It was no surprise he’d made little headway. Not only Franka’s history would inhibit things moving forward, she’d lost a lover in a dramatically sad way.
There were many wounds Franka Drakkar needed healed but only some of them Noc could assist in this effort.
The loss of her lover she’d have to come to terms with on her own.
Suddenly, Valentine tipped her head to the side as she felt it. Within seconds, the room turned green. Not Valentine’s green, which shaded emerald to jade. No, Lavinia’s green. The green of Lavinia’s goddess of the other world, Alabasta, which was the color of a fertile meadow.
Every witch with any amount of power had their own color.
It represented their soul.
Thus Lavinia’s was fresh and nurturing.
And Valentine’s was rich and precious.
Valentine directed her eyes to the vortex forming and watched Lavinia appear.
“My friend,” Lavinia greeted when her feet were planted on Valentine’s priceless Persian rug.
“It’s late,” Valentine replied.
Lavinia, accustomed to Valentine, took no offense at her reply and smiled but looked to the sphere on the table.
Her eyes moved back to Valentine.
“The knight of your world is making progress,” she noted.
Valentine swept a hand to her crystal ball.
“This, I’ve noticed,” she drawled.
Lavinia nodded. “What you may not have noticed is that her mother’s magic was revealed, but Franka’s was not. We both felt the swell of it that terrible night some days ago, but she has not come forward as a witch. No one else is aware of it, save perhaps Noctorno. This concerns me.”
“She’s coping with a good deal, Lavinia, perhaps you’ll give her more than a few days,” Valentine suggested.
“It’s my duty to my country to share that I hold this knowledge, my friend,” Lavinia replied.
Valentine sighed a delicate, displeased sigh.
“It would be nice if you would come,” Lavinia urged. “I do think she’s of your…” her friend’s lips tipped up, “kind, and you will speak well together.” Her voice dipped quieter. “In times such as these, she may need something just as that.”
“I’ll return,” Valentine replied.
Lavinia nodded. She knew if Valentine said she would be there, she would be there.
Unfortunately, Lavinia knew Valentine would be there because she cared.
“You came to my world just for this?” Valentine asked.
Lavinia looked through the dark room but shook her head doing it, stating, “I was curious.”
“Do be curious at another time,” she invited. “When it’s not the dead of night and I don’t have a lovely body, not mine, obviously, currently warming my bed.”
Lavinia eyed Valentine. “Now I see why you returned home.”
Valentine shook her head. “You see nothing. He’s just a body. A trifle. A useful one, but only that.”
Lavinia eyed her far more closely. “No one is just a body, Valentine.”
“He is,” Valentine sniffed.
“Have you had another who meant more?” Lavinia asked.
“Ah,” Valentine breathed out. “I see you’ve come in the middle of the night not only because you were curious, but to discuss my love life, which means you’re not simply curious. You’re nosy.”
“It’s morn in my world,” Lavinia reminded her.
“I do know that, chérie,” Valentine sighed.
“I know you know. I also know you didn’t answer my question,” Lavinia pressed.
“When the time comes, I’ll choose a man to make me round with a daughter. But even then he’ll just be a body, though he’ll also be his seed, so rest assured, I’ll select him with great care.”
“That’s wretched,” Lavinia said gently.
Valentine lifted her brows in surprise. “You wish to be tangled up in a relationship?”
“I’ve lived a life where I was quite content with my own company. But I must say, watching Finnie and Frey, Maddie and Apollo…”
“That was about magic. And destiny,” Valentine eschewed.
“All love has its own magic,” Lavinia returned, her eyes sliding toward the door, her words the truth, of course, with caveats. “Even love that doesn’t span universes.”
“It also can be used for ill, if turned into a weapon,” Valentine retorted. “And this happens often, in both worlds.”
Lavinia returned her gaze to her friend.
“Quite right, my dear,” she whispered. “Odd, we seem to have this conversation often. With varying results. This suggests love is foremost on our minds most of the time. Including yours.”
Valentine didn’t deign to reply.
“You must come soon,” Lavinia urged, wisely changing the subject. “I’ve only visited with Franka once, and I didn’t know her before, but from what I knew of her, she’s much changed, though I think she’s discomfited by it.”
Valentine knew very well how that felt.
Lavinia spoke on. “Not to mention, when I’m with the others, they speak of her already not simply with compassion for what she’s endured, but with humor and even growing affection.”
This, Valentine had seen in her crystal, finding herself looking on…happily, doing so hoping it would continue.
“I’ll be there,” Valentine replied.
She then wondered when she started hoping about anything.
Caring and hoping.
How vile. Both were so very vulgar.
“Until we meet in my world,” Lavinia called, and Valentine watched as she faded away.
With an agitated gesture, Valentine shook her sleek red hair out of her face and looked back to her crystal. She lifted a hand and trailed her fingers over it, searching, and she found someone she’d discovered some days ago when she’d decided that meddling with Franka and Noc would not be enough.
There was another.
And as she watched the large man go about the business of sleeping in his own bed, her jaw set and she trailed her fingers over the crystal again.
The smoke vanished.
There she went, caring about someone else.
And worse, doing something about it.
Valentine Rousseau rarely expended effort on anything someone didn’t compensate her for, except, of course, one of her trifles.
She definitely expended effort on her trifles.
Her thoughts moved to what she’d just seen in her crystal and she was pleased in this world, as in the other, he was such a fine specimen. A plaything such as him would be—Valentine drew in a wistful breath—delicious.
Alas, such as him, she had found, didn’t tend to like the way Valentine played.
He would be perfect for his intended.
An intended he didn’t know he had (yet). And that intended had no idea what Valentine had planned for her future.
A warm curl swirled in her belly.
Valentine sighed yet again as she shook off her uncharacteristically soft, romantic thoughts.
She was losing her touch.
She needed to find it again.
To do that, her thoughts moved to the young, naked, firm, male form asleep in her bed, and in the dark, Valentine smiled her cat’s smile.
She walked back to her bedroom, went to the nightstand, opened it and took out a box of matches. She struck one and lit the three candles on the night table.
She brought the match to her lips, blew out its flame and touched the glowing ember against her tongue where it sizzled.
She dropped it to the nightstand with a small smile curving her lips.
She then tossed the matchbox back into the drawer and closed it.
And then Valentine turned with languid but definitive purpose to the form in the bed.
* * * * *
Franka
I walked down the front steps of the Winter Palace somewhat stiffly, but I managed it, hoping I hid the stiffness by twitc
hing my fur cloak closer around me.
That stiffness became more pronounced when I saw what awaited me at the bottom of the steps.
I was headed to the jail to see my parents.
Noc had told me he’d be accompanying me.
However, at the bottom of the steps, milling about at the side of not my sleigh but one of the queen’s sumptuously-appointed royal sleighs, stood not only Noc but also Finnie, Frey, Circe, Lahn, Cora and the Noctorno of my world (who allowed those close to him to call him Tor, something he invited I do at my command attendance at dinner last night with the lot of them and the queen).
What, by the gods, were they all doing there?
No.
No.
I didn’t care.
In my estimation from the message delivered by the bird my brother sent sharing when they’d left his home, Kristian and his family would arrive at the Winter Palace on the morrow.
It had been nine days since the drama in the buttery. Due to a physician’s care (and Josette’s), my back still ached, but it was healing far more rapidly than normal.
Noc and the rest had not ceased being friendly and sociable in this time. In fact, the more I was able to get up and about, the friendlier and more sociable they became.
This didn’t matter to me.
I wanted this final visit with my parents done and behind me. I wanted to see my brother. After that, Josette and I (and whatever maid she selected to accompany us, the task of finding said maid something Josette had thrown herself into with abandoned glee) were off to cross the Green Sea.
Therefore, whatever befell me at this present moment, and the next, and the next, I would endure.
Until I was away.
Perhaps the others were preparing to go into town. There were two royal sleighs waiting and a variety of horses.
That was likely it.
But due to the fact that they were friendly and sociable, for whatever reason traits like that made you behave in ways like this, they were milling about waiting to see Noc and I off.
Noc noticed me making my descent, and not surprisingly he broke off from chatting with Cora and Tor and jogged up the steps toward me.
“How you doin’, sweetheart?” he asked, his face a picture of concern, his hand capturing mine, and before I could pull it free he tucked my fingers around the inside of his elbow, drew me close to his side, kept his fingers snug around mine in a way I could not escape, and thus he assisted me down the steps.
“How I’m doing is being quite capable of descending a flight of steps on my own,” I replied.
“I’ll take that sass as you doin’ good,” he muttered.
I had learned from the very beginning that Noc decided to take whatever I said in whatever manner he wished to take it.
Hence in response I simply sighed.
Noc led us to the side of the sleigh where Cora and Tor were standing, and I noted Frey ceased speaking with Finnie, Lahn and Circe and came our way.
We stopped by the sleigh and Frey stopped at our grouping.
He was looking down on me with the same concern Noc showed.
“You’re certain you wish to do this, Franka?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” I answered.
He studied me a moment before he nodded once and declared, “We’ll be there with you in case something upsetting happens.”
At his words, I felt my body jolt and knew the extent of recovery in my back for I only felt a vague twinge of pain.
“I…sorry?” I asked.
Frey indicated the assemblage with a sweep of his proud head, which now included Circe, Lahn and Finnie, all of whom had joined us, before he repeated, “We’ll all be with you in case something upsetting happens.”
Dear goddess.
They were going to the jail with me.
But…
Why?
“That isn’t necessary,” I stated swiftly.
“A sister has a sister’s back,” Cora decreed. “And a sister’s man has her back.”
I looked to her. “Rest assured I mean no offense, princess, but we aren’t sisters.”
“We totally are,” she returned.
“But…” I felt my brow furrow. “Are you, that is to say, is the other me your sister in your world?”
I heard Noc chuckle and saw grins and smiles all around while Cora answered (through her own grin), “No, babe. What I’m saying is, we’re both chicks and all chicks are sisters, blood or not. And we have to look out for each other.”
How peculiar. She, too, used these slang words “babe” and “chick” to refer to her own gender.
Mad.
And women looking out for women?
That wasn’t mad. It was delusional.
It was my experience (and not experience due to my participation in such vulgar goings-on, they were so vulgar, they were even beneath me) most women, at least women of my ilk, didn’t look out for each other.
They seduced one another’s men and uttered cruel things about clothing, hairstyles, excess of weight or not enough of it, not to mention honing in on and dissecting with malicious glee anything else that might be perceived as a weakness or unattractive. Or they would harp on it to make it seem unattractive (mostly due to jealousy or spite). The sound of a voice. An ungainly talent at a dance. A gaucheness with social discourse.
These were not the cuts I had once relished, and not because it was all too easy.
Mostly because if a woman had a man, it was lower than low to set your sights on him. And tearing apart anyone for things they could not control wasn’t sport. It was simply vicious.
But I’d lived my life with women behaving in this manner. Josette had even shared tidbits of female servants doing the same.
Three women giving up a morning where they could be at their leisure to do anything they wished in order to accompany me to a bloody jail just in case I got upset?
Unheard of!
“There’s really no need,” I persisted. “I’ll only be there a short while.”
“There’s a need,” Circe put in.
“Absolutely a need,” Finnie agreed.
I didn’t understand this.
However, this discussion was prolonging a situation that I’d like to see done. Precisely getting in the sleigh, getting to the jail, seeing my parents and returning to the palace.
So I gave in, murmuring, “As you wish,” pulled free of Noc and turned to the sleigh.
I felt movement around me as Noc reached in front of me to open the door to the open-topped sleigh. I also felt his hand at my hip steadying me as if I couldn’t climb into a bloody sleigh on my own, something I’d been doing since I’d gained control of my legs and feet.
I clenched my teeth in frustration, attempted to ignore his touch, which was firm enough that I felt it even through my furs, my gown and my warm undergarments, and found my seat.
Noc found his beside me and Cora had entered the sleigh and was settling beside him.
I didn’t stoop to looking around to see where the others had gone. I simply grabbed the fur throw that was at the ready for us on the floor of the sleigh to pull over my lap. It was large and long and while I did this, Noc adjusted it over his lap as Cora did the same.
All of us tucked in the sleigh together like bosom buddies on a jaunt (laughable), Noc reached forward to take hold of the reins secured before him.
I looked at the four horses attached to the sleigh.
For the horse’s sake, two was optimal to share a load, even on a long distance ride.
Four to sledge through town was ludicrous.
Unless you were a royal.
And since Cora was, I supposed it wasn’t outlandish.
What surprised me was that Noc took the reins when I was relatively certain that the other men mounted steeds.
I turned to him and asked, “Do you not ride?”
I heard him click his teeth and watched him snap the straps, lurched with the forward movement of the sleigh, and then saw
him look down at me.
“Ride?” he asked.
“A mount,” I explained.
“Not much of that kind of riding in my world, babe,” he stated, and I felt myself blink in surprise. “Though I do ride, just not a horse. A hawg. As in a Harley.”
Cora piped in at this juncture.
“You have a Harley?”
Noc looked to his other side. “Yeah.”
“Wow. Cool. Wish I’d gotten a ride with you before I had to leave our world,” she remarked.
“Didn’t get to get on it much in Seattle,” Noc remarked. “Figure that’ll change in NOLA. Least I hope so.”
I heard this conversation but I was still back where it started.
“You ride a pig?” I asked with disbelief.
Both Noc and Cora’s attention came to me and they stared at me mutely for a second before they both burst out laughing.
Well.
How rude.
I looked forward.
“Not laughin’ at you, sweetheart,” Noc said gently, through laughter that was, indeed, at me. “But you were bein’ funny. We’re talkin’ about motorcycles. You don’t have them here. We have automotive vehicles powered by gas. Move on wheels called tires. No animals needed. They go a lot faster. Most of them are enclosed, but not bikes, what motorcycles are sometimes referred to as, a brand of which is Harleys. That’s what I’ve got. Those have two wheels, not four, and are open to the elements. You ride them kinda like a horse, except they’re motor-powered.”
“Interesting,” I said like it was not.
However, it was.
What kinds of machines would these be, no animals needed? They seemed implausible and fanciful, just like what he’d shown me that first night we spoke—his “phone.”
And yet that was real.
I had often thought of his gadgetry since, in the rare alone times I’d had, wishing I’d taken hold of it, inspected it, tested its magic.
Animal-less “vehicles” powered by gas I would adore the opportunity of seeing.
“It’s cute, you not getting it,” Noc went on to explain, noting my continued mood (as he always did, he just often chose to ignore it). “If you went to our world, you’d understand it.”
I did not share that I’d be quite interested in going to his world and seeing these fantastical contraptions at work.
I also did not share that it was not cute to laugh at someone who was ignorant about something for reasons not in their control.