I shifted my gaze over his shoulder toward the door, hearing Frey demand on an enraged bellow, “Talk, Nils. Now!”
But that was all I heard as Noc quickly carried me down the passageway.
“This isn’t good,” I whispered.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Noc assured.
I closed my eyes tight. “You don’t know.”
“What on…?”
This was a female voice, and I opened my eyes and turned my head to see the green witch rushing toward us.
“Frey needs you,” Noc grunted, not pausing a step, meaning Valentine needed to jump to the side as he forged right ahead, passing her. “Room at the back,” he finished.
I turned my attention over his shoulder and watched Valentine disappear in a tall, thin spiral of green smoke.
Noc kept moving.
I took in a deep breath, closed my eyes again, and for the second time that night, the second time in decades, I used my power, opened my senses and sought my brother.
I was out of practice and in immense pain. I couldn’t sense him.
Either that or she’d already broken him. With Kristian, it never took long.
“I can’t sense him,” I told Noc, still trying to do so and feeling us ascending stairs.
“Franka, just focus on you, yeah?”
“This could mean she might have already broken him.”
“Frey and Valentine have this.”
I opened my eyes only to narrow them at him. “What do those words even mean?”
Noc blinked as he kept climbing stairs, and when he was done with his blink, his lips quirked.
“There’s my sugarlips,” he muttered.
I didn’t have it in me to cut him with a reply. The pain jarred through my conscious and I felt bile drive up my throat.
I swallowed it down but whispered a horrified, “I may be sick.”
“Please, fuck, wait ten seconds until I have you in my bed,” Noc begged.
“I’ll try,” I promised, and fortunately, after what felt a great deal longer than ten seconds, I was able to keep that promise.
I bit back a moan as he carefully extricated his shirt from me and gnashed my teeth silently as he rolled me to my belly. Once he’d positioned me, I felt the covers being pulled up over my bottom.
I then watched as he reached to the cord beside the bed and tugged on it.
“How did you know to come to the buttery?” I asked.
He looked down at me. “Your girl. She woke me up, totally freaked.”
I felt my brow furrow. “Freaked?”
“Panicked,” he explained. “Worried about you.”
“How did she know?” I asked.
“I don’t know, babe. She woke me, she was freaked way the fuck out, said you were in danger. I didn’t take time to interrogate her. I put some clothes on and hauled ass.”
I decided to leave that alone. I’d speak with Josette about how she knew later, after I was assured Frey and the green witch “had this.”
Therefore, I changed the subject as I watched Noc stride purposefully across the room. “Why did you pull the cord?”
He disappeared through his dressing room door but still called out, “Gonna need clean towels. And more water. And one of those sleeping drinks you talked about. And a bunch a’ other shit, this place has it.”
Being slightly twisted to observe the door to the dressing room was causing too much pain, so I rested my cheek on my arms crossed under me and demanded loudly so he could hear (meaning indecorously, which I found irritating), “You need to go back to Frey. Ascertain he has things in hand.”
Noc came back wearing another shirt, this one odd, seeming to be one piece of material, no buttons, long sleeves, the fabric looking soft and fitting snug at his chest and shoulders.
He was also carrying a drying cloth that looked wet but wrung.
“Your cousin’s got dragons on call, Frannie, I think he’s good,” he denied my demand.
“I—” I began just as he stopped by the bed.
“Please be quiet, baby,” he said in a soothing tone. “Try to relax. I’m gonna lay this on your back, maybe the cool will give you some relief, and we’ll hope a doc gets here soon.”
He said that and I had no response, just kept my eyes tipped up to him, fascinated that the soothing tone of his voice was reciprocated by the look on his handsome face.
After some time, he asked, “You good with that?”
“Pardon?”
“Me putting this on your back, Frannie, you ready?”
I felt my face pucker. “I dislike this name you call me.”
He bent at the waist so his face was much closer to mine.
Confronted in that proximity by his striking good looks, I felt my face unpucker.
“Franka’s a good enough name, I guess. But it’s hard and that’s not you.”
I mentally pulled my famous Franka Drakkar bravado around me and would have tossed my head if I didn’t know it would cause intense pain. “You don’t know me.”
His voice got lower when he returned, “You know I do.”
That made me shut my mouth, for oddly and with not a small amount of panic at the mere thought, I imagined he did.
“You ready for the towel, sweetheart?” he asked.
I did not bite my lip. I did not tense (for tensing made the pain worse, I’d learned that long ago). I did nothing but nod.
Noc nodded back, straightened, and with a tenderness that made my nostrils sting in order to fight back a different reaction, he laid the cool, wet cloth along my burning, ravaged back.