Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel

by Abigail Gibbs

  “Fallon, you do know who you are, don’t you? You’re an interdimensional royal celebrity hosting a party at your mansion. Everybody is going to come.”

  He rested an elbow on the counter and placed his cheek in his hand. “Well, when you put it like that . . .” His smile—cheeky enough—turned million-dollar, proving my exact point. “My siblings have hosted parties. I know what they are like, and can get like. But I’ve got everything covered,” he continued, straightening up and placing his hands down on all the envelopes. “Your early birthday party will run without a hitch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Fallon

  There was a spring in my step when I got back to Burrator. I could finally banish the ugly green-eyed monster for good, due to Edmund’s explanation of his closeness to Autumn. The party preparations were going well. And Autumn was happy. Not even her vision could take away from her growing strength.

  I knocked on Alfie’s door, expecting him to tell me to go the hell back to Athenea, so was pleasantly surprised when both he and Lisbeth called for me to come in. I found them both in his reception room, Lisbeth wrapped in a blanket on the sofa with her feet poking out onto Alfie’s lap. He was painting her toenails.

  He briefly looked up to appraise the grin I had plastered on my face. “Autumn? Just let me do this little toe and then you can start babbling.”

  Lisbeth shook her head with a smile, paused the movie playing on the massive plasma TV, and offered me a slab of chocolate, which they were surrounded by. I hovered, watching the domestic scene with interest and envy. Seeing Alfie participate in pampering was nothing new, because he had a steady hand—his minor had been in art—but seeing him do it so willingly and lovingly just reaffirmed in my mind how much he cared for her. It was strange as well to see Lisbeth looking so feminine, with her hair loose and framing an easy smile. It was a simple kind of pretty. An approachable, rosy-cheeked kind of pretty. Nothing like Autumn’s regal, otherworldly, out-of-your-league beauty, which scared most people away.

  Alfie finished and left for the bathroom with the polish remover for his hands, and Lisbeth cleared space for me to sit down.

  “Lovesick,” she stated with a knowing smile as I flopped down and buried my head in my hands.

  That was all she needed to do to open the sluice gates on a rant. “I’m so into her, and I don’t even think she notices,” I began, talking much faster than the optimum for coherence. “It’s so strong, she’s all I think about, and not all of those thoughts are polite,” I admitted through clenched teeth, and I could see Lisbeth was forcing herself to calmly nod, when all she probably wanted to do was laugh like Alfie from the other room.

  “And they called it puppy love . . .” he sang in a booming baritone between heaving guffaws, coming out to tidy the coffee table.

  I glared at him, and if I hadn’t been such a nice cousin I would have pointed out that he had been exactly the same the first time he met Lisbeth. Instead, I continued to pour my heart out. “And yet I have no idea how to act on it. What to say to her, what to do, how to even try not to be clumsy around her . . .”

  “Not possible,” Alfie replied, dropping down in the seat to the left and stretching his arms out to rest on top of the feather-filled, perfect-for-slouching sofa cushions. “You are inherently clumsy. It’s incurable.”

  Lisbeth crushed several pieces of chocolate wrapper into a ball and threw them at Alfie. “You should be yourself, Fal. And if that includes being clumsy, then be clumsy. She can only love you for you.”

  “Yes, but being me means being a prince! And you must have noticed how averse she is to everything House of Athenea.” My head dropped into my hands again. “She must be the only girl in this dimension who feels like that, and I fall for her.”

  Lisbeth brought a hand up to rest on my shoulder and rubbed my back in slow circles. It was comforting, and even though I wished it was somebody else’s hand, it helped me rewind to how I had felt entering the room.

  “At least you know she isn’t friends with you just because you’re royal.” She sighed. “I think you should tell her how you feel.”

  I raised my head in horror and Alfie immediately caught my eye, shaking his head discreetly as Lisbeth plowed on.

  “It will put an end to this limbo. There is a risk she won’t feel the same way,” she admitted, yet the knowing smile was back. “But I don’t think that’s likely. Even if she doesn’t now, once she knows she might develop feelings. It happened to me after Alfie declared his undying love over the summer.”

  She leaned over the arm of the sofa so she faced Alfie, and then half turned back, frowning. “Uh-oh. I know that look. Private prince time.” She tapped her toenails and, satisfied, got up to kiss my cousin. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “The bed is going to be cold tonight,” Alfie sung in halfhearted baritone, watching her close the door with the blanket and chocolate tucked under her arm.

  I thought I should apologize and opened my mouth to do so, but he got up and retrieved two bottles of beer from his mini-fridge. Casting a quick spell that sent the metal caps flying, he resumed his place on the other sofa.

  “You’re turning into an alcoholic.” I laughed, but neither of us missed the uneasiness in the way I abruptly cut off. I took the other beer and gripped the neck tightly. Everybody copes differently.

  “What Lisbeth said about being yourself was great, but you shouldn’t reveal how you feel unless you’re absolutely sure Autumn will return the sentiment. There is too much at stake for you to screw up—”

  “I know.”

  “We need her. We’re fucked if she isn’t on our side.”

  He slammed the bottle down on the glass table and the sound chased my intake of breath. His eyes were a milky white.

  “I’m scared, Al,” I blurted before I could censor my words. Feeling a fool, I added, “Not just of telling Autumn. Of everything.”

  He sighed, picking the bottle back up and coming to sit down next to me. He rested his arms on his knees and stared blankly at our reflections in the glass. We could be brothers. Even our thoroughly white, worried eyes matched.

  “We knew what we were getting ourselves into when we came here.” He sighed.

  “I had no choice. Father made me.”

  “Fal, if nothing progresses with Autumn by Christmas, I’m going to move into the townhouse in London. With Lisbeth.”

  I took a few sips of the beer. It was horrible.

  “This hellhole is sucking the life right out of me, and it’s unfair to make her travel down from Hertfordshire every week.”

  I took a few more sips.

  “I’m not as strong as you. I won’t be fate’s pawn. I’m sick of this chess game. Of the waiting. And I won’t drag Lisbeth into it, either.”

  I finished the bottle off in two gulps. “I’m only this strong because I have to be by her side. I don’t have a choice.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he chuckled, getting me another beer.

  “Al, she had a vision of Kaspar Varn and Violet Lee having sex.”

  He had his back to me, and made no reply other than a very quiet grunt, which might have just been a response to a cap hitting him in the forehead.

  He lay down on his original sofa of choice, head propped up on the arm and his legs flailing over the edge. He raised his fresh bottle. “To English girls!”

  I snatched the other bottle from where he had placed it on the table. “To English girls!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Autumn

  The party did not go without a hitch, because the small matter of politics got in the way. For the first time since Queen Carmen of the vamperic kingdom had died, Varnley called an interdimensional meeting.

  And for the first time since my own grandmother had died, I found that I longed to be sixteen, so I could take up my place on the Inter.

  But, I reassured myself while making yet another kitchen visit to approve of the preparations, parties don’t orga
nize themselves.

  Fallon, Alfie, the duke, and the duchess were all gone, and Lisbeth wasn’t returning from London until the afternoon, so I was left in charge.

  And that meant bolting around like a startled horse, constantly bumping into Chatwin and finding myself firing off a series of yes/no answers, before moving on to have him ask the same questions ten minutes later, wearing the same rattled expression, carrying the same stack of silver trays balanced with champagne flutes.

  If I had known throwing a party Athenean-style was this stressful, I would have offered Fallon a helping hand earlier.

  The grandfather clock in the duke of Victoria’s study—which more or less kept time—struck on my way back from the basement kitchens, telling me it was more or less one o’clock, and with an exasperated sigh I realized I had been awake for over thirty-six hours. Initially, I had thought my newfound ability to sleep only half the nights in the week like the rest of my kind was the most wonderful thing to happen to me since Fallon had invented black coffee laced with maple syrup, but now I wasn’t so sure. The London Bloodbath had made rocking a vamperic look very un-vogue.

  “Oh my, the place is spotless!” I heard the princess say from the entrance.

  With a horrified look at my midriff, I tore at the apron strings fastened around my waist and threw the maid’s clothing into the hands of the nearest servant. Then I made a dash for the entrance hall, patting my hair and distantly hearing myself snapping something managerial—like “Walk with me!”—to Chatwin when he appeared again.

  I skidded into a curtsy to find that, with the exception of the duchess of Victoria’s polite exclamation, my efforts had gone either unnoticed or unappreciated. And coming up the steps with what seemed like no intention of pausing to remove his light tan jacket, at odds with the regalia underneath, was Fallon, who headed straight for me and dragged me toward the back of the house. Edmund followed silently.

  “Last night, Kaspar Varn and Violet Lee slept together,” Fallon growled, telling me he hadn’t had much sleep, either.

  That explained the pointed expressions of the older Athenea, but I still struggled with the concept. Never mind the fact that I had seen such an event no less than three times—the latest, hours before, apparently in real time, fully awake, with a headache that had Chatwin ordering all sorts of spell-infused brews.

  “Last night? I thought the Inter met at Varnley? Surely they didn’t . . . right under the noses of . . . well . . . everyone?”

  “The meeting moved to Athenea in the evening. The human contingent refused to meet at Varnley and apparently King Vladimir didn’t want Violet Lee out too late,” Edmund filled in from behind us in such a dry tone that his disapproval was unmistakable.

  “They took her out of Varnley?”

  “The Inter ruled she be kept in the dark, remember?” Fallon retorted. “And they haven’t changed their minds on that. Moreover, my father hasn’t changed his mind. It was about the only thing anybody could agree on.”

  He slumped against the arm of a basket chair in the conservatory and I stepped onto the terra-cotta floor to join him, well aware of his condemnation of this particular choice of the Inter’s. I was inclined to agree. Being given the knowledge of our existence is the least Violet Lee deserves. And it could aid her choice on turning, too.

  I found a comfortable nook in the plump back of a sofa and eyed both men. They were clearly exhausted—Fallon’s weight was making the chair slowly slide away from beneath him, and Edmund looked hungry enough to reach right down into the carefully regulated indoor koi pond and sample homemade sushi, despite his devout veganism.

  “Look, just . . .” Fallon trailed off and opened his mind up, flooding it with images. He didn’t even bother to conjure a picturesque landscape. I slowly made my way among them. It took me fifteen minutes, but there was a lot to absorb. Like how Fallon had met the infamous Violet Lee, and admired her strength; touched her neck. How, with an emotion-clearing shake of my head, the entire Inter had been witness to Kaspar Varn’s outburst. How his father had roared upon learning of his latest bedfellow, forbidden them to touch. How he had sent his son to Romania, decided to punish Violet Lee by making her the sacrifice in their annual Ad Infinitum Ball.

  Upon this image, I withdrew. This was not a good development. I had witnessed what the entire world would now learn of, but what I had seen had been something that could give us all hope: Violet Lee showing affection for a vampire. This wasn’t just him seducing her; she had willingly gone to bed with him, I was sure of it, and that meant she might consider turning.

  I told Fallon and Edmund this.

  Fallon seemed uninspired. “I don’t think we’ve got time to wait for her to fall in love with him.”

  I stood a little straighter. “Why not?”

  Edmund left the pond and stared straight at the prince. The latter shook his head. “She’s seen it already.” I folded my arms. “The meeting was called because the vamperic council suspects that Michael Lee has gained an excuse to essentially launch a war against the vampires in his daughter’s name.”

  Hence the middle-of-the-night, three-hour (and, frankly, rude) warning everybody had been given of the meeting. Varnley were probably terrified. I raised an eyebrow. “And the excuse is . . .?”

  “Prophecy. One of ours, to be precise.”

  “Which one?”

  Fallon threw his arms up in an exaggerated shrug with the same sudden burst of energy he had used to drag me in. “That’s what they hoped we could tell them.”

  “There have been rumors about the Prophecy of the Heroines,” I prompted, otherwise drawing a blank.

  Fallon shrugged.

  “And it gets even worse,” Edmund sighed.

  Fallon looked utterly surprised, like the idea of things getting worse was as ludicrous as that of a human girl being held political prisoner by creatures she had grown up thinking were mythical.

  “I talked with the head guard at Varnley this morning. Kaspar Varn and Violet Lee were pursued by two slayers on their return, and there is reasonable evidence to suggest those two slayers were Giles Randa and Abria Pierre.”

  I stopped leaning against the sofa. The slayers who had been with the Extermino! One look at Edmund’s face told me I was right.

  But Fallon picked up on something more. “Pierre?” He said it with such venom that I felt the need to find support for my back again.

  “Yes. Abria Pierre is the fifteen-year-old daughter of John Pierre and, since the killing of Claude Pierre in the Bloodbath, the next leader of the clan. She no doubt seeks revenge on the Varns for her brother’s death.” Edmund took a long breath to replenish the one he had expended in his, as always, thorough explanation. “More importantly, this signals that what we experienced at Kable was definitely no fluke. The slayers were not rebels who have joined the Extermino. They are the flesh of Pierre, and are involved in Lee’s efforts to get his daughter back. They answer, it seems, to more than one master now.”

  “So it’s like a . . .” I searched around for some way of summarizing what I thought he was suggesting. “Interdimensional factional conspiracy?”

  Edmund raised an eyebrow. “Catchy. That is exactly what it is. Pierre, chri’dom, Lee, the rogue vampires, and probably this shady Crimson family have united. United while we are weak, divided, and in crisis over Violet Lee.”

  I wanted to tell him he was doing an extremely bad job of being a protective surrogate uncle at that moment. Putting all these worrying theories in my head was not going to help me organize a party effectively. Except they weren’t theories anymore. Someone in one of these breakaway groups had clearly discovered the maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and was exploiting it.

  Edmund, perhaps realizing that he had just horrified his two teenaged charges, hastily added: “But I can think of no more competent man to deal with this than your father, Fallon. He and your mother got us through two world wars, remember, and that’s just to mention the last century.”<
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  Comparing this to world wars wasn’t exactly reassuring, either, and Fallon chose that moment to excuse himself for a few hours’ sleep.

  Edmund did not move. Instead he placed his weight on one polished black loafer, folded his arms, and stared at me.

  “You’re too young for what is happening. You won’t be able to deal with what is going to happen to you—to us.”

  Before I could process those words, he was gone, fleeing down the long white corridor, lined with servants’ doors, back to the entrance hall.

  “Edmund, come back! I demand you explain that statement!” I yelled in his wake. The entire staff in the kitchens could probably hear me through the doors, but I didn’t temper my anger. “If you are referring to my visions, I’ll—”

  There was no point in continuing. He had disappeared. Instead, I turned back to the conservatory and had barely crossed the threshold when a waxy leaf belonging to a white lily, so vast and heavy its stem drooped to the floor, caught fire. Making surprisingly efficient tinder, the entire leaf was engulfed. The single white lily did not survive, either. I left the pile of ash I had created.

  “Damn it, why won’t anybody explain anything to me?” I hissed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Autumn

  I hugged Lisbeth as soon as she unzipped the polythene bag. She could not have picked out anything more perfect. Yet by the time I had the dress on, I was having doubts.

  “It’s quite short,” I complained, tugging at the tiered hem that flared slightly from the hips, while the slip underneath somehow managed to stay firmly attached to my thigh, a little too high up.

  “No shorter than anything the other girls will be wearing,” Lisbeth reminded me from her dressing table, where her magic finished off her makeup. I didn’t disagree with that. My phone had been vibrating constantly all afternoon, with multiple girls seeking reassurance about their wardrobe choices. “And you asked me to find something for tonight. I think it’s very you.”