The Midnight Before Me

by Elizabeth Lo

  “Yes… no… I don’t know…” he stammers.

  “Will you help me?” Glorieux asks him, a too-wide smile on her face. “Will you come with me? I will accept you. Just come with me. You’ve been… wronged. Tortured. Strangled. Chained by the world, haven’t you?”

  He nods, his mind still delirious, the fire fogging his mind as much as it’s fogging his eyesight.

  “Come…” she urges.

  As a son, isn’t it part of his duty to take care of his mother like it always says in those fairy tales or on those café advertisements during parent-day specials? But as a friend… as a human, isn’t it his duty to do what’s right?

  Which is right?

  You’re pampered.

  “Huh,” he mutters. “Maybe that pipsqueak wasn’t wrong.”

  Kill his mother or go with his mother?

  Strangely, it’s in this moment, he remembers Midnight’s brother. That angry, desperate spirit he had seen in the woods. He was exactly as Artemis thought he would be. Out of control. Violent. Dangerous. Emotionally driven and illogical.

  But… Something made Artemis step forward and hold his hand.

  Perhaps, it had nothing to do with what the Ruined Boy was. After all, there was nothing different about him compared to Artemis’ imagination of him. Maybe it was just finally seeing him and witnessing nothing but pure emotion on another human being’s face, albeit driven by the deterioration of the soul, that made Artemis want to step forward anyway.

  Because even in the mad emotions, there was a human behind those eyes.

  A human he misses in the coldhearted eyes of his mother right now.

  “No…” he says, softly at first.

  “What?” Glorieux steps closer, her eyes calm but slowly smoldering.

  “No,” he repeats more firmly this time. “NO!”

  He dives for her hand and swings her down onto the ground, locking her hand behind her back just like he saw Annabelle do once. If only he could have remembered things sooner.

  The enchantments and incantations Phelix had made him memorize come back in an instant.

  The words slip over his tongue and tumble out of his lips—the magic-stealing incantation that was used on nuagepanthères in Thyrmia centuries ago.

  The last rune pulls itself from his tongue before Glorieux can get another word out, and instantly, he feels himself filled with power and energy.

  Lightheadedness floods in along with a fearsome headache. The strength in his arms becomes so overwhelming, he can barely feel them, while Glorieux, on the other hand, falls limp. His body slumps and every breath feels electric. Everything is moving too fast.

  A thought starts to overcome him: Will he even survive this?

  “I’m sorry…” He whimpers. “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry, Annabelle. I’m sorry, Sucre. I’m sorry, Phelix.”

  It might not be a fact that Midnight can save him or save the ones he cares about. But it’s a possibility.

  And sometimes, one just has to grasp the possibility regardless of the risks, he remembers Phelix telling him.

  The only one who can save his mother now is Midnight. He will make her kill his mother first. He wants this complication out of his life. He wants this confusion, this knot unable to be untangled, gone. He will make her do it. He knows she can. She has the ability.

  So he will. He will do it even if it costs him his life. His mother must die.

  And so, he makes what feels like could be the final Teleport of his life.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Midnight

  Brambles are annoying. So are bushes, roots, and twigs.

  Maybe it’s them that’s been making me uncomfortable. Ever since we set off, I’ve felt this foreboding feeling of dread. Ever since, I’ve felt… off.

  “I swear,” Annabelle mutters behind me. “If someone rips my skirt up again, I’m releasing hell on earth.”

  Lafayette chuckles.

  “How far do we have to walk?” I ask, tripping for the nth time on a root.

  “Watch your step, Mid,” Lafayette says in a sing-song voice, ignoring my question.

  “Shut up, you superhuman,” I say, but I can’t help but smile too.

  “Hey, I trip, too.”

  “Sure.”

  But thus far, despite his injuries, he has yet to see what the color of the top of his boots are. My boots, on the other hand, are constantly sinking into the damp ground and hitting every other rock possible.

  But… despite my struggles with the peskiness of nature, the scenery really is quite pretty. The chill air only seems to be adding a more pristine feel to the whole place, and it’s that time of day when it gets just slightly warmer before the chill of the evening can set in. Green moss lines the sides of the ashy brown trees, and the ambiance of the leaves fluttering in the breeze calms my nerves. Slightly.

  It’s the calm before the storm. In a way, it’s agonizing because I can only think about what’s going to happen instead of focusing on the world around me.

  I don’t know what it will be like to have all those souls in me. Noisy, I guess? Or maybe they’ll try to take over my body and control me. I hope that doesn’t happen… but I have no plan on how to resist them since, of course, I haven’t suffered the Memento Mori effects directly. Only activated those effects for someone else… apparently.

  Speaking of which… Lafayette’s been relatively uncaring about all this ever since we started for the Summer Palace. He’s been joking a bit, as usual, with his frequent sarcastic comments. I suppose he decided that it’s better to not worry about me. Which is, you know, good.

  Looking back and forth between our small encampment and the Palace, I see Sucre actually traveled a lot further than we thought he did during that mad escape from our first attempt. The Summer Palace is still a bit of a way off. At least I get to travel with a little entourage. In case one fails, I have a backup executioner. Preparation is key, right?

  “How good is your aim, anyway?” I ask the both of them. Might as well strike up some conversation. “In case you need to shoot me from across the hallway.”

  “Pretty good.” Annabelle shrugs, which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be reassuring.

  “According to my mentors I have ‘lethal aim,’” Lafayette says while casually picking up a little rock off the ground.

  He prepares to throw, pointing to a bird on a branch with his other hand, then pressing that same finger to his lips. His gaze is unsettlingly still.

  “You’re not actually going to hit it, are you?” I whisper, slightly nervous now.

  “Do you want me to?” he asks calmly, a smile on his face.

  “No,” I say.

  He throws, and the little rock shoots through the air almost like a bullet, striking right next to the bird’s feet. The little thing flies away, but the branch it was perched on falls to the ground, broken right where it sat.

  “There you go,” he says. “I didn’t hit it.”

  We start walking again, a little faster to make up for the lost time.

  “Cheater. It’s so much easier not to hit it,” Annabelle huffs.

  Lafayette shrugs.

  “Yeah,” he says. “But Mid didn’t want me to hit it.”

  “You knew she would tell you not to hit it.”

  “Maybe,” he smiles. “I can go again if you’d like.”

  “Yes, please do.

  “But then… Mid would just tell me not to hit it again.”

  They both just laugh, whether in agreement or disagreement, I don’t know. I to try chuckle along.

  “You’re not just using me as an excuse for missing it, right?” I say, poking his arm.

  “Of course not.” He slows down a bit to pat my head. “I just don’t want to show all my cards at once.”

  “Oh?”

  Curious, I dip forward, catching a little pebble between my fingers. My hand rears back, and I fling the rock towards a tree in the distance. It doesn’t even reach the tree, pitifully fa
lling to the ground early.

  “…Where were you aiming?” he asks incredulously.

  “There… clearly.”

  He just laughs at me.

  “Someone needs more target practice.”

  “Wow,” Annabelle says. “That was pretty bad.”

  I laugh.

  “Okay, so throwing a rock is harder than I thought,” I say. “Some very important cards you must be hiding up your sleeve, Mr. Falcon.”

  He grins at me, pulling my head to him with one hand, chuckling.

  I wait for him to say more, but he just replies with a simple, “Indeed.”

  He’s definitely hiding something…

  “But, Midnight,” Lafayette says after finishing his laughter. “If you don’t even want me hurting a little bird, what are you going to do when you actually have to shoot someone to save yourself?”

  He lets go of me, letting us walk in separate lanes once again. My head is cold now.

  “Hmm… I… don’t know. It depends on the situation,” I respond. “As you can see… I probably wouldn’t even hit them if I tried.”

  “Hmmm? What if I go insane and you need to kill me?” he says. “We can pretend it’s at point-blank.”

  “I wouldn’t. I would just go break the curse.”

  “You… do know that insanity exists outside of curses, right?” he asks sarcastically, but there’s a bit of bite in his tone.

  “Yeah, of course, I do,” I retort. “I thought you were implying… you know. Going crazy because of Black.”

  “Right… But what makes you think I’m not crazy on my own. I mean we haven’t known each other long. Looks could be deceiving. I could pull a gun out on you right now.”

  “You know, sometimes you don’t really need a long time to get close to a person,” I say. “You wouldn’t do anything like that without a reason, so if such a time comes when you need me to shoot you, it wouldn’t be because of an excuse like that.”

  His insistence on his question is a little strange, and he just smiles to himself, though it’s not a happy smile.

  “That’s reassuring I suppose,” I think I hear him say.

  “Plus,” I continue, “I think Annabelle would get to you first if you tried to kill me… before you’re supposed to.”

  “Hmmm… I see your point.”

  Where is Annabelle?

  “Annabelle,” I call, turning around. She’s fallen far behind, distractedly studying the moss as she steps on it. “Annabelle,” I say, louder.

  Her head looks up suddenly.

  “Oh.” She quickly runs to catch up. “Are we there?”

  “No, not really,” I say. “You just looked a little… distracted. Is something wrong?”

  “Oh. Haha, yeah.” She joins in between Lafayette and me. “Sorry.”

  “Why?”

  She’s still twirling a lock of hair around her index finger.

  “Just… worried. About Artemis.” She glances back in the direction we had left. “You know. He might get into trouble.”

  “Excuse my insensitivity,” Lafayette jumps in. “But… why do you worry about him so much?”

  Annabelle looks ready to retort, but she quickly retracts any sort of snide remarks she had in mind as she thinks about it.

  “I don’t really know… But he’s more important to me than I am to myself… because of what he’s done for me, and just… because I love him for the sake of loving him, you know?”

  “Really?” I blurt out of the blue, accidentally breaking the warm glowing picture Annabelle just created.

  Annabelle rolls her eyes at me.

  “Of course, Middie.” She grins. “Sometimes people love each other just… because they can. Because you’ve grown so close to that person.”

  “Aw, that sounds lovely,” I respond, laughing a little. “Beautiful, even if it’s a little cheesy.”

  And she just giggles in return.

  “Yeah, it is,” she says. “Strange to hear it from a murderer.”

  “But she’s right… it’s possible,” Lafayette says, making us both look at him in surprise. He glances at us, sees our stares, and just keeps grinning. “Strange to hear it from a murderer, right?”

  And once again, they laugh with each other. A sound that now sounds miles and miles away from me.

  Now, with every step closer we get, a little bit of nervousness courses through me. Despite our laughs and giggles, there’s a slight tension between all of us. Soon enough, each of us takes up a fascination with the mulchy terrain as we start to pick up the pace. I guess Lafayette and Annabelle are just getting their pre-battle jitters out. But I feel stuck in between collapsing right here and charging straight into the Summer Palace to get it over with already.

  “Hey,” I say, breaking the silence after it’s settled over us a while. “Promise me you guys won’t miss me too much when I’m dead, okay?”

  Smile, Midnight. Keep smiling.

  They both stop, staring at me dumbfounded.

  “What…” Annabelle starts, but Lafayette holds up a hand, stopping her.

  He just smiles at me. A secretive smile. That close-lipped, polite smile always used for hiding things.

  “Of course,” he says.

  And then we move on.

  Lafayette and Annabelle soon make an effort to strike up a conversation about some combat thing. They look happy, right?

  Good. That’s good, right?

  I’m glad I can make them happy. I’m glad that when I’m gone, Lafayette will be free from at least one of his demons and Black will no longer suffer. Maybe, Glorieux will be able to find her freedom. I’m glad that… at least now, there are people I care about.

  Breaking this curse is worth it.

  Just keep saying that. Just keep saying it, and maybe I’ll start to believe it.

  Moss patch after dirt patch after root after moss patch passes. At one point, my mind completely blanks, just trying to soak in the peace from the eye of the hurricane.

  Above us, Sucre flies out, a screaming lady following closely behind.

  “There they go,” I whisper to myself, watching them fly by in the sky. “Must be nice to fly…”

  Step after step.

  What if it hurts? No, what am I thinking. Of course, it’ll hurt. But it’ll be short. I hope. Just the click of a gun, a bang, and I’ll be dead. Before my soul can even begin to fuse with the dead.

  To be honest, I’m… a bit scared of what will happen to me.

  No, Midnight. That’s selfish. It doesn’t matter if you’re scared or not. It’s about the people you’ll save.

  I suppose, even if Glorieux and I seem so far apart from each other, we’re both similar in our problems. One pitched against many. I wonder what it would have been like to talk to her before she became corrupt.

  “There,” Lafayette suddenly says, bringing me back from my thoughts. His finger points at the granite wall up ahead.

  “We’re on the… right side of the castle, right…?” I ask, jogging up so I can try to see better.

  “Sort of… Here in Galviton, we say ‘east’ not ‘right,’” he says patting my head. “And yes, we’re on the east side of the Palace. There’s a window, there.” He points up somewhere, but from where I’m at, I can’t see what he’s talking about. “We can sneak you in through there.”

  Getting close enough, we find a sturdy enough tree to climb that clears the height of the wall surrounding the Palace.

  I climb up first. The leap over the gap to get to the wall makes my heart do backflips, but I make it, clinging onto the slippery surface and hoisting myself up.

  Annabelle lands more gracefully, while Lafayette does it the fastest out of the three of us.

  Now for the window…

  I guess I could just Decompose it. It cracks once then bursts into the air, little shards of it scraping my skin as it goes.

  The jump looks a bit too long for me. Just looking down makes my heart skip. Why did they make this wall so high up
? Sighing, I shake out my hands and then Teleport through the small opening.

  Lafayette lands next to me less than a second later, fitting his body through the small hole of the window and then rolling to a stop.

  I step to the side to wait for Annabelle.

  BOOM!

  The wall explodes from underneath.

  “Annabelle!” I yell, running to window.

  A large blast blew a hole in the wall and a crater in the ground. I can’t even see the caster of the spell yet, but I can hear their shouts. Did they pick up on my Teleport?

  Annabelle lands in a pile of rubble, mostly unscathed, but the shouts and screams don’t get any softer.

  “Anna—”

  “Go!” she yells. “I think they can sense your magic. I’ll distract them and meet you at the front. Just go!”

  I hesitate, but Lafayette grabs my hand, and we take off down the halls, my feet flying underneath me as he gives me half my momentum.

  Hall after hall after hall, we finally end up in the middle of the entrance hall again. One of the double doors is half open, just how I left it. The block of ceiling that Glorieux broke still sits conspicuously on the carpet. Only one vase is left untouched, the rest have all smashed against the unforgiving stone of the Palace.

  Racing as fast as my heart, I dash for the painting.

  They’re gathering at the door, running in. Some get shot in the head from the side—Annabelle, I’m sure.

  “YOU WON’T KILL US! YOU CAN’T COME IN!” the Hanburians yell. There are holes in their clothes, crusted blood acting like war paint on their bodies, and black soot still smeared over their faces. Next to the glossy, white marble of the palace, they look like smears of ash on fresh snow.

  They all barrel towards me faster than I thought was possible, and I do a double take, stopping just in time for a survivor to collide with me. I landed on the part of the entrance hall without carpet, the fall makes my head buzz. The painting is right there… So close…

  The survivor who crashed into me picks me up like I’m an annoying rock in his way and throws me back towards the front double doors. My spine gets a poke from the fallen ceiling piece, sending rivers of electricity through me.

  BANG!

  Lafayette’s pistol goes off, hitting my attacker square in the head.