I’d been summoned.

  I’d had my bath, my hair arranged, my personal lady’s maid, Josette, working miracles (as she normally did) doing the work of three maids quietly with no complaint and great talent.

  I had never told her this, of course. Though I did pay her wages and they were more than others in her position, so I suspected she knew.

  If I saw him again, I would also not tell Noctorno that I took his advice about the sleeping draught and now felt more refreshed than I had in months.

  Further, I would not tell him that our conversation of the evening before had been most helpful.

  It had not alleviated the pain or the guilt. However, it offered me ways to cope with, at least, the latter.

  I had no idea why the queen was summoning me, but I hoped whatever it was didn’t take too long. I’d had no food since my bread and cheese (and wine and whiskey) of the night before, and for the first time since Antoine was taken, I was famished.

  I also needed quiet and concentration to plan my next steps, those being the ones I took after I visited Kristian to make certain he was healthy and well.

  I followed the guard down the hallway thinking all of this as well as the fact I wished to be away from the Winter Palace as soon as I could.

  I thought this because I simply wished to be away as soon as I could. It was never safe for me in Lunwyn. Every visit there was a risk.

  But also, with the windows being boarded, no natural light could come in, and it made the Winter Palace, a normally beautiful dwelling, eerie in a way I did not like.

  The guard stopped at the closed door to the queen’s study, rapped on it sharply with his knuckles, waited for the command of, “Come,” and I felt my lips curl with suppressed delight.

  No queen had ever ruled Lunwyn.

  Nor Hawkvale.

  Nor Fleuridia or the city-state of Bellebryn. And certainly not any of the savage nations of the Southlands—Korwahk, Keenhak and Maroo.