Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel

by Abigail Gibbs

  “I want to go home,” I said shakily. It didn’t sound like that was actually what I wanted. “I won’t leave my parents alone with the Extermino around.”

  “You told me over the weekend that your parents were in London until Thursday,” the prince called from behind the tree where the teachers were. He spoke in English, for which I heartily wanted to hex him. Suddenly, he was in front of me, the cherry blossoms settling in a circle around where my hands rested on the tabletop for support, as I arched away from them both. “Why are you lying?”

  He looked hurt, but I felt boxed in and could not look at anything except the bare tops of my feet after that. “I just want to go home.”

  “But you seemed so happy over the last few days.” Now his voice sounded hurt.

  “I want to go home,” I repeated. Is that so hard to understand?

  “My lady, perhaps you do not understand, but things are different now. You cannot just do what you want. It is not your choice anymore,” Edmund continued. He really was very tall. Very imposing.

  “Yes it is!” I sidestepped along the bench, needing to escape the enclosure, but the prince was quicker and thrust his arm out, trapping me.

  “The third fas. Loyalty to Athenea. I’m ordering you to come back with us.”

  My lips parted. “Are you being serious?”

  “Deadly,” he murmured. The movement of his lips unwittingly drew my gaze toward them, and perhaps because my lips had parted, he was doing the same. He was so close his breath blew a few strands of my hair across my face. I wanted to brush them back, but there was no room between us to slide a hand. Instead, he did it for me, using the hand that had shut me in, but he did not tuck the wisps behind my ears as I always did. “I don’t want you in danger.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he confirmed, still not raising his voice above a whisper.

  I kept watching his lips for another second, then threw myself to the left, marching straight past the cherry tree and its plaque to Kurt Holden, parting the crowd with ease.

  “Okay, show is over, folks, into the hall. We need to get you sent home.” I glanced back to see Mr. Sylaeia’s instruction go ignored by the students, who stood stock-still to let the prince pass in his pursuit of me.

  “Autumn! Don’t be like this.”

  I tripped down the stairs and raced through the covered entrance we had treaded barely an hour before. “Be like what, Your Highness?”

  “I don’t know . . . just don’t throw a tantrum like you’re a spoiled brat.”

  I choked on my own words, glancing back again. He was keeping pace with me a few meters behind. Edmund followed at a distance. “That . . . that is complete hypocrisy coming from the guy who would have happily ignored the fifth fas.” I held up five fingers and then thrust my arms out in frustration as I started to cross the parking lot. “Strict adherence to the Terra Treaties, of which a major part is guardianship of human youth!”

  I heard his hands slap against his sides. “It’s not that simple for me, and you know it! And it shouldn’t be for you, either. You didn’t even think twice about throwing yourself into the arms of the Extermino for a group of humans!”

  I whirled around and lodged my hands just above my hips. “Oh, and our lives are worth more than theirs, are they?”

  He teetered to a stop just in front of me and ran a hand down the back of his head. “That’s not what I meant.” He sighed. I waited for him to explain what he did mean. “You are such an enigma,” he eventually said, cocking his head to one side. “One week you impulsively try to blast Valerie Danvers from here to Vancouver and now you are more than happy to lay your life down for her.”

  “I didn’t just do it for her,” I mumbled.

  “Don’t be pedantic.”

  “Don’t be incorrigible.”

  He let out a sudden short laugh. “You are really quite cute when you’re irritable.”

  My mouth fell open yet again and I shrieked in displeasure, storming away toward the bus stop.

  “Duchess,” he sang out. “Where are you going? We are in a giant snow dome and you’ve left your bag behind.”

  I glanced behind to see him biting on his lower lip as it quivered, his hands stuffed down into the pockets of his colored jeans as he practically bounced along.

  That is it! Taking a few running steps, I leaped into the air. A shield there might be, but it stretched far beyond the perimeters of even the primary school, and I could still put distance between me and him.

  “No, no, no! Don’t do that!” he shouted after me, and I felt his own magic lift him into the air, followed by a reprimand from Edmund.

  It seemed logical to head in the direction of the river, but the shield only extended to the road on that side, and I would not get far. Instead, I again retraced our movement on the way in, using the other road out of Dartmouth as a guide. I wouldn’t be able to get far, and he was a lot fitter than me and catching up; for an absurd moment, I considered dropping down and hiding out in the girls’ locker room of the town’s sports center, the last large building within the shield. Either way, I was going to have to descend.

  But as I passed the roundabout and was picking a spot where I could hit the ground running, a powerful curse hit me in the back. I would have screamed as it shunted me off course, but it had knocked the wind from my lungs. It wasn’t enough to pluck me out of the air, yet, as I discovered not a second later, it was enough for the prince to catch up and collide with me. His arms wound around my back and his momentum carried us right over the road and hedgerow and into the sports center soccer field. Then the stem through which his magic flowed was clamped and we were freefalling; despite the pain clutching at my bottom rib, I managed to scream, letting the sound taper off as we slowed on a cushion of air. Though he was clearly in control, I still glared at him as we came to a stop so close to the ground that my dangling hair raked the grass. He ignored me and lifted one of his hands from between my shoulder blades to cradle the back of my head, protecting it as he let us down the last foot. I came to a gentle rest, utterly flush to the ground while he straddled my hips.

  When it became apparent he was quite comfortable there, I tried to roll over and throw him off. He was having none of that and grabbed my wrists, pinning them in one of his hands above my head.

  “Your Highness, I demand you let me go!”

  “You . . . demand?” he questioned slowly, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head slightly. He was using his mischievous smile; it was so potent, his dimples appeared again.

  “Yes, I do!” I insisted. “This breaches the Terra!”

  “Correct. But I’ll let you go as soon as I know you are going to come with us, and you are safe,” he retorted, springing up onto all fours and leaning over me. I was provided with an involuntary view of his chest: I could see his scars creasing his shirt, and where his ribs ended, and the way the material really made his muscles show up—pecs, Gwen always called them.

  Abruptly, I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. His deodorant smelled different. Like chocolate.

  As soon as I had recognized the scent, he was sitting up straight again, resting on my stomach, and with yet another shriek of frustration I realized what he had done. My arms were bound together not by his hand now but by restraints, which also appeared around my ankles as I tried to summon my magic to destroy them. Nothing happened. My blood did not run hot, and the spells would not trip to the front of my mind.

  “How dare you? That’s degree-level magic!”

  He threw back his head and laughed, and then placed his hands on either side of my shoulders so his face was level with mine. He continued to chuckle.

  “What?! I don’t find this funny!”

  “It’s not! Honest,” he protested, clearing his face to appease me. “But this is the Autumn Rose I remember from my childhood. It’s good to see her—”

  “Earlier you said I was having a tantrum! Are you insinuating that I was a spoiled child?”
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  He looked stumped and his lips moved wordlessly. “I . . . oh . . . well . . . you were very . . . independent.” He nodded as though to reassure himself that was the most tactful response.

  I was about to retort when somebody cleared his throat from beside us.

  The prince grinned sheepishly. “Hi, Edmund!” With that, he clambered off me, standing up.

  The older man pointed at me. “You . . . are . . .” He couldn’t even finish that particular sentence. “Cars will be here in two minutes. And you’re staying at Burrator until it’s safe. No arguments.”

  I brought my tethered hands over my head and tried to place them on the ground so I could get up. It didn’t work. “Well, in that case, you will have to go via my house, as I need to collect some more clothes. No arguments.”

  The prince bit back a snort of laughter.

  Edmund didn’t look so amused. “Cast what you need.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know where my spare uniform has been put, and plainly I need it.”

  He grunted his reply and I took that as a yes, noticing, even with my limited field of view, that we were drawing a crowd at the field entrance—mainly employees from the sports center, who were all looking up at the shield.

  “At least help me up,” I told the prince. He complied, taking my hands and pulling me into a sitting position. Apparently, I was not to be trusted to stand up, and he flopped down behind me and rested his back on mine so that I could sit comfortably. I drew my knees up and rested my bound hands on them.

  “Hey, Duchess,” he said after a while.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Are you going to start calling me Fallon now?”

  I closed my eyes and sighed quietly. He had noted my lapse in the mist. “Perhaps.”

  He laughed again. How can he be in such high spirits after everything that has happened, both over the weekend and in the last hour? In fact, how can I be so calm?

  True to Edmund’s word, the cars were only minutes away, and at the roar of the engines, I was afforded the privilege of being allowed to walk again. As soon as the door slammed behind me, the restraints around my arms disappeared, and outside, the dome faded. With its withering came rain. Hard, unforgiving rain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Autumn

  Somebody had clearly fought their way into the English block, as my bag was sitting on the floor of the car. I dove for my phone and had to suppress a groan of frustration when I realized the battery had died. So when we pulled up outside my house, I ran straight out before Edmund could even finish his sentence about being quick. He followed me in, leaving the driver to turn the car around.

  “I know it’s small,” I said the minute I got through the door. Edmund’s eyes, which had been wandering, briefly met mine as I kicked my shoes off, and then went back to eyeing every corner. I excused him in my mind on the grounds that eyeing things was his job.

  Upstairs I plugged my phone in, threw my damp jumper in the wash, and emptied my weekend bag out onto the bed, starting to throw fresh clothes and underwear into it. By the time I had returned from my hunt to find my other uniform, my phone was buzzing with message after message. There were four texts from Tammy alone, three from Tee, and one each from Gwen and Christy; Jo had sent two short, stern e-mails demanding to know why I hadn’t answered her novel of a message from Saturday. I quickly sent conciliatory replies to Tee and Tammy, telling them I was going back to the prince’s—Fallon’s—place, and then sent a near-identical one to my father. I didn’t mention the Extermino. No doubt my mother would be annoyed at “my” decision, but I needed to tell them so they didn’t try ringing the landline.

  When I was done, I took a deep breath, sinking onto the bed. I squeezed my eyes shut, and then opened the Facebook app. As soon as my news feed appeared, I went straight to my friends list and typed in “Nathan Rile.” The three bars that indicated loading blinked on and off, on and off, on and off, and with every pause my hand tightened around the phone.

  No match has been found.

  “What?” I breathed at my phone. Maybe he changed his profile name. I tried Nate and Nathaniel. I tried guessing his middle name. I checked the whole list, searching out all the surnames beginning with R. I tried a regular search, in case he had deleted me. There was nothing. But it was only when I went to my profile and scrolled down to July (where I knew he had posted a message wishing me a good summer in London) that I actually registered what had happened. The message was gone. And so was he.

  “My lady, would it be possible to leave sometime in the next day?” Edmund snapped up the stairs.

  “I’m coming!” I shouted back, looking one last time at the line between posts where Nathan’s message should have been, then threw my phone and the charger into my school bag and a few books and my toiletries into the larger bag. I would have to change when I got there.

  Bolting down, I cast away the larger bag, locked the door behind us, and then cast my school bag with the keys in it into my room at Burrator. When I got back into the car, the prince—Fallon—was fiddling with his own phone, though I doubted it was with Facebook. Royalty didn’t have personal profiles, as my friends from Kable had found out when they had tried to Facebook him.

  He saw me looking and handed the phone over. The screen was dominated by an article from Arn Etas, titled “Suspected Lee–Pierre Pact Remains Unconfirmed by Interdimensional Council; Human Contingent Refuses Support to British Government in Second Dimension.”

  I scanned the article while we waited for Edmund, who was outside talking to Richard and his sister. It was much of the same with the humans. In each different country, in each different dimension, members would be elected to the Inter to form a single representative body for that country, regardless of dimension, and together, all the representatives formed the human contingent. They had the same voting weight as any other dark-being kingdom, despite being larger, but if they chose to throw their lot in with Michael Lee, one of the few humans of his dimension who knew about our existence (and only because of his position, because the ignorant humans didn’t vote in his dimension), then we would be in trouble. Thankfully, none, not even the British contingent, had, because of his involvement with suspect groups like the slayers and, according to the article, rogue vampires.

  “When did rumors about Pierre and Lee get out?” I asked Fallon.

  “No idea. Old news now anyway,” he replied in my mind. “We could have a Pierre-Extermino pact on our hands.”

  “Perhaps today was just a one-off,” I suggested, trying to be uncharacteristically optimistic. He looked at me like my scars had gone bright blue. I grimaced and handed him his phone back. As he closed the app, I could see that the screen was topped with the words FALLON—PERSONAL (SECURE). I was reminded, quite suddenly, of his explanation of why he had come here: the quiet life.

  I watched him tuck the phone into his pocket and Edmund get back into the car. He couldn’t truly escape who he was.

  I sighed, buckling up before leaning my head against the window. Fallon had withdrawn and I let Nathan emerge from his box in my mind. Never mind a pact. How about the Extermino turning humans? Stories of humans becoming Sage were so rare . . . it was dangerous. It was absurd.

  I knew that at some point, I was going to have to tell them about that, but for now I was content to create a compelling argument to convince them—I wouldn’t believe me if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

  Closing those very eyes, I found Nathan’s face staring back. As I watched, vines crept across his face and settled as clawed fingers across his cheeks. They were not a work of art, like a true Sage’s scars. They were poison ivy. He had been tainted. Tainted gray.

  It was not an image I could shift, and even when I fell asleep, he would not leave me be.

  I awoke when arms slid their way under the backs of my knees and my shoulders, and I felt a few drops of rain nestle themselves in my hair. I let my eyes flutter open only to close them again when I caught a glimps
e of an off-white shirt and russet scars. I spent most of the journey inside trying to fake sleep and work out why I was fighting the urge to let my eyes go pink.

  “What is going on? Alfie and Lisbeth came back early, they said something about Extermino . . . Lords of Earth, what happened to Autumn?!”

  “Relax, Aunt, she’s just asleep,” Fallon said. My head was resting on his shoulder in the hollow beneath his jaw, and I could feel the tension in his throat adjust as he spoke. It made something burn in my chest.

  “You will have to wake her up. You need to tell us what happened,” I heard Prince Lorent say.

  “Give me a minute then. And have some chamomile tea ordered. Trust me, we need it.” The footsteps retreated and I heard a door open and close before I was placed on a chair. He sank down into the cushions beside me.

  “Autumn, I’m sorry, but it’s time to wake up.”

  Then move me off your shoulder, I thought. Nevertheless, I wriggled a little, opened my eyes, and slowly sat up, taking in our surroundings. We were on the sofa in the drawing room, which was empty. No fire had been lit and the room was still and cold, and the gentle tapping of rain on the windows, the ledges of which very nearly brushed the floor, didn’t help to warm the place up.

  “Hey there,” Fallon said, placing a hand on my shoulder. I looked at him, bleary-eyed. “Sweet dreams?”

  “No. Not particularly.”

  He removed his hand. “Did you have a vision?”

  I shook my head and flattened the bloody pleats of my skirt. Thankfully, none of the blood had passed any higher than the hem of my blouse, so nobody had questioned how it had got there. It just looked like it was from my leg.

  “You can get changed once we have explained what happened. My father . . .” he waved his hand, “I mean, the king, will need to know about this.”

  I nodded. He leaned back into the sofa and closed his eyes, ignoring the bustling as maids and manservants entered and the fire was lit and the tea poured. When Chatwin came over with the tea, I thanked him and avoided eye contact, because I knew he kept glancing at my skirt. When he had gone, I eyed the liquid in the cup skeptically. It was golden and looked like something I would never drink.