Prince Alfie’s reply was entirely drowned out by the thunder that tagged along with another strike of lightning, which did the same thing but was brighter, with more forks, and I shrieked in surprise, cutting Prince Fallon off as I accidentally took a step back into his chest. He steadied me with his hands on my shoulders and I briefly registered how warm they were on my soaked T-shirt.
But they couldn’t remain there, and we didn’t hang around to see a third strike, as a roar and a scream—a proper scream—raced down the hallway, hitting us full-force in our backs and wrenching me out of his arms. It winded me, and my heart stopped, but we were gone, sprinting back to the entrance.
I could hear Prince Alfie yelling for his father, and followed them into the drawing room, where the princess was half collapsed in an armchair, her husband pacing the length of the room. A man dressed in the uniform of the Athenean king’s staff watched him nervously from a corner.
Prince Alfie glanced at each of them in turn. “What happened?”
His father wheeled around toward us, noticing our appearance. Even from a distance I could see his eyes. They were black. Black and then entirely white.
“Attacked!”
Prince Alfie stepped hesitantly toward his mother. “Who? Father, what are you talking about?”
“Violet Lee,” he grunted, as though it was troublesome for him to even tell us her name. Lady Elizabeth gasped; I could feel the air move as Prince Fallon swayed from behind my right shoulder.
“Last weekend,” said the man I now presumed to be an envoy. “At the Autumn Equinox ball, though the vamperic council only informed King Ll’iriad this past hour. The culprit was the heir to the earldom of Wallachia, a certain Ilta Crimson. He drank from and attempted to rape her—”
“That’s suicide!” Prince Alfie blurted. “She’s under the King and Crown’s Protection!”
“She insists he meant to murder her. And . . . and interrogations of his father suggest he did have a motivation. So yes, it was a suicide mission.”
He shifted uncomfortably under our heavy gazes. We were all utterly silent, save for the sound of Prince Lorent’s pacing.
“It seems he was a seer, and knew something about the future of the situation surrounding the girl. They are not letting his father leave the dimension or Kent, because he appears to possess information, too, but he refuses to tell—”
“Make him tell!” Prince Alfie blurted from the floor, where he was crouched beside his mother, tightly gripping her hand—she hadn’t moved since we had entered.
“Can’t,” Prince Fallon muttered, and everybody’s gaze shot to my shoulder. “The Terra forbid it. All seers and their confidants have the right to silence, unless called before the interdimensional council.”
“Charnt! I forgot that,” Prince Alfie muttered, managing to make his mother stir with his cursing.
“Should have done a politics degree,” Prince Fallon murmured in an undertone, irritated. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear. He raised his voice. “And they can’t call a council, because that would attract too much attention and Michael Lee would find out. And if that happens, then . . . that is right, isn’t it?” he directed at the envoy, who nodded glumly.
“This is why the gag orders were issued. News can’t get out, which means that you girls can’t relate this to anyone. Not even your families,” his uncle said. I hadn’t been planning to tell mine anyway. I doubted they would understand or care.
“What has happened to this Ilta Crimson then?” somebody said, but I wasn’t entirely sure who, as the front covers of an assortment of papers on the table caught my eye.
“He was killed.”
Violet Lee’s face stared up at the ceiling. They always used the same picture of her—the school photo. It was such an unnatural pose. You could see as far down as the school logo on her breast, but no farther.
“By whom?”
I mentally undressed her, tearing the blazer into strips as easily as if it were made of the paper she was printed on. Her hair contracted into curls, and legs grew from the stumps of the column text. They were quite long; she was taller than I was, and I could see how white they were because her dress had been hauled up.
“Prince Kaspar Varn.”
I blanched. I blanched and I ran.
I was in “my” room within seconds, gasping, leaning over the desk, gagging, gripping the edge for support because there was no strength left in my legs.
This cannot be happening.
Tears plummeted onto the papers, and my knees buckled as I sank into a crouch. My chest was wrenching and I toppled forward onto my knees, almost banging my head on the desk, but was saved by the arms that slipped around my waist.
“No. It’s not that bad.”
He pulled me upright and I fell into his chest, completely unable to support myself because the weight that had been gradually eroding had fallen right back onto my shoulders. “I-it is,” I forced between sobs. “It is!”
Stiffen that upper lip, child!
“No, it isn’t,” he cooed in Sagean into my hair, which was down and curly. “Your grandmother was a seer. One of the best. You have her gift. You could be as good as her.”
“No! I don’t want to be!” I wrenched out of his grip, unintentionally copying his switch in language, glaring at him. How could he understand? How can he say such things when he knows why she died? “And how can I be a seer? I’m not fully fledged yet!”
The people revere us, child.
I began pacing as he surveyed me, an increasingly pained expression forming on his face. Outside, the lightning continued, cutting my path into strips of light as I crossed the room.
“You know some people develop earlier.”
Parents watch their children grow old in the hope that they will have strong and auspicious enough visions to be prophets, like Contanal; or have the length of sight of Eaglen; the precision of Antae; even the power of chri’dom, the leader of the Extermino.
“Not this early!”
You are a great seer, too, Grandmother.
“But you’re not young enough to be panicking over this!” He made a lurch for me as I passed, but I jumped out of the way. I didn’t want him to touch me.
No, no, child! I am a cursed seer. We all are.
“Autumn Rose, please just stop!” He dived forward again and this time managed to grab the tops of my arms, securing me midstep. He gripped me tightly: I could feel his nails even through my cardigan. “I’m sorry! I just don’t want you to do anything stupid over this!”
A lump in my throat formed, and the sobs, which had abated with the anger, returned. “I don’t want to be a seer! They always get so caught up in politics, it will mean having to go to court and I’m not ready for that and—”
He looked like he might cry, too, and roughly, as though acting on an impulse, he pulled me into a tight hug, lifting me onto my tiptoes and squeezing my breath out. My mouth opened and I gasped into his T-shirt, getting a breath full of deodorant. I broke away, spluttering.
“Autumn? Are you okay? What happened?” I felt a hand on my back, and leaning over as my stomach convulsed, I could see his loafers moving as he guided me down onto one of the sofas.
“Your d-deodorant,” I choked. “T-too strong!”
His eyes bulged and his skin flared to match his russet scars from the collar up, right up to his hairline. “It’s Lynx,” he said apologetically, squeezing his muscled arms against his side and wrapping one across his front until his hand clutched at his shoulder. He took a small step back and his left calf hit the corner of the coffee table; he tripped, taking tiny steps to regain his balance. When he did, his eyes went bright pink and I had to stifle a giggle.
He ran a hand down the back of his head. “I . . . meant to do that.”
I couldn’t hold back a burst of laughter this time and hushed myself by pressing my knuckles to my lips, still grinning from behind my fingers. He cocked his head first to the left and then to the right, w
atching me with a bemused expression, before carefully navigating all furniture corners to perch down on the edge of the glass top of the coffee table, facing me. He was so close our knees were touching.
He reached forward and untucked my hair from behind my ear. It contracted into curls, because it was drying from the rain. “Your hair suits you when it’s curly.”
He smiled and retreated, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on his thighs. I had the desperate urge to place it back behind my ear but resisted.
“How are you feeling?” he asked as he placed his weight on his elbows.
“All right. I just . . .”
“Go on.”
“I don’t want to go back to court as a seer. People will expect so much of me, because of how good a seer my grandmother was. Her shadow is so large. She had so much control over her visions . . . and all I have ever seen is this Violet Lee girl. I’ll never be as good as her.” My head drooped and I screwed my eyes shut as I felt them sting with the threat of tears.
“You can’t say that. You’re about to turn sixteen, and already you’re seeing a massive event like this attack. I think you’re casting your own shadow over a lot of seers right now.”
“But at least they can control what they see. I have no choice but to watch horrible things, like . . . like . . .” I didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“Things?”
I finally looked up at him. He was still poised in exactly the same position, resting the weight of his torso on his elbows, his elbows on his thighs. This close, I could see that his tan was fading where the sleeves of his V-neck T-shirt—he always wore those—were slipping up. “Yes, things,” I whispered.
“Can I see?” He had snagged my gaze and wasn’t letting me go—it made it hard to contemplate refusing. “Please?” he added.
I had fended off intrusion into my mind for so long—I was surprised he hadn’t raised the matter sooner. Now he wanted to see the most private images, and though I had every confidence in the barriers I had built up over nine years, I was still afraid to let him in.
And yet . . . I closed my eyes and methodically moved from cavern to cavern, checking the chains and locks around the boxes in which I almost permanently kept the majority of my thoughts. Sweeping around, I brushed all emotions into the corners, away from where he would pry. Like dust, they puffed into a cloud, only eventually, and very reluctantly, settling where I wanted them. Satisfied, I drew up the dreams, arranging them chronologically.
Consciousnesses, even when safe within their mental barriers, have a scent, or a melody; something that makes them as easily identifiable as if you were directly looking at the person. His was no different. It was like a color wheel whirling before my eyes; it spun so fast the colors blurred and became an iridescent blue.
Yet there was a limit to what you could sense from behind a brick wall. Consciousnesses are easy enough to sense and identify, and, depending on familiarity, can be used to locate people. But from outside the barriers, the view is only skin-deep—like glancing at a person.
So when my barrier fell like drapes to the floor, and I found myself sucked completely unwillingly into his mind as he entered mine, it knocked the wind from my lungs. It was like stepping into another world.
Another world of rolling hills, diving and rising toward great ridges and mountains in the distance, full of trees, and white-capped waves, and blue skies. Behind, the plain gently sloped up toward a ravine of white cliffs, aging to gray. Sat atop them were yellowing blockhouses: they looked disused, but I knew not to be fooled. I knew not to be fooled by the whole scene.
It was his home, Athenea, or at least the very farthest reaches of it—with a few slight alterations. Piled around the bases of trees were trunks, some upturned, tattered, others neatly fitted together and treasured, many chained. Some lay with their lids thrown wide open—from one nearby I could hear the echoes of our conversation about Amanda and from another I caught a glimpse of images that illustrated what he had told me.
Yet the chaos was an illusion, too. It was a place on lockdown. His thoughts and emotions were nowhere to be seen or felt, with only one exception: his exuberance at a scene he clearly loved very dearly. It was intoxicating, and I drank it in as it warmed me from my head down, brightening the shadows in my own mind and dissolving the weight that was always trying to crush me.
It couldn’t last. I felt him come to the end of my last dream, which reeled along in my mind in my distraction, and knew I would have to withdraw—it would be rude not to.
Opening my eyes, I found his body mirroring my own position: very upright, arms stiff and gripping the coffee table (mine gripped the edge of the sofa), eyes blinking rapidly to adjust to the real light.
“You saw the London Bloodbath,” he muttered in disbelief. “In hindsight?”
I shook my head slightly. “No, minutes before it happened,” I replied, just as quietly.
He ran a hand down the back of his hair again. “Miarba,” he swore, then froze, his hand stiffening at the top of his neck and his eyes bulging. “I am so sorry! I never usually curse.” He averted his eyes as his arm gradually slid down and flopped into his lap. His gaze followed it and he laughed nervously. “Honest,” he added, his eyes suddenly bouncing back up to me.
Maybe I was still tipsy on his vitality, because I felt my cheeks warm. That’s cute. That is very cute. “I believe you.” I paused. “But you can’t tell anyone about my dreams. Please. I have the right to privacy.” The insistence in my voice against the backdrop of the heavy rain and thunder sounded pitiful, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d simply refused what should have been a demand.
“I’ll try, Duchess.” He reached up and untucked my hair from where I had lodged it behind my ear again. “But you know if Violet Lee or any—”
All of a sudden he jumped up and I whipped around in my seat as the door banged shut, wildly blushing at the fact I had actually run from the room downstairs. Prince Alfie was standing in front of the frame, and his cousin obviously recognized the look on the other’s face—as did I. Their expressions were near-identical.
“What’s wrong?”
“More bad news I’m afraid,” the elder prince replied, rubbing the side of his head with his palm. Prince Fallon’s lips parted, and my stomach clenched as the weight dropped back onto me for the second time in minutes. “Extermino again.”
My breathing halted, as all the sense of safety that I had gradually begun to rebuild after their attack in the summer and the Atheneas’ arrival evaporated.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Autumn
No. No way. Absolutely not.” The prince’s voice rang down the hallway as I headed toward the morning room, where a very early breakfast was waiting. Six forty-five. I haven’t been up this early in months. I could hardly walk in a straight line I was so tired, and I hadn’t bothered to straighten my hair as I didn’t have the energy to summon my magic. In short, I needed coffee, badly.
“You can’t make me! I’m not a child anymore, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Strictly speaking, you are a minor until January,” an unfamiliar voice—male, with a Canadian accent—said. I froze midstep. I wasn’t in any hurry to meet anybody outside of the family and Lady Elizabeth, and the incredulous tone of the other person told me he was no servant.
“Don’t be pedantic.”
“Better punctilious than dead, don’t you think?”
“Don’t be melodramatic.”
“Fallon: your father, your uncle and aunt, my father, and I all think this is necessary for your safety. Does that not mean something to you?”
“No! I came here to avoid all of this!”
I closed my eyes with a resigned, noiseless sigh before edging down the corridor toward the door, peering through the crack because it was ajar. Prince Fallon stood with his back to me, and I was alarmed to see he was still dressed in a loose T-shirt and sweatpants when we had to leave in less than half an hour
to get to school on time.
All of a sudden, I felt the rush of multiple consciousnesses slam against my own and begin to wrestle—violently and unrelentingly—with my barriers, until I felt the cooling embrace of Fallon’s consciousness. With that, the intruders pulled back slowly, like retreating waves, dragging a disturbing amount of my energy with them.
I was left in no doubt as to the identity of the people attendant on the prince.
“Autumn,” he called aloud. Gingerly, I stepped into the room. There was no point hiding the fact I had been just the other side of the door.
Hovering behind the prince, I kept as close as I could to the table laden with food and a large jug of coffee. Three men were dotted along the far wall, leaning against the ledge that ran the length of the window, dominating the room. A fourth stood perfectly upright among tall vases of flowers, dwarfed by his height. As I emerged on the other side of the prince, he unstuck and came forward, bowing with the other three.
“My lady,” he greeted me warmly, and to my utter surprise took my left hand in his own and kissed the finger where a ring would be placed. “How beautiful you have grown to be.” As he straightened, I blushed, less at his compliment and more at the fact he obviously knew me while I did not know him.
But I did know what he was; what they all were. The Athan Cu’die. The royal bodyguard.
They are everything the Athenea need them to be. They are as happy in the foreground as they are in the background; they will deal with the pomp and circumstance and they will act as normally as any other member of the staff. All guards and military personnel, from a messenger to the lord high admiral, are directly answerable to them and their leader, Adalwin. Most are born into the role; they train as children alongside their royal highnesses, because it fosters feudal loyalty. They would die for their charges, if called upon to do so.
The prince spared me the embarrassment of trying to reply by rounding on me. “Autumn, you’ll agree with me. Having bodyguards is stupid, isn’t it?”
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