King of Midnight: Rosethorn Valley Fae #1

by Tasha Black

  Something was standing on the tiled wall of the fountain, like it was about to jump in.

  It wasn’t a woman exactly, but it was woman-like in its curving shape.

  It had long silver hair and a smile that was a little too wide, revealing curving rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  It had just peeled a T-shirt over its head and was dropping it to the ground with the long, webbed fingers of one hand, as the other hand tugged at a pair of shorts.

  “My God, what is that?” Sara murmured.

  “Can you see the teeth?” Dorian asked sounding surprised.

  “Of course I can see the teeth,” she replied. “Do you see the webbed fingers? Why aren’t people running away?”

  “That’s the naiad,” Dorian said. “She must have escaped somehow when the mirror broke. Humans see her glamour. But you and I see past that to what she really is.”

  You and I…

  She glanced at the ring on her finger once more, feeling like she was somehow more than she had ever been before, and wondering what that meant for her.

  “Ma’am, I need you to step down and put your clothes back on,” a nervous looking mall security guard said to the creature by the fountain.

  “We can’t let him try to imprison her,” Dorian said. “She’ll lure him into the nearest body of water and eat him for lunch.”

  “You say they can’t see what she is, right?” Sara asked.

  “They see her as an ordinary old woman,” he said, nodding.

  “Excuse me,” Sara shouted. “Oh my Lord, excuse me, please let me through.”

  The amazed crowd parted slightly.

  “Oh, Aunt Irene, there you are,” Sara yelled to the naiad.

  The naiad stopped fussing with her shorts and looked at Sara with some interest.

  Sara looked at those wicked teeth and hoped the interest wasn’t food-related.

  “I’m so sorry, she must have spit out her medicine this morning,” Sara told the guard. “Come on, honey,” she yelled to Dorian. “We have to get her home.”

  Dorian moved forward instantly, offering his hand to the naiad, who took it with great dignity, and stepped down from the fountain wall as if she were a debutante about to be presented at a ball.

  “You gave us the slip, Aunt Irene,” Sara scolded as she elbowed a path for them out of the crowd.

  “Here you go,” Dorian said, draping the T-shirt over the naiad’s ample bosom.

  Sara saw that the shirt read My Niece Went to Area-51 and All I Got was this Lousy T-shirt.

  “Keep moving,” Dorian muttered through his teeth.

  Sara trotted to keep up.

  Soon they were back out in the parking lot.

  The naiad lifted her face to the cloudy sky, like a flower longing for rain.

  “I know,” Dorian told her. “We’ll try to get you back someplace wet, but not here.”

  The naiad moaned. It sounded like she had two voice boxes.

  Dorian pulled the T-shirt over her head and put her in the backseat of the car.

  “I’m going to ride back here with her,” Dorian said.

  “Fine,” Sara replied, relieved that she wouldn’t have to wonder what was happening with the creature while she drove.

  The naiad moaned again and gnashed her teeth when the car started.

  “Easy, lass,” Dorian told her.

  “Where are we going?” Sara asked, wondering how long she could drive around with the creature in her car.

  “Back to the castle, I think,” Dorian said, the worry clear in his husky voice. “We have to make sure no others have escaped.”

  15

  Dorian

  When the carriage stopped, Dorian swept the naiad up in his arms to carry her into the castle.

  She was lighter than she looked, and her skin was cool and slimy to the touch, almost translucent.

  She rested her silver head against his chest and sighed.

  They both knew what he had to do.

  In the time before humans, the naiad was free to frolic in the lakes and streams. When she was hungry, she lured in creatures of the forest, and drowned and ate them in the cool depths of the water.

  But her most tempting prey in modern times was clever enough to fight back.

  And humans were growing exponentially more knowledgeable. They had no magic, but they learned to build gadgets of all sorts to do the things they couldn’t do for themselves. One day they would invent a device that allowed them to see through the fae glamour. When that happened, the wildest of the fae creatures, like the naiad, wouldn’t be able to adjust their ways to fit in.

  Her feral nature was her most interesting quality, but it was about to curse her to imprisonment again.

  Fortunately, her small form felt exhausted in his arms. She had no fight left in her. And he had no fear of her sharp teeth.

  Dorian had saved her from execution back in his world, taking her in when the rest of the Seelie court ejected the monsters from their realm.

  The naiad was such a wild creature. He wasn’t entirely sure if she thought in words as he did, or even how sophisticated her thoughts were in the first place.

  But she knew him. She remembered her king and was grateful to him. That was why he was able to bring her back here without fear of violence.

  And he hoped he could make her understand why he would have to hold her captive once more.

  Though how he was supposed to do that without the midnight loop, he had no idea.

  Sara ran ahead and used the keys in the little box to open the door.

  The sight of his beautiful queen cheered him. Sara was resourceful and ready to help.

  Now that they were together, his powers would grow and they would come up with a way to keep the world safe from the naiad, and vice versa.

  He carried the naiad in through the chestnut door.

  The house gave an almost imperceptible shiver of excitement as he entered.

  The grandfather clock stood dormant and dusty, as before, but he could sense the life in it.

  He wondered what would happen here tonight at midnight.

  Would the house come to life in expectation of its king? Or would it all be quiet now that the mirror was broken?

  “What are we looking for?” Sara asked.

  Oh, my love, we are looking for nightmares.

  “We’re looking for anything that doesn’t belong,” he told her, knowing how vague he sounded. “Let’s begin at the mirror. Maybe there will be signs of what else escaped.”

  She nodded and headed into the conservatory.

  They stood in the threshold and looked out over the room. Everything appeared to be just as they had left it. Sara went over to the broken shards of mirror on the ground by the wall.

  “Do you see anything?” he asked her.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said, squatting down to take a better look. “It’s just the glass and—oh.”

  He strode to her side quickly. “What is it?”

  She was holding a piece of mirror and turning it over in her hands.

  “It’s not a mirror anymore,” she said. “It’s…something else.”

  He got down on the floor with her, cradling the naiad to his chest with one arm.

  Sara was gazing at the shard as if she were hypnotized.

  “May I see it?” he asked.

  She handed it to him without comment and picked up another.

  The shard was simply black now.

  No… there was movement in it.

  “It’s like a movie,” Sara said, looking at another piece. A blur of green leaves filled it.

  Dorian placed his down and picked up another. “This is odd. I can’t see myself in any of these, but it’s not motionless like regular glass.”

  “Wait,” Sara said. “I do see myself in this one.”

  He glanced over.

  “But the angle is off,” she said turning it to him. “It’s very strange.”

  He looked at the shard, and instead
of his own reflection, it still showed Sara, but from slightly to the side.

  “Oh,” Sara said suddenly, looking at the naiad.

  He looked down at the poor creature.

  She was looking over at Sara.

  “Naiad,” he said softly.

  She looked up at him and he glanced at the shard in his queen’s hands.

  It showed his face.

  “I think we’re seeing what she’s seeing,” Sara murmured. “What all of them are seeing.”

  He looked at the shards spread across the floor. If each of them represented a loose monster, he wasn’t sure how he would ever retrieve them.

  “Are they all moving?” he heard himself ask.

  Sara began lining up the shards on the floor.

  The naiad whimpered. Her skin was going from slimy to sticky.

  “Before we figure it out, I need to do something about her,” Dorian said sadly. “She’s drying out.”

  “What should we do?” Sara asked.

  “She needs a wet place with a food source,” Dorian said. “And we need to try to get her back into a loop so that she can’t harm anyone.”

  “The koi pond?” Sarah suggested.

  “By the Gods, your mind is fast, my Queen,” he said. “Yes, that’s perfect.”

  He rose, cradling the shivering naiad. “Hold on, darling, we’re going to take care of you.”

  She buried her cool sticky face in his neck as he carried her out to the garden.

  He followed Sara along the familiar mossy stones to the koi pond.

  It was overgrown now, full of cattails and lily pads.

  But the naiad wouldn’t mind.

  “Here we are, lass,” he told the naiad. “Your own little pond.”

  The naiad peeked out and allowed herself to be slowly lowered into the water.

  When she was standing on her own, he let go of her and she continued her descent into the water until she was fully submerged.

  She surfaced a moment later looking much happier. A smile split her wrinkled face almost in half, and her many rows of teeth shimmered as water poured out of her mouth.

  “How do we get her into a loop?” Sara asked.

  “First, she has to go back to midnight, so no one happens upon her,” Dorian said. “Then she’ll need to be bound there.”

  “How do we do that?” Sara asked.

  He loved the way she said we. He wasn’t sure if she was ready to admit it or not, but she was already his partner, already prepared to take on the mantle of her magical responsibilities, using her powers to protect his subjects even if she didn’t fully know what they were.

  “I can call the darkness to bring midnight,” he told her. “But you’ll need to sing a song of binding.”

  “How do I do that?” Sara asked.

  He considered the question.

  “Your powers are different than mine,” he told her. “But I suspect you are some sort of bard. Do you know what that is?”

  “In our world that would be like a guy with a lute that plays music in pubs,” Sara said dubiously. “But only in books and on HBO shows.”

  “A bard might make his living that way in my world as well,” Dorian allowed. “But a bard’s true nature is the ability to tell a story with music. And if the story is good enough the song has special magic.”

  “That doesn’t really sound like me,” she said, looking a little sad.

  “You are a merchant,” he said to her. “You help people decide to buy things?”

  “Well, yes, kind of,” Sara said. “I help people who are buying or selling things. I try to help them get a good value.”

  “How do you do that?” he asked.

  “By convincing the other party that my value opinion is correct,” she said.

  “So your job is using your voice to influence others?” he asked.

  She opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “I think you’ve got this, Sara,” he said gently. “I’ll bring midnight. You sing a story that will help Aunt Irene decide to stay in her loop until it closes around her.”

  “You just called her Aunt Irene,” Sara laughed.

  His smile mirrored hers.

  “She never had a name before,” he admitted. “I guess it’s as good as any.”

  They both observed Aunt Irene, who blinked back at them benevolently as she gnawed on a koi fish.

  Dorian hated to think what might happen if she ran out of koi. They needed to close the loop.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Sara.

  She nodded. Her feet were set and her face was a mask of determination. He pitied anything foolish enough to stand against her at that moment.

  He closed his eyes and let his hands fall by his sides, palms up.

  It had been an eternity since he had called to midnight himself. He half-wondered if his powers had weakened after centuries in the loop.

  But the magic of midnight prickled his palms almost instantly.

  He could hear the clock in the house begin to chime.

  He opened his eyes in time to see the sky darken.

  “Now, Sara,” he said.

  She looked up at him, seemingly frozen.

  “Sing, my love,” he whispered to her. “Help my naiad.”

  She gulped and then began to sing softly. The words of the song seemed to flow from her effortlessly.

  Aunt Irene, midnight embraced you,

  You escaped your king, and so we chased you,

  This world is loud and strange and dry,

  Polluted oceans, smoggy sky,

  Angry humans, magic gone,

  Nothing good to nibble on,

  A strange new world you found today,

  But here you do not wish to stay,

  This little home feels good, feels right,

  You close your eyes and rejoin midnight.

  Aunt Irene had been watching Sara with some interest as her song was sung.

  Whether or not she understood the words was uncertain, but she clearly knew she was being honored. When the end of the song came, the limpid naiad inclined her head, eyes closed, as if to acknowledge her public.

  Dorian allowed the swirling darkness of midnight to collect around her.

  As the sky around them brightened, Aunt Irene faded into a shimmering echo of herself and disappeared.

  “We did it,” Sara whispered.

  “You were incredible,” he told her, wishing he had the words to tell her how amazed he was.

  “Hold that thought,” she said. “Should we go look at her mirror piece?”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  They headed back inside, Sara half-jogging ahead of him.

  He joined her on the floor of the conservatory, where the shards were laid out just as she had left them.

  “It worked,” Sara said, holding up the piece that had shown them the world from the naiad’s point of view. The image had changed to that of an ordinary mirror.

  “Let’s see if it will go back in the frame,” he said, grabbing it and holding it to the wall.

  It pulled almost magnetically toward the proper spot.

  But when he tried to remove his hand it began to fall.

  He caught it quickly.

  “It won’t hold?” Sara asked.

  “Maybe we need them all,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “So I guess we need to try to find the others.”

  They both looked over the floor full of shards.

  A separate point of view was reflected in each - trees, skylines, darkened corners. Some were too dark to make out any details at all. The views were so generic that it was nearly impossible to tell where any of them were.

  “Oh my God,” Sara gasped. “Tabitha!”

  She was looking at a shard that showed the profile of a young woman through the window of a stone house. Whatever creature this vision belonged to was staring right at her.

  “You know her?” he asked.

  “That’s my best friend,” she replied,
jumping to her feet. “What’s looking at her?”

  “I can’t tell from this,” he said. “Do you know where she is? Is that her house?”

  “It’s the Morning Star Lodge,” she said.

  “An inn?” he asked.

  “No, it’s Rosethorn Valley’s history museum,” she replied. “Come on, we have to protect her.”

  He felt a momentary pang of pride at her instinct to defend her subjects.

  “We should bring these with us,” he said, indicating the shards.

  They picked up the shards carefully and quickly and carried them out to the car.

  Dorian loaded the pieces into his new leather satchel as Sara drove down the hillside so quickly, he was afraid the little car would fall apart.

  Moments later, the tires squealed and the carriage slid as she swerved into the gravel parking lot of a big stone house with a terra cotta roof.

  16

  Sara

  Sara leapt out of the car the instant it stopped moving.

  Her heart was pounding, and adrenaline moved her feet faster than she thought possible.

  Tabitha was in danger - Tabitha the brave, the funny, the confident, the best friend Sara had ever had.

  Sara swung open the glass door and exploded into the museum.

  “Tabitha,” she cried out, scanning the big room with the vaulted ceiling.

  She stopped in her tracks when she saw that Tabitha was standing by the fireplace, perfectly intact. A man stood beside her, their heads together in intimate conversation.

  “Sara,” Tabitha said, looking up as if she were in a bit of a daze. “Is everything okay?”

  “I, um, need to talk to you,” Sara gulped.

  The man turned to her, and she noticed he wasn’t entirely human.

  He looked human enough at first glance. He was perfectly formed, wearing nothing but a pair of leather breeches to demonstrate his sculpted form.

  He smiled at Sara - a warm, friendly smile with the normal number of teeth.

  But there was something too alluring about him, like a barely-visible halo around the golden curls of his hair.

  “Tabitha, we need to leave, now,” Sara said.

  “Who is your enchanting friend?” the man asked in a voice that sounded like the lead of a soap opera. “Why don’t the three of us get to know each other better over dinner?”