22. Midnight
Midnight
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” Noec said, pausing to look out at the lamp-lit courtyard. He pointed across toward a high-up window. “I used to live right there in the guest rooms. Just for a few weeks, until Elia and Heron could take me in. That’s when Nia and I became friends.”
Flora looked up at the shadowed facade, interested, though she was hesitant to speak, hopeful that silence would coax out more of his story. He had been quiet for the past hour since the news of the village. Impressively, he seemed to be holding it together better than Heron.
After a while, Noec met her expectant stare. She looked out, then back at him. He looked out, then back at her. They both huffed, realizing that they were playing the same stupid game.
“I hardly remember life before I met you,” Flora conceded softly.
Noec let out a quiet chuckle, his warmth easing the stillness. “I do,” he replied. “It wasn’t half as fun.” He pressed a gentle kiss to her hand, one that left her heart fluttering.
Noec looked up to her, eyes reflecting the dim light of the streetlamps. Gently, he said, “Elia... she told you about my parents, didn’t she?”
Flora felt suddenly as though she had been caught. “I... yes. I’m sorry. I should’ve allowed you your privacy.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry,” Noec sighed, looking down at her hands as he took them in his. “You’re my best friend. It should’ve come from me. A long time ago.”
Flora studied him thoughtfully, absent of a worthy reply. She could finally make sense of the trauma hidden in his eyes. It was the warmth, the sweetness, the optimism that she still couldn’t explain.
“I just... didn’t want you to see me any differently,” he continued, his gaze breaking from hers nervously. “I didn’t want you to see me as broken.”
“I’ve never believed that anything could break you,” Flora replied. “You’re the strongest person I know.”
He sighed, blushed, and turned away, though she swore she caught a glint of a smile on his lips. Quiet, he interlocked his fingers with hers as they leaned against the stone railing and looked out. “You have to know I think the same of you,” he said softly.
The silence was broken only by the gentle tumbling of liquid in the fountain below. Flora looked down to where Romeo’s body, now decayed entirely, had just been earlier that day. She wondered if Davy was doing okay, or if the madness had already consumed him entirely. She missed her bodyguard.
Flora herself could never quite learn to whistle, but Noec whistled as they walked down the stairs towards the prison.
From Noec’s lips came a bird-like vibrato, an impressive music that had always captivated her with both jealousy and wonder.
Its sound echoed gently through the stone stairways and hallways.
Noec slowed to a stop by the last long and narrow window before going underground. He looked out at the twinkling sky, only decorated by a handful of wispy, shadowed clouds. Even as the sky was falling around him, he could look out and wonder at the stars—and whistle.
Whatever song he had made up in his head, it lingered on in hers long after he had stopped. She watched him as he watched the sky, and the music played on.
Grease was waiting for them with a key at the cellar door. There were muffled noises behind the chipping wood of the door.
“You’re sure you want to see him?” Grease asked Flora. “You’re sure you can handle this?”
“I’ve seen it before,” Flora assured him. “And I need him to know that he’s not alone.”
Noec squeezed her hand as they descended the final set of stairs. The muffled cries were growing louder, and the coarse groans of a scythe were becoming audible.
They passed through an office before entering the prison, where Aria sat at a candle-lit desk taking notes on the specimen across from her.
Aria’s makeshift office was situated inside an old prison cell—surprisingly spacious, isolated from the others, and absent of a door.
A harsh, guttural cry rumbled from the corridor beyond, though Aria seemed too focused to notice.
Grease led them past, toward the dark corridor.
“Be careful.”
Grease glanced back, meeting the warning in Aria’s eyes as she peered above her glasses. He nodded his acknowledgement and tapped the hilt of his blade.
The tap of Grease’s shoes led them through the dark corridor, where whispers tangled with the hollow clang of cell bars. He twirled his keys once, then stopped and knocked on the cell to his left.
“Hey bluebird,” he prompted. “Nice to see you’re still chirping.”
“Flora... we should go,” Noec said, tightening his grip on her hand as he stopped walking with her. “This was a mistake.”
There, to their left, a young man mumbled to himself, sweat dripping from his dark brown hair as he gripped his shins and rocked.
“Florabean?” Davy asked, his rocking coming to an abrupt stop. “Bean, is that you?”
“I’m here, Davy,” Flora said, wrapping her hand around the rusty iron bar as she peered into the dim cell. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Suddenly, the trembling figure rushed for the door of the cell, bursting into a flurry of smoldering shadow. Flora barely withdrew her hands before a blue-eyed beast rammed into the bars, teeth gnashing against metal. With the bulk and bite of a grizzly bear, it peeled its lips and snarled.
Then, it locked eyes with Flora—and went still, like a predator bracing to lurch.
Noec pulled Flora back sharply, and Grease cautiously drew his sword.
“You did this,” the creature muttered, eyes shifting wildly upon Flora.
“You brought me here.” There was a low snarl behind Davy’s voice as it continued, “Now, I’m going to either kill myself down here like the others, or kill myself fighting for these people who mean nothing to me.
” He stepped back and paced slowly along the cell door.
“What are you going to say, bean?” he said through a rumbling hiss.
“What are you going to say to Mom and Dad, knowing that they’ll never see me again, not with my eyes open? ”
“Enough,” Noec’s command echoed through the prison, his voice rough and guttural with the unearthly edge of his scythe form. Davy’s demon was shocked into a fleeting silence. “You will wait out your curse like all the others,” Noec said.
The brown polychrome smiled a sharp, jagged smile and growled as Noec tugged Flora towards the exit.
As they rushed by, Flora recognized the young woman who had approached them in search of Aria’s medicine.
She had been so frail that even the strain of standing had left her trembling.
Now, her once fragile form darted erratically from wall to wall within the confines of the cage.
Her bony fingers, trembling with unnatural energy, curled tightly around the cold bars of the door.
Her wide, feverish eyes tracked Flora’s every movement, brimming with a strange, almost manic excitement as she passed by.
“Never should’ve come here,” Noec said, the acerbity still sharp on his tongue. “We should’ve known better—I should’ve known better.” He pulled her harshly as they reached the end of the corridor. “What was I thinking?”
“Bye, bean,” Flora heard a voice call after them, sounding more like her brother than the creature that haunted his shadow. Flora glanced back into the darkness as fragments of ash settled to the ground beside his cell. “Love you.”
Aria looked up from her station with one raised brow as they passed through her makeshift new office.
Flora’s inhale shuddered, and she blinked quickly as the door latched behind them. They said nothing as they climbed the stairs back towards the guest rooms. Blindly, Flora followed Noec’s shadow down sets of tall, empty hallways as her vision seemed to narrow.
“Heron and I will stay here,” Noec said dryly.
His voice was a fracture in the harsh stillness as he paused in front of an elegant red door.
His hand rested on the golden handle, though he made no move to open it.
“That room is for you,” he added, motioning to the door across the hall without looking back.
His gaze lingered on the red door, his grip tightening, then relaxing. “Go.”
“Goodnight,” Flora said softly, though she didn’t move. She stood there, uncertain, as he sighed deeply and closed his eyes, his fingers slipping from the handle.
“I wish you could just go back to Earth and stay there.”
Flora froze. His words struck like a blow.
“What?” she whispered.
What did he want from her? She didn’t have a strong, fearsome alter ego like he did, but she had done her best to help.
They wouldn’t take her as a fighter, and they didn’t want her as a martyr.
Even letting them take Davy hadn’t been enough—not for Noec.
Flora felt the sting of anger twist in her chest. But still, for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to leave his side.
After a long pause, Noec glanced over his shoulder. His glossy eyes met hers, and he murmured, “Everyone I love is going to die again.”
Robbed of anger and poisoned with guilt, Flora tugged him close and wrapped her arms around him. “Noec…” she muttered. “No, you can’t start thinking like that.”
Noec dug his head into her shoulder and mumbled softly, “There’s nothing I can do. Not against this.”
“We can fight, Noec,” Flora whispered. “And we can hope.”
“I’ll fight until my last breath,” he replied. Noec lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes. “But… hope is what’s going to break me.” Pressing his brow to hers, he shut his eyes. “I’m not as strong as you think I am,” he said. “Not when it comes to you.”
Flora hesitated, breath catching. Then, she loosened her arms from around him and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “Come here.”
He blinked, then followed. Noec sat beside her; she reached for his hand and held it firmly.