Midnight Soul (6 page)

“As you said, Noctorno,” I spoke haughtily,
looking right in his eyes as I kept moving toward the door, “there
are no such things as heroes.”

Except
, I thought but did not say,
you
.

And with that, I pulled my gaze from his,
kept my head lifted and swept out of the room.

* * * * *

Valentine

“She is not a good person,” Lavinia
declared.

“Mm…” Valentine murmured, her attention aimed
at the large sphere sitting on its emerald-green velvet pillow on
the table between Valentine and her fellow witch.

“I can understand your fascination with her,
my friend, she’s quite fascinating. As a snake lying coiled in the
sun would be fascinating. But get too close, the snake
strikes.”

Valentine lifted her hand to her crystal
ball, twisted her wrist and skimmed the blood-red tips of her
fingers across the cool glass.

The image in it of Franka Drakkar walking
with head held high from the queen’s study drifted away in a mist
of green smoke.

She looked up to Lavinia.

“There’s more to that one,” she stated.

“I’m uncertain you wish to discover it,”
Lavinia returned.

Valentine wasn’t uncertain.

“Perhaps you forget,” Valentine returned,
“the rose grows amongst thorns.”

“This is true,” Lavinia retorted, “and I have
not had any direct dealings with the woman, but I’ve heard much. So
much, it indicates not only is Franka Drakkar a thorn, her
particular thorn is dipped in poison.”

Valentine studied her friend and wondered if
she didn’t sense it.

Lavinia was nowhere near as powerful as
Valentine was.

However, she held great power. She should be
able to sense it.

Where she sat across from Lavinia in the warm
comfort of her rooms in the palace, she asked, “Do you not sense
it?”

“I sense it,” Lavinia replied.

As Valentine thought.

“Unusual in your world, no?” Valentine
asked.

“Unusual and unlawful,” Lavinia replied
shortly.

Yes, from what Valentine had learned, it
was.

Intriguing.

Valentine’s gaze drifted back to her crystal
as she purred, “Hmm…”

“The only reason I like that look on your
face, Valentine, is because I sense your interest in Franka Drakkar
will mean you will not leave our world as you’d planned after
Apollo and Maddie’s wedding. I enjoy your company. Over the last
months, I prayed to the gods our troubles would end without too
much destruction and heartache. But with the fondness I hold for
you, I still faced the end of those troubles with a heavy heart for
I knew it would take you away, for there would no longer be any
reason for you to come back. Therefore, even if the reason you’d
stay, or return, is Franka Drakkar, I’ll take it.”

Valentine nodded, touched in spite of herself
at Lavinia’s words.

Valentine made a habit of not connecting with
mere mortals. Not that she was a goddess, but she was also no mere
mortal. This, a habit she’d broken of late, precisely when she’d
started dabbling in travel between the worlds, her own and the
women she’d brought here.

“No, indeed, I do believe things will
continue to be interesting in this world,” she raised her eyes to
Lavinia. “The
good
kind of interesting this time.”

Lavinia shook her head, a smile playing at
her mouth, and Valentine knew if she didn’t feel it was beneath
her, she would have rolled her eyes.

Valentine felt her lips curl at her friend’s
reaction, but her thoughts strayed.

There had been much that had happened over
the last years in this universe. It took a great deal of attention.
So it wasn’t a surprise that the few people she knew in this world,
most of them quite clever, had not taken the time to scratch under
the surface of Franka Drakkar.

The truth of the matter was Valentine would
have been interested in her even if she was as vile as they all
thought she was.

In this world, much more than Valentine’s own
(even though it was still prevalent in her own, irritatingly), a
woman had very little power.

In this world, she had to rely solely on her
cunning and wits, her looks, her sexuality, anything at her
disposal, in order to get what she needed, grasp hold of what she
wanted, wield as much power as she could amass.

These were not weak weapons in any arsenal, a
woman’s or a man’s.

It was just, for some reason Valentine didn’t
understand, the organ swinging between a man’s legs put him at an
advantage.

In this world, where wars were still fought
with swords, bows and arrows, it was understandable physical
strength was valued.

Understandable but still unacceptable, as the
successful reign of Queen Aurora would attest.

And from what Valentine knew, Franka Drakkar
enjoyed a good life with no paid occupation, traveling the
Northlands, flitting from ball to ball in fine dresses, wreaking
havoc as sport as she injected her venom, her aim so true there
were many who actually feared her.

Yes, Valentine found Franka Drakkar very
interesting.

She had business to attend to, amongst other,
more intimate needs to be met, at home. Those intimate needs she
hadn’t seen to in a long time.

She needed to return to New Orleans, see to
that business, then spirit back for the wedding.

She was in the mood to do a little
scratching, dig beneath the surface.

And it was what lay under the skin of Franka
Drakkar that she wished to discover.

* * * * *

Noc

“You’re brooding.”

“I’m not brooding.”

“You’re totally brooding.”

“Who even
says
brooding?”

“They do here.”

Noc scowled at Cora.

Princess Cora, to be precise. Her twin was an
evil one, and now a dead one, a casualty of yesterday’s dramas, and
not a big loss.

Her body had been spirited to her parents in
Hawkvale.

Fucking
spirited
.

Apparently they grieved.

But they were the only ones.

Jesus, this place was fucking crazy.

It was also crazy interesting.

But it was still fucking crazy.

The woman sitting next to him had to
seriously love her man to give up their world to live in what
seemed to Noc like a Renaissance Festival run amuck. A really good
one. But with all that snow outside, a really
cold
one.

Though Cora had told him Bellebryn, where she
lived, was much farther south and had a different climate.

“We have weather like Florida. Cool winters,
warm summers, sunshiny days,” she’d said then shot him a huge
smile. “Without the humidity, which makes it totally perfect.”

Noc shook himself out of his thoughts and
carried on the conversation.

“She’s not that girl,” he stated as to the
reason of why he was “brooding.”

Cora’s beautiful face got even more beautiful
when she openly showed her concern.

“I don’t know her, but from what Frey and
Apollo say, she is, as in she
really
is,” she replied. “And
Maddie told me the story of what she’d said to her, right to her
face, and, Noc, it was
not
nice.”

“It’s an act, Cora. All a big show,” he told
her.

“Maybe so, but if it is, from what I’ve
heard, it’s a good one.” She leaned his way where she was sitting
beside him at the dinner table. “And Noc, okay, she helped save the
world. That was a big deal. But Frey explained to you what they
gave her in the queen’s study. In our world value, it’s worth
millions.” She leaned closer. “Maybe even billions. No joke.”

“She put her ass on the line, babe,” he
returned. “And maybe she needs it.”

“Perhaps the furs, some coin.” She shook her
head, moving away and tipping her eyes back to her plate. “But all
that?” She kept shaking her head, speared a buttered, herbed new
potato and looked back at him. “She’s a member of a House. In
Lunwyn, they take care of each other in aristocratic families.
She’ll have an allowance. And that allowance will be handsome. You
can’t know this, but her clothes are of superb quality. She clearly
has more than one maid, the way she’s tended to. She wasn’t hurting
before. Her taking all that, well, I don’t need to know her to know
it’s greedy, Noc.”

“I’m a cop, Cora, I read people for a living.
And I’m tellin’ you, that woman who walked into that room today is
not the woman that woman is.”

“I know,” she muttered, lifting the potato to
her mouth. “You told us all that before she showed.”

She ate the potato, and Noc looked to his own
plate to spear one too because this world might be crazy, but they
had great food, and he didn’t know how those potatoes were made,
but they fucking rocked.

“Maybe she was, I don’t know…playing you,”
Cora suggested softly.

Noc turned his eyes to her. “I don’t get
played.”

“From what I hear, she’s a master.”

“I don’t get played,” he repeated.

“Okay, then maybe she’s more likeable when
she’s drunk,” Cora tried.

Noc chewed and swallowed his potato then
turned fully to the gorgeous princess at his side, his dinner
partner, as Cora explained, something that was important in any
seating arrangement in this world.

Crazy.

“There’s more to that woman than meets the
eye,” he stated.

Her head twitched. “Are you…I mean, I
thought…uh, well, you know, you and Circe seem like…are you…do
you…?”

He put her out of her misery by sharing,
“Circe and me, that was what it was, and what it was was between
us. She’s an amazing woman. We’ll keep in touch when we go back to
our world. But she doesn’t want that and I’m not looking for it
either. We both knew that going in. We both knew what we wanted
going in. We both got that. And that part’s done.”

“I don’t actually get any of that,” she
admitted.

Noc gave her a grin that he hoped took any
sting out of his next words. “Not yours to get, babe. That’s what
I’m tryin’ to say.”

“Right,” she replied.

“And straight up, different time, different
world, I’d be into Franka,” he glanced up at Cora’s phenomenal,
thick, shining, dark-brown hair, looked back to her and winked.
“She’s my type.”

And she was.

He’d dated gold, and Circe was a blonde.

But he knew the one he’d pick in the end
would be a brunette.

Cora had great hair, but Franka’s was even
more thick and shining and a deeper, richer brown.

Not to mention the woman’s eyes were fucking
amazing. That deep blue. Goddamned gorgeous.

She also had a beautiful neck.

No, not beautiful.

Slim.

Delicate.

Elegant.

But it was her mouth that drew him. She was
what a cosmetic surgeon would use to create a million different
sets of lips. Pink. Full. They looked soft, even pillowy.

Noc had to admit it’d suck, leaving this
world and not being able to put his mouth to those lips.

But he was not going to kiss those lips.

He wasn’t about to get in deep with a woman
from this world and he knew himself; the way she looked, her
manner, the way she was both before and after they got drunk last
night, she’d draw him in.

But he’d already done that and it got his ass
in a sling in a variety of ways, including him being magicked to a
parallel universe, dropped onto some remote island in order to face
down three witches who wanted to take over the world and wouldn’t
have hesitated to wave their wands or snap their fingers (or
whatever witches did) and waste him like blowing out a match.

He wasn’t going to go there with Franka.

That was why he knew they were all wrong
about her.

It wasn’t her playing him. It wasn’t her
being drunk.

It was that she loved the man who’d been
killed by those witches and she’d done it deeply.

The woman they all described didn’t feel
anything deep, except for herself.

But the pain behind those blue eyes of hers,
she could try to hide it, but it was so immense, that was
impossible.

The thing was, Noc didn’t get why he cared so
much what they thought.

They’d talked about how much they were giving
her, doing this way overkill because they wanted rid of her for
good and sneered at the fact she’d take it.

He’d told them she wouldn’t, and the way
they’d been when they disagreed was not ugly or mean, just
definite.

Then she’d taken it.

He was not that guy who always had to be
right and he’d only spent a few hours with the woman.

But he’d felt like she’d personally slapped
him in the face when she’d accepted all that treasure from Queen
Aurora. He’d been certain, and shared it with Frey and Apollo,
after their time drinking whiskey, after she’d admitted how she
felt guilt about what she’d done to betray her country, she’d
decline.

He didn’t feel like the asshole who had lost
a bet. That moron who was in the position to take the hit of
I
told you so
.

He’d felt like she’d betrayed
him
by
not being who he was certain she was by doing what he was sure she
wouldn’t do.

All of this meant it was probably good she
was leaving tomorrow.

First, she needed to get away from folks who
didn’t like her and didn’t mind in the slightest sharing that with
her. No one needed that.

And second, Noc needed her away from him.

He was going to go to Apollo and Maddie’s
wedding.

After that, he was going to sail with Frey
and Finnie as they took Cora and Tor back to Bellebryn.

When they’d offered him his own chests of
jewels and gold, he’d bartered instead for that. A few months in
this world, taking it in, seeing as much of it as he could see.

Before he’d come here, discussing his
involvement with Valentine, he’d already put in notice at work.