Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel

by Abigail Gibbs

“Miarba! I think she’s having a vision!”

  “For Ll’iriad’s sake, what else can fate throw at us?!”

  I’m having a vision? I wanted to shout, to shriek for them to make it stop, but that wasn’t happening. All that tumbled from my lips was her name, over and over.

  “She’s giving it all away. Do something!”

  “Do what?!”

  “Calm down, all of you. I need you to hold her still while I perform a spell.” It was Prince Lorent’s voice, and he sounded determined.

  “A spell that needs a knife? Uncle, what the fuck are you doing?!” I heard Fallon snarl.

  “Blood magic. This will put her into a coma. It’s a living hell, but we have no choice. She’s having a vision. She’s going to reveal who Violet is. We can’t let that happen! We don’t have a choice!”

  In my head, I screamed and screamed and screamed in horror. Out of my mouth spilled secrets. I had no control over my body and I was about to be silenced. I had no idea if I would ever wake up again.

  I felt the blood drop onto my skin, and the slice of a blade onto my wrist. Alien words were muttered, and I fell off the cliff into hell.

  It was a tiny slip of paper, no bigger than a postcard. Thick, heavy, expensive paper. Plain. They weren’t exactly going to leave a calling card.

  “You must write it. They may recognize my handwriting. I send flowers to funerals and such.”

  He took up a fountain pen and breathed down the nib. It was cold in Iceland, even with a roaring fire at the room’s center, and the ink turned to sludge.

  “Write . . . write . . . ‘Michael Lee struck bargain with hunters for Carmen’s death. Lee girl knows. Pierre will confirm.’ Short and to the point is better. Our fanged friend isn’t famed for his patience.”

  He scribbled out the dictated message.

  “And you’re sure this Lee girl is the second Heroine? If she is killed by the vampires, we could have an international incident on our hands. We might lose our allies in the slayers and rogues, too. They’re trying to get her safely back to her father, after all.”

  He watched his mentor stare out the window, back turned to him, and in the silence he could almost hear the cogs of his incredible brain turning. The man was a bona fide genius, there was no denying it.

  “As ever, Nathaniel, your grasp of the situation is impressive.” The sarcasm dripped off the man’s tongue like the water that trickled down the edge of the icicles outside the window. “All that is simply collateral damage. That alliance was forged before I had visions of this Lee girl becoming second Heroine. No matter. It has given us valuable information about her father’s role in Carmen’s death. In any case, if she dies as a human, there will be a war. If we stop the Prophecy of the Heroines, there will be a war! It’s terribly convenient.”

  He picked the note up and carried it to the window, clasping it tight in his hand. He didn’t offer it over. “Completely sure?”

  The man threw his head back and laughed, a sound that so often filled the dining hall and private parties his mentor threw. He was a man of belly-shaking laughter, of jokes and pranks, of pleasant company, especially the female kind. It was hard for a young man not to be drawn to him.

  “I am chri’dom, descendant of Contanal. I am the greatest seer alive, and my visions are never wrong. The duchess of England is herself having visions of Violet Lee. And what’s more,” he snatched the paper out of the other man’s hands, “I want this little necromancer of a Heroine dead before she figures her powers out.” He waved his hand over the paper, and it disappeared, on its way to seal Violet Lee’s death. chri’dom used the free hand to pick up his glass of brandy, poured by Nathan himself—there were no servants in Contanalsdóttir. “Happy Ad Infinitum!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Fallon

  Three days and three nights we sat in silent vigil at the duchess’s bedside. There were always two people attending her, constantly making skin-to-skin contact and feeding her magic like a blood drip. She never once stirred, propped up with her back against three layers of soft feather pillows, cream nightgown stitched up to her neck and hair splayed across the white linen. She looked like an angel. A dead one.

  But her heartbeat was strong and steady. Sometimes it sped up a little, and my uncle hypothesized that she must be experiencing her visions in those moments. Occasionally she broke into a sweat. After the first day, staff came in and sponge-bathed her while Lisbeth and my aunt continued the vigil. The first time I went reluctantly from my makeshift bed of pillows and comforter on the floor, afraid to leave her in case those were her last minutes; afraid to leave in case she awoke and I wasn’t there.

  Eaglen came, late on the first night, and the entire household, even many of the servants, gathered in Autumn’s bedroom and stood like mourners viewing a body. Only perhaps Edmund had known her as long as the aged vampire, and when Eaglen entered the dimly lit room, his cracked lips parted and he let out a soft “Oh,” and stroked her forehead as lovingly as the surrogate grandfather he had supposedly been to her.

  It was a scene that best described my own emotions. Helpless and pitiful and speechless.

  It was Eaglen who had seen her coming, Eaglen who had warned us the June before that she was a Heroine, and it was with increasing urgency over the summer that he pressed us to act on his visions. Now we knew why, I supposed. The second Heroine had entered his presence, but Eaglen was too old and wise to meddle with fate, or so he claimed, and so hadn’t warned us about Violet Lee. Watching him with Autumn, so tender and earnest, I became more and more certain he had only told us about her because he cared for her so much.

  We filled him in on what little he didn’t already know, and in return pleaded with him to return when she awoke . . . his insight into Violet Lee’s time with the vampires would be invaluable in planning our next move.

  I thought about all of that as I sat at her bedside, taking my turn in feeding her my magic. It was the morning of the third day of her coma, and I shared the duty with Edmund. He had brought a book with him to read, something heavy from the Man Booker shortlist, according to the label on the front, but he kept setting it down every few pages.

  “Not any good?” I eventually said after he repeated the action for the fourth time. I attempted to set my tone at friendly conversation, but missed it by a panic attack and a sob.

  He shook his head and half-raised a shoulder. “It’s brilliant. I just can’t . . . concentrate.” He sounded at a loss for words.

  I hummed in acknowledgment. I didn’t much feel like sparing him words. It was crazy, because he had told me about his connection to her, but I didn’t feel as though his concern was righteous. He was almost as bad as I was. He rarely left her sitting room—I had found him crashed out on one of the couches, late one night—and spoke only to the servants to ask for food, or to his sister, Alya, who seemed to be the only one able to coax him outside. The night before, I had heard her saying something to my aunt about “Edmund’s guilt.”

  He should feel guilty! said a nasty little voice in the corner of my mind. He failed to keep her safe! He should have been guarding against the Extermino! He should be dismissed!

  But I didn’t listen to the nasty voice, because I knew it was jealousy that was creating it. Something in the way he had handled her back at the beach, after she swore, had stirred something very deep and lasting in me. I could still see his arm wrapped around her, clamping her in place not an inch above her breasts. The way he had whispered into her ear like he was kissing it, and the way her back had arched in response, pushing her backside into his groin . . . the primal way she let go of her emotionless façade and seethed and spat at him, her eyes burning red from anger . . .

  I wanted her that way.

  “She wanted to die,” Edmund eventually murmured. “I watched a child try to kill herself in front of my eyes. That does something to a person. It kills something inside them.”

  “It killed me,” I said simply. “I would have died w
ith her.”

  “Don’t say that,” he snapped, looking up at me and away from her for the first time. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I do,” I retorted, meeting his gaze steadily. “I know that I love her enough that a life without her isn’t worth living.”

  To my surprise, he laughed. “You have a lot to learn about women, Your Highness. When you’ve been forced to sleep on the couch, denied sex for weeks, and ordered around by an irritated member of the fairer sex, then you’ll know whether you love her enough or not. Come back to me when you’ve had your first argument; you’ll soon change your tune.”

  I scowled at him and felt my blood run hot. I would not be mocked by staff, friend or not. “I love her!”

  He leaned back into his chair. “I know, and I can think of no man worthier of her. Just don’t approach the relationship with rose-tinted glasses on. It won’t do anybody any favors.”

  I flinched at the unexpected praise. “Yes, well . . .”

  I went back to staring at her. I love you. More than petty domestic idiocy can destroy. I squeezed her hand. More than Edmund thinks. I don’t care if we’re young—

  Her hand squeezed back. I nearly jumped away in shock and Edmund’s head shot up.

  “Her hand squeezed!” I squeezed it harder. Sure enough, the pressure on mine increased.

  I think Edmund must have done the same, because he got up and kicked his chair flying, rolling her eyelids back. “Yes. Yes, I think she’s coming around,” he concluded in a determined whisper. At that moment, two of the medics that had been staying in to take care of her appeared in the room and began fussing over her, doing all sorts of tests.

  “Let go of her,” one of them suddenly snapped, talking to me and Edmund. My eyes widened in horror. So did Edmund’s, and together, never tearing our gazes off the doctor, we both unfurled her fingers from our own.

  My hand hovered an inch above her skin, just in case, as the medic pressed a stethoscope to her chest—they weren’t using electronic monitoring equipment, because every time they tried, the magic we were pumping her with sent it haywire. He waited for what seemed like an eternity.

  “Her heartbeat is strong, as strong as it was. She’s had enough donation for some time, I think. But the spell is only just wearing off. Now we wait for consciousness.”

  I tried reaching out with my mind to tell my family, but they were all blocked off. Edmund solved the problem by bounding off to the door and shouting down the corridor.

  “Lords of Earth, keep the noise down. I’ve got a headache.”

  The voice behind me was rasping and strained, but I would recognize it anywhere. I dived for it and found my face surrounded by golden coils, limp and dirty but still shining. Slowly, arms wrapped around me, too.

  “I’m sorry,” said the same little strained voice. I just shook my head into the pillow before I was yanked back by my shirt.

  “Let her drink, Fallon,” Edmund said, and she was passed a glass of water, which she downed in one gulp.

  “How am I alive?” she asked, taking another glass of water and doing exactly the same.

  “We continually fed you magic. Like a blood drip,” the medic said proudly. “Never in my entire career have I experienced any condition such as yours. It took a lot of improvisation.”

  There was a determined set to her eyes I had never seen before. She looked straight ahead and straightened herself on the pillows, working her way back so she was totally upright.

  “Well done,” she offered, as my family began to pour in, like she was praising a child. “We haven’t got time for pleasantries,” she continued in a tone damn near an order as some of the staff started to drop into bows. “I’ve been to hell and back, and hell is the future. It doesn’t look good.”

  My uncle didn’t betray any of his relief. “Send for Eaglen. While we wait, you can eat. Then you will tell us.”

  “He sent the note. It was the day after Ad Infinitum. There was a clock with the date on the mantel. I had that dream a few times, before it changed. She was reading a letter, about being tied as a Heroine, and then it changed again, and she had a knife at her throat and the vamperic king threatening to kill her. But it always stopped when Prince Kaspar Varn turned away and left her for dead. I had those three visions over and over, without ever knowing if she dies or not. It was hell.”

  “And chri’dom called her a necromancer? You’re quite certain?”

  “Completely.” She looked it.

  “Eaglen?” my uncle eventually conceded after his lengthy cross-examination.

  The old vampire got up from his chair and limped toward the bed. He was showing his age, compared to the last time I had seen him, that was for sure. But if his body was aging, his spirit wasn’t. He sat down on the bed and bounced a few times, his short legs leaving the floor every time.

  “Oooh, squeaky,” he commented, grinning in an old-man-making-a-dirty-joke sort of way, and then cleared his throat. “I think chri’dom could very well be right. Searching her mind, I have already found that she is having necromantic-style dreams of the present. It wouldn’t surprise me if she can soon see past events, and perhaps see the dead, too.”

  “I’ve seen some of those dreams, in my own visions of her,” Autumn offered.

  “But what’s this tied thing?” I asked, feeling like the only person in the room who was mystified at that statement.

  “Surely you have heard of Contanal’s last prophecy? Of the relations between the second Heroine and another? He maintained that it didn’t just end with the second Heroine, but who knows . . .” Eaglen trailed off.

  The way his eyes shuttled between Autumn and me was so pointed a blush traveled right up her cheek, from her neck to the roots of her hair.

  “It seems Violet Lee and Kaspar Varn are tied. They both share a telepathic communication, too, in the form of an embedded voice containing the personality of the other . . .”

  I zoned out to watch Autumn’s intent, purposeful expression. She was absorbing every last bit of information, storing it up, and with every nugget her mind—blocked off but oozing emotion—grew more and more confident. She was born for this. She has been raised for this. I hoped, somehow, the stress and power of her new role would perversely be the thing to fill the gaping hole in her heart. Because, evidently, I wasn’t enough on my own.

  “So, to conclude, it seems we have a tied young necromancer Heroine on our hands, whom chri’dom is presumably trying to murder by sending a note telling my king that her father orchestrated the death of our dear Carmen,” Eaglen summarized.

  I could see what Autumn meant by bleak. I gripped her hand and she squeezed it back.

  “No disrespect meant, Eaglen, but we need to tell her she’s a Heroine and get her out of the second dimension, quickly, before anything happens,” Autumn said, in the same tone of assumed authority she had used earlier. It was slightly deeper and slower than usual, and sounded even more British for it.

  Eaglen flinched a little. Though he had no official ranking—titles didn’t even exist until he was middle-aged—he commanded a lot of respect for his age and power. He didn’t like orders, that much was clear from his slightly gaping mouth.

  “But, my Lady Heroine, we can’t afford to meddle in fate too much. I fear we have already, and we don’t want to risk destroying the Prophecy by running too much off course.”

  “But she might die!”

  “It is better for her if she finds out she is tied as you have envisioned. If we are too hasty, we may also drive a wedge between Violet Lee and Kaspar, because they are apart at the moment, as I explained earlier. We need them together, as Contanal prophesized!”

  “So . . . what do we do?” my uncle eventually asked after some silence.

  The room remained silent, and I could sense it dividing as gazes flicked left and right. I agreed with Autumn: we couldn’t afford to put Violet Lee in danger. But I knew the older occupants of the room would side with Eaglen. They were stuck
in their ways and afraid of fate.

  Eaglen spoke up. “We wait. But not long. The weekend after the Ad Infinitum celebrations, the Varn children go on a hunt. This year they plan to take Violet. I will gain you entry with the guards; we shall say you are visiting me. Perfectly legitimate, given our connection. Stay close to her, and to him. Make sure they bond, and nudge them a little if they don’t. Check that she understands and knows of the Prophecy, and bring it up if she doesn’t. When she is alone, tell her what she is. But Kaspar must not know—”

  “Why?” Autumn demanded. She glanced back at me, and I was surprised by the slight tint of angry black at the edge of her irises.

  Eaglen got up and walked around the bed, placing the four posters and a chest between himself and Autumn. “Because Violet must find my late queen’s letter, and Violet must nearly die, and Kaspar must turn away from her, because sometimes a man must almost lose what he has to realize what he has. See? You leave the dimension, your king will send men as late as we possibly dare, and voilà. We have meddled with fate as little as possible. This is how I have seen it.”

  “You’ve seen all of this? Then it supersedes what Autumn saw! Why didn’t you say?” my aunt almost shouted from the corner of the room. “Lords of Earth, seers!”

  Eaglen shrugged. “Eh, dramatic effect, I suppose. I’m going to enjoy my power, until this young whippersnapper starts outwitting me at every turn.” He threw a hand out toward Autumn and brushed his beard over his shoulder, laughing. “Now, the best-laid plans cannot be made on an empty stomach, so forgive me if I return to my home dimension for a spot of AB-negative.”

  He went to leave the room, full of dumbstruck Sage, but Autumn called out to him.

  “You can’t order me about, not anymore.”

  Without turning back toward us, he paused. “No, but fate can.” And with that, he limped away.

  It was several more hours before my family and the medics were content to leave me and Autumn alone. A maid remained, tidying and arranging the many flowers and gifts that had been brought to Burrator from Autumn’s home. We had intended to bring her parents, too, but they had refused. Not even their daughter’s coma would entice them to face the Athenea.