“Somnium!”
Chantée shot forward from the bedroom and crashed into Nocte’s stomach, wrapping her skinny, little arms around Nocte while jumping up and down, her French-braided pigtails flapping about in excitement. All Nocte could do was carefully balance the steaming mug of passion fruit tea (a mug Chantée had chosen for her, a mug that apparently resembled a cartoon character called Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh) in her hands to prevent the hot beverage from spilling onto the girl.
Even more startling was Alex, who was not only unperturbed by the scene, but was actually watching the girls from the kitchen with a few eggs in his hands. Nocte would have thought he’d storm over by now, either to take the tea from her grasp or to pull Chantée away from danger, but instead he merely chuckled as if he had expected it, but if he had expected it, then why would he prepare the tea for her beforehand?
It was not according to their daily weekday routine.
“I told you she was worried,” Alex commented good-naturedly.
Comprehension dawned and Nocte carefully returned Chantée’s hug, the mug sloshing precariously. Chantée’s reaction to her absence from the day before was not something Nocte had expected. For Alex to wait up for her and for Chantée to greet her so warmly… This was not nothing. This was something warm and pleasant and wonderful. It was something she thought she no longer had.
They made life easier to live.
“Are you okay?” Chantée asked, pulling away just enough to look Nocte in the face. “You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
Slightly insulted at Chantée’s implications and certainly touched by the girl’s concern, Nocte smoothed her hair back in reassurance. Chantée slept with her braids intact to avoid bed head, but several strands had broken from their confines. Alex was going to enjoy putting his little sister’s hair back to a more presentable state. “No. I’m not hurt. Just a little tired.
Chantée frowned, not pleased with her answer. “Maybe you shouldn’t go to work today…?”
Nocte smiled and patted her on the head again. “I promised to get myself cake today.”
“It’s okay,” Chantée said. “We have cake all the time now.” Nocte liked cakes; she bought them very often. “You should get one tomorrow.”
Alex startled her for the second time when he spoke, “Or I can pick one up after work.”
Chantée smiled at her big brother, with teeth, sparkles in her eyes and everything. “That’s even better!”
“You should rest,” Alex added.
As much as Nocte was touched by their sentiments, she really couldn’t have another day to just her and her thoughts. She needed a distraction, away from all the doom and gloom she had sunk herself into. Time to be more optimistic, more free, more happy like the many times before. Besides, that fairy that had trespassed nights ago was still swarming in her head, spitting blood on her face and ever the present warning.
“No, I’m okay,” she said. “I really need to get out of the house and do something, or I’m going to be bored.”
Chantée twisted her mouth, looking ready to argue.
“Go and change, Chantée,” Alex instructed, dismissing her.
Chantée pursed her lips and then trooped back into the bedroom to do as she was told. Finally, when the bedroom door closed, Alex turned back to Nocte.
“How did you sleep last night?” he asked.
This was a topic Nocte was more comfortable with. Moving away from the glass door and the sunrise she had watched (Alex had opened the curtains for her today — another action not a part of their routine), she settled onto a kitchen stool at the island counter.
“Good,” she replied, putting down the tea to show him the woven bracelet around her left wrist. “It works like a charm.”
He smiled, both in relief and at her lame pun. “Good.”
“Yup,” she chirped. “How’re the eggs?”
At her reminder, Alex turned to the frying pan and cracked a couple of eggs in, sizzling and cooking almost instantly. She watched as he popped several slices of bread into the toaster next. He was running late, according to schedule. Nocte was surprised he wasn’t panicking, but taking a look at the clock, she realized that he wasn’t running late, but that Chantée had gotten up early. Even more surprising was that Chantée-
“Chantée woke by herself,” Nocte mused aloud.
Alex wiped the bread crumbs fromt eh counter and shrugged. “She didn’t sleep well last night.”
Nocte tensed, thinking that the Fae had played tricks again.
“She was worried about you,” Alex said, facing her. “She got up around one in the morning to check up on you, and I had to tell her to wait until morning to talk to you.”
Nocte’s eyes grew wide, not knowing what to say. She was shocked that she hadn’t heard them wake last night (a mistake she would not make again), and completely floored that they would take such pains to make sure that she was okay, to make sure that she was present — to make sure that she existed.
So much.
They were so much like them that it almost hurt.
So much.
“Thanks.” It was all she could get out.
“Any time,” Alex returned, taking out the plates to give her some time to recover.
“Here,” she offered, jumping down from the stool. “I’ll help.”
Again, not according to routine.
But then again, she reasoned, yesterday had been anything but routine.
“You’ll be back for dinner tonight, right?” Alex enquired conversationally.
Nocte read his hesitance loud and clear as she switched the toasts from the toaster and onto the plates. “Yeah. Yesterday was a fluke. Today we’re back on schedule.”
She didn’t miss the way his shoulders relaxed or the way his posture eased. He had been worried that she’d leave again… and how true it’d be if the Fates decided so. If her Keys one day suddenly worked, would Nocte hesitate before leaving? Would she even stop to say “sayonara”?
It was not something Nocte wanted to dwell on.
“So I’ll drop Chantée off at school?” she pushed her unpleasant thoughts aside, handing the plates back to Alex.
“We’ll go together today,” he said.
They paused in their conversation when Chantée moved from the bedroom, dressed for the day, to the bathroom. They were like parents in so many ways.
“Cool,” Nocte said once the girl was out of ear-shot.
“Listen,” Alex said, slipping the eggs onto the plates. Nocte straightened. “Halloween is coming.”
Despite herself, she perked. “Are we going trick or treating?” He pinched his lips unpleasantly. “So that’s a ‘no,’ obviously.”
Alex shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Right,” she agreed, distraught that she hadn’t thought of that.
“I have some charms for you, just in case,” Alex said. “They’re in my bag.”
Nocte didn’t protest. She didn’t feel like it was right to refuse after abandoning them yesterday. “And Chantée?”
“I restocked her yesterday,” he said. “And your necklace seems to be working well.”
He meant the peony seed necklace she had made for Chantée, and he had no idea how well it worked. She had spent hours on the thing, threading red thread through hard seeds with a delicate needle. She had pricked her fingers so many times that her hands had felt numb for days. She hadn’t even needed to squeeze out extra blood to secure the spell after all that blood she lost during the process itself! (It had almost been a traumatizing experience!) Too bad Chantée hadn’t been wearing it during the night of the fairy invasion, but it may have been for the best. Any fairy that may have survived didn’t have the knowledge of just how impossible it was to take the girl. It was better for the household to have any advantage possible when facing the Fae. One could never be too careful.
“Somnium!”
This time Nocte had the opportunity to empty her hands (by placing the plates onto the island counter) before Chantée effectively glomped her again, knocking her back just a bit. Perhaps she shouldn’t have left yesterday without telling the girl first. Perhaps she shouldn’t have left at all.
“Will you be at dinner tonight?” Chantée asked hopefully.
“Yes,” Nocte said decidedly, tugging at the peony seed necklace around the girl’s neck to check its durability. It held true. “I’ll be picking you up from school today, and then we’ll go grocery shopping. You can choose the cake if you want.”
“Yes!” Chantée sounded brightly.
Nocte smiled as they settled in for breakfast, the eggs and toast tasting sweet with warm milk. She noticed how Chantée kept looking at her, as if afraid she’d vanish at any given moment, but Nocte was more concerned over the girl’s safety than her paranoia. Paranoia was good given their situation. At least Alex understood what it meant. Alex was almost the personification of paranoia, checking over the charms around Chantée’s wrists, neck, ankles, pockets — everywhere — as they readied to leave the apartment. He made sure the charms were secure, tugging at the woven bracelets, prodding at the pendants, checking his sister’s pockets — almost falling over himself to ensure that there was salt at the windowsills, that the paper charms were working on the walls and various other devices.
Nocte knew that her runes, like the peony seed necklace, would hold.
“Here.” Alex passed her a small pendant on a rough twine of string and a piece of yellow paper folded into a small triangle — a lucky Xonese charm, Nocte recognized.
They paused a moment to wave at Chantée entering the school.
“Thanks,” Nocte said, pocketing the paper charm and tying the pendant around her neck. She could feel the protective auras wash into her chi.
“Heading south?” Alex enquired, the direction of Ness St.
She shook her head. “East.” Not the direction of Ness St.
He nodded grimly. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
Nocte watched him board the bus with a sense of displacement, as if she needed him to define her. As if she needed some man to give her a sort of identity. But it wasn’t just Alex, a part of her reached out for the girl within the brick building, within the confines of the school. She hated to admit it, but the siblings gave her a sense of purpose — the prophecy gave her a sense of function. Without the siblings, without the need to protect the Singer, Nocte would just be drifting along the streets of Earth with no place to live or to go, probably choking to death. She would just be spending all her time thinking.
And thinking, Nocte knew, was dangerous at times.
Very.
“Summon: imp,” she cast, and then hopped onto the nearest bus heading east.
After hunting down the baddies for more than a month, Nocte was beginning to understand a thing or two about the layout of Juncture City. She rarely recognized the streets by their names, but certainly by their landmarks. There was that street with that strip mall at that place. There was that corner with a Tim Hortons and a Starbucks and a Second Cup (that particular street liked their caffeine). Then there was that other street near that park where dogs liked to poop and pee. Nocte knew exactly what she was talking about.
She rummaged through the wanted papers as the bus rumbled through the tight city streets. She had to occupy herself with bounty hunting, otherwise she would think again, and she knew exactly who she wanted to bring in today. She slid aside two papers to take hold of one marked for a certain Mister Pàn. He had been charged with murdering a yaojing couple who had just emigrated from China a month ago, and he had been found guilty, even confessed to the crime just last week. The peculiarity of this man was that he had been located long ago, but had never been brought in by a bounty hunter. Either this guy was good at talking himself out of tight situations, or he was rich enough to bribe his hunters away. Judging by the bounty on Mister Pàn, Nocte didn’t care how much he’d offer her. It was time to get that winter coat Mr. O’Callaghan had recommended before, and through the right way too, which meant a Mister Pàn was going to be very surprised.
Nocte jumped off the bus when it stopped at the corner of Maple Ravine and Valley, a trail park that had been constructed by the city in 1989. According to the papers, Mister Pàn frequented the park daily, but the times of such visits varied upon his mood and the weather. Fortunately it was a sunny day with no chance of rain, but Nocte didn’t know the man enough to judge his mood. He was bound to show up, but when was a different question.
It was now a waiting game.
Purchasing a bottle of water from a hot dog vendor, Nocte followed one of the emptier paths deep into the woods, her sneakers rough against the stray pebbles and hard on fallen twigs. She didn’t bother with stealth. She didn’t even know if her target was near. Instead, she made sure to stay close to one of the streams as she stalked deeper into the trees, stopping finally when she was sure there was no one there but her.
“Summon: kappa,” she cast into the stream.
A green child-sized, frog-human creature slipped into the water like silent death. From the uneven, light-fractured surface of the stream, Nocte could just make out the kappa’s beaked mouth and turtle-like shell on its back; its web-like hands as it floated just below the surface of the water, waiting on her. Slowly, its head surfaced from the stream, its nostrils, eyes and face shaped like that of an ape’s. The most notable feature, besides its shell, was the hollow cavity atop of its head nested in the middle of his scratchy seaweed hair, a saucer filled with a mysterious, magical liquid that was not water.
Nocte took out the picture of Mister Pàn for the frog-human to see. She remembered to switch to the Dōng dialect (Earth’s Japanese) when speaking with the kappa. Kappas prefer the Dōng dialect. “I am looking for this man, a Mister Pàn. If you find him, do not kill him. I need him alive.”
“Hai,” the watery gurgle of the kappa responded, and then it tipped its head in obedience with practiced ease for none of the liquid on its head budged at all.
“Summon: cwn annwn.”
She repeated the same instructions to the ghost-hound before climbing up one of the higher trees in the woods. With the kappa in the water, the cwn annwn on land and her being near the sky, Nocte had all her corners covered. She had been made, trained and sculpted to be the perfect predator. She was not going to screw this up. She wanted to get a coat, and a nice one, not one of those cheap, not-warm-at-all ones. She deserved it!
Churning her chi, she jumped from the tree she had just climbed and landed on the hardiest branch of another, the trunk swaying at her sudden added weight. But with the balance of the crane, Nocte didn’t hesitate before flying herself to the next tree, and then the next, and then the next, until she was as close to the start of the trail path as she dared to go. Several leaves, red, orange, yellow, brown and flickering in the morning sun like an elaborate autumn rainbow, fell to the ground in tufts, but they appeared like they had been naturally detached from the trees, perhaps by the wind, than by a master martial artist above.
Sitting down on a branch, Nocte wiped the sweat from her forehead and waited for Mister Pàn to arrive. For hours all she saw were the elderly getting their daily exercise, some health enthusiasts jogging hard with their mp3 players in their ears and, around lunch, some teenagers sitting down to eat with their group of friends. She didn’t know how well the kappa and cwn annwn were faring, but Nocte knew that she couldn’t stay up in the trees when it was past lunch time.
She liked her food.
When the teenagers cleared the trails to get back to (what Nocte hoped was) school, she finally stood and sighed when a wind brushed by, cool against her sun-heated face. Lightly, she stepped off the branch and fell delicately onto the branch below until she landed on the ground with the grace of a dancer. She patted the leaves from her clothes and then made back to the hot dog vendor she had bought the water from.
“One hot dog and a bottle of water, please,” she requested.
“One hot dog,” the vendor repeated as he placed a sausage on the grill, “and a water.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking the refreshingly ice-cold water and chugging down a swallow in relief.
She stepped aside to let the old couple behind her put their order in and spotted the translucent form of the cwn annwn standing erect between a bush and a tree. It nodded and Nocte understood, but her hot dog wasn’t done. She could abandon her lunch and race after the ghost-hound… orshe could wait for the hot dog to be in her hands and then race after the ghost-hound.
There really was no competition.
Folding her arms, Nocte eased her posture back and waited patiently for her hot dog to be done. She was pretty sure that the cwn annwn wasn’t going to lose trace of Mister Pàn anytime soon, and she was pretty sure that it was more excited that Nocte was waiting and thus allowing their prey some time to hide, or attempt to hide anyway. The hound lived to hunt, after all.
“Thank you,” Nocte said, taking hold of her hot dog.
The cwn annwn knew that it was soon time to hunt, and if it could, Nocte was sure it’d be wagging its tail by now. But she made it wait a little longer, pouring ketchup onto her hot dog. Finally, with the satisfied amount of pickles stuffed into the bun, she took a heavenly-tasting bite, swallowed with pleasure… and then off she went onto the trails once more, fast walking to keep up with the cwn annwn.
“Oh,” she sounded, stuffing the last bite into her mouth. “In-thrush-ing.”
She swallowed, took a swig from the water bottle, and then proceeded to smirk.
Mister Pàn was Xonese, with large eyes and a crooked nose — it had once been broken, she could tell. He was in his early fifties if his greying hair was of any evidence, and he was currently thrashing in the stream against the unrelenting grasp of the kappa. In truth, the kappa had kept its word; it had dragged the man into shallow waters so he had no possibility of drowning (unless he was stupid enough to choke himself to death), but the man was so muscled and tough-looking that it looked ridiculous to see him wriggling in the water like Death was at his heels. It was like he was a child!
Nocte chuckled. “Enough.”
The kappa threw the man back onto land with a burbling snicker.
“Mister Pàn?” Nocte said, placing her fists on her hips. “I’m here to take you in.”
“Ex-Excuse m-me?” the man coughed, spitting out the access stream-water from his throat. “Do you know who I am?”
“A murderer,” she quipped. “Now if you don’t want the kappa to get you again, you better come with me.”
Mister Pàn straightened, easily breaking six feet in height, and glared down at her from the edge of his crooked nose. “I have the protection of the Master of the city. You do not want to touch me.”
“‘Master’?” she echoed, not impressed. “Well I-”
She paused when she saw a shadow move from behind him. It wasn’t threatening, Nocte knew, for she recognized it right away. With those bat-like wings and pointed tail — it was the imp…
“Here is my proof,” Mister Pàn said, shoving a medallion in her face.
Nocte pushed it aside, not even giving the thing a courtesy glance. If the imp had sought her out, it meant that the girl was in trouble.
“I’ll deal with you later,” she told the man.
“Wha-?”
She didn’t even wait for him to finish before running for the nearest bus. The imp wouldn’t have shown itself at a distance if it didn’t think Nocte could reach the girl in time. If Chantée was truly in danger, the imp would’ve spoken to her directly, or would’ve pursued the threat to its hiding place — Nocte believed that the girl was still relatively safe. There was no need to contact Alex at the moment.
She dismissed the kappa, but let the cwn annwn stay at her side in its invisible form. The imp must have returned to the school by now. Regardless, she found her nerves frayed and taunt as the bus neared downtown. She was apprehensive that perhaps she’d be too late, or just miss the chance to protect her. She had to have faith in Alex’s charms — in the peony seed necklace she had constructed herself.
She was going to have to buy a coat some other day.
“Damn it,” she swore quietly.
And the nights were getting colder too…
She fixed her bag and consciously stepped off the bus with the cwn annwn following behind her. She couldn’t see it, but certainly feel it as she moved into the crowded street seamlessly, knowing that the ghost-hound would be able to keep up. Whatever the danger was, Nocte was not going to let herself be out in the open to face it. Searching cautiously, it didn’t take her long to find the imp up on a maple tree, its bulging orange eyes like a firefly’s glow. Very deliberately, the imp met her eyes and then swerved his dark pupils to her left… right at the street corner… on a bench…
“By Men-shen,” she hushed, slipping into the nearest coffee shop. “Please help me guard the doors of the school.”
She slid (as discreetly as she could) to the windows to get a better (and safer) look at the man sitting on a bench at the corner, watching the children play in the school yard during recess. She let the cwn annwn slip back into the street, circling the man at a comfortable distance. He didn’t notice. Of course he didn’t, which only surprised her. He wasn’t wearing a disguise. He wasn’t even attempting to hide. He was just… there, with his dirty blond hair and green eyes and almost obsessive stare on the lone figure that was Chantée.
He was the man who had tried to take the girl during Siren’s concert oh-so long ago.
Nocte rubbed the sweat from her nose and fixed her glasses.
She knew he couldn’t make a grab for the girl in broad daylight, in front of so many people. The only chance he had was after school, and Nocte was going to cut him off for sure. The true problem was whether or not Nocte and the girl would be able to out-run the man. It would not do to have him following them back to the apartment. Alex would flip, for one. Then Nocte would have to kill the man. It would be such a messy process.
And Nocte still wouldn’t be able to get a coat by the end of it.
She took a seat when a woman and her baby vacated a table at the window and ordered a French vanilla coupled with a chocolate pastry. She sat there, watching the man watching the school, for a little more than two hours. She suddenly had a lot more respect for the imp, who had been watching the school’s premise for weeks and everyday came up with nothing. At least now it had the cwn annwn for help.
Nocte stood and left the coffee shop just as the last bell rang from the school. Already at the entrance there were parents gathered about, waiting for their child to come out with their backpacks and eager faces to get out of the damned place. As predicted, the man had gotten up from the bench and crossed the street, as if he were a parent waiting to receive a child of his own. And he was receiving a child. But not his own.
Nocte knew exactly what she was going to do, summoning several more cwn annwns to circle the man. Like translucent wisps, they fluttered at the peripheral of her eyes, watching, ever watching, the man and waiting, ever waiting, for the signal to hunt.
It was so on.
She crossed the street from the other streetlight and stalked towards the school, eyes zeroed in on the man. She could feel Alex’s luck charm working to her advantage as she slithered through the busy street unhindered, beating upstream against the traffic. A moment later and she felt her heart stop. The man had found Chantée, her French braids bobbing up and down in search for Nocte. He was now walking towards her. He was now reaching for her. She was now seeing him. She was now recognizing him. Nocte was now doubling her pace.
With a sudden burst of speed that Hermes would have envied, Nocte signalled for the hounds to hunt and quickly scooped Chantée up in her arms just as the vanishing creatures barrelled the man down like a hurricane. Chantée, shaking and heaving dry sobs, clung to Nocte as she raced them into the nearest bus heading west.
The man never had the chance.
“Shh,” Nocte quieted gently. “It’s okay now.”
“I-I th-thought-t,” the girl shivered, her face in Nocte’s neck.
“S’okay,” Nocte said, watching the bus roll away and the man still on the ground. He hadn’t known what had struck him, for just as soon as he was down, she had unsummoned the cwn annwns and the imp. He never had the chance to stand before she was gone with the girl.
Poor sucker.
Only entertainment.
“Let’s go shopping, okay?” Nocte enquired softly.
Chantée nodded, unable to speak. They both knew that the man had been bad news, and it was precisely what Nocte told Alex that night. She waited until Chantée went to bed before taking out the partially eaten cake out to cut herself another slice. The talk needed something sweet to counter the bitterness.
“Remember when someone tried to take Chantée at Siren’s concert?” Nocte asked.
Alex looked up from one of his paper charms on the front door and shot her a look. “You mean:you?”
She rolled her eyes and cut a chunk of the cake with her fork. “I mean a guy. Not me, but a man, remember?”
He only nodded, going back to his charms.
“Well,” she said, “he was waiting for Chantée after school.”
Alex spun so fast that he slipped and fell to the floor with a bam.
Nocte chewed and swallowed the cake at her leisure.
“What?!” he gaped from the floor, using the door to push himself back onto his feet.
“Yeah,” she said conversationally. “He was gonna grab her, but I got there first.”
Alex looked ready to die.
“By the way,” she continued casually. “When are your friends coming over again?”
He straightened and smoothed out his shirt, as if that would gloss over his “moment” back there. “I’m not too sure myself, but soon. I know they’ll be coming soon.”
Nocte licked the last crumbs from her plate and nodded. “Good.”
Good. They could use all the help they could get.
#
Two nights later, Nocte didn’t understand why she was awake. It hadn’t been a nightmare. It hadn’t been a nightmare for a long time. She brought her wrist up and ran her index finger over the charm bracelet, the rough weave prickling across the fragile crevices of her fingerprint. It held firm, unbending, unrelenting, uncompromised, and thus explaining that it hadn’t been a nightmare that had woke her in the middle of the night. But it didn’t explain what had.
Her eyes moved to the clock. It was two in the morning and she should be asleep. There was no reason as to why she was awake. She was not thirsty. She was not hungry. She did not need to pee. There hadn’t been a nightmare. She placed her hands back under the blanket for warmth. There was salt on the sills. The doors and windows were locked. The charms were on alert. Her ruins were installed. Most importantly, Alex and Chantée were both safe and sound asleep in the bedroom. She could hear their even breathing from behind the door and it did not feel like any of them were to wake anytime soon.
There was no reason for her to be awake.
And yet, when she closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep… she just couldn’t. There was this nagging feeling at the back of her head that told her to stay awake, that told her that there was something strange in the air. But when she stretched her senses to probe the area, nothing seemed out of place or awry. Nothing was wrong.
Nothing.
Turning her back on the glass door, Nocte firmly closed her eyes yet again and forced her breathing to slow. Agitated, she cleared her thoughts and pushed herself to drift. Slowly, extremely slow because of the tension she felt, she began to sink… began to doze… began to-
She shot up from the couch.
Something was off.
Someone was on the roof.
She was out the door in a flash, disregarding her glasses as she took to the stairs at an alarming rate. In what had to be a world record, every nerve in her body immediately heightened and spilled over the brim. Her sense of sight magnified, touch sensitive, hearing susceptible, taste perceptive and smell overpowering. She felt like a werewolf on a full moon, or a vampire on bloodlust, like the animal and the more primitive part of her had taken over, where instincts ruled prime as she flung open the door to the roof.
The moon and stars were a far blur in the night without her lenses, but Nocte could still make out the distinct shape of a person standing on the roof. He was paralyzed, she could tell. He had not foreseen her magic web and was thus caught. He was an idiot, Nocte decided.
Carefully, she moved forward, her bare feet stinging at the rough pebbles on the roof. She waited for another to show up — the man couldn’t be stupid enough to act alone. But as she neared the intruder, she felt her heart beat faster, and faster, and faster. His features became clearer with each step she took, and she felt herself rushing forward to prove her suspicions.
No.
It couldn’t be.
Blond hair.
Green eyes.
That natural good-guy aura…
She stopped just short of a metre from him, not believing what she was seeing. Out of everyone, out of all the heroes on Erisire, she did not, never expected it to be him. Perhaps his friend, but never him. He, too, was just as shocked to see her, his eyes wide, mouth agape, hair ruffled. He had always been, in her mind, neat and impossibly tidy. He had always been, in her mind, away from all the drama!
Doctor Lucent, the seventh son of the seventh son, a branch member of one of the four Hero Powerhouses on Erisire, made strong due to his timely (seventh of seventh) birth — made reliable due to his connection to the Yang Clan. Ever the compassionate one, Doctor Lucent hadn’t even been a possibility in Nocte’s mind to be matched with her. The Lucent Clan had always been the arch nemesis of the Paine Clan — and yet, all Nocte could think about was-
She grabbed Doctor by the collar, looked him straight in the eye and demanded:
“WHERE ARE YOUR KEYS!?”