Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel

by Abigail Gibbs

  The figure in the image began to fade, and though Violet still held me, our connection seemed to weaken.

  “Fallon,” I called out, feeling him and Kaspar catching up with us. “There are still boxes in my mind, right? It’s still defended, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. What happened? You looked terrified.”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  It was a long way through the palace to the far corner of the west wing, where our rooms were. The journey was silent, other than a few mumbled comments on Violet’s behalf about the size of the palace. The thread between us bounced our nervousness and the awkwardness of the situation back and forth.

  What the hell was that? Was it her necromancy? But how did I see it? And where is Eaglen when you need him?!

  I pushed the door open into a reception room much like my own, only decorated in richer colors. The windows faced east, rather than south as mine did, and the view was of landscaped gardens rather than the mountains and lakes I was lucky enough to look out on.

  Three maids and the palace housekeeper awaited us. They dropped into low curtsies and the housekeeper introduced herself.

  “And these are my lady’s maids, who will assist your ladies-in-waiting, when you choose them, of course,” the housekeeper said.

  Poor Violet Lee blanched and looked to me for help as the housekeeper continued on with her explanation of the room’s amenities.

  “It’s like a ruddy hotel,” I heard Kaspar mutter.

  “I think we’ll just settle in for now,” I interrupted, effectively dismissing the staff. The housekeeper, too professional and efficient to be ruffled, gathered and hurried the maids out of the room.

  Kaspar walked over to the large table recessed into a bay window and poured two glasses of blood from the clear, stoppered bottle that had been set out, along with wine. With a grim expression he took one over to Violet.

  “Did you see Mother again? What did she say?” he demanded.

  Violet nodded, and meekly told him, “Nothing important.” I fought hard not to catch her eye, as I felt her decision to lie flow into my mind as though I had made it.

  “I’m not thirsty,” she croaked when he held the glass out.

  Vampires would be dead if they didn’t have magic in their veins and didn’t consume the energy of others. Their hearts didn’t beat. They didn’t breathe. They only sucked in air to express emotion, as if some inherent instinct told them oxygen would make things better. But it was a placebo to a vampire. Every Sagean child knew that. So hearing Violet’s breathing pick up made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  Kaspar’s expression darkened. His eyes hadn’t ever left black. “Violet,” he growled.

  Fallon entered but froze in the open doorway.

  “Drink it,” Kaspar said flatly, seizing her shoulder. She let out a muffled squeak and attempted to step back, but he held her in place. She shook her head slightly and sucked her lips in like a toddler refusing food.

  She was several inches taller than me, but she looked so small and frightened I wanted to reach out and rip her out of his grip, yet as he raised the glass toward her lips, I realized it was the blood that terrified her, not the tormented vampire she was tied to.

  Disgust was pumped across our connection. I had no issue with vampires drinking blood, but I wanted to do nothing more than tear the glass away and throw it from a window; pour the contents down the sink. I will make myself sick, if I have to. Eat normal food . . .

  With a strangled cry she choked down a few sips, coughing out a lot of it, which Kaspar wiped from her chin with his sleeve. “This has got to stop, Girly,” he muttered.

  I felt myself recoil. Girly? How patronizing—

  The thought was subsumed by a flutter in my chest that wasn’t my own. The fear fettered into nothingness, at least for now, but it was always in the distance, a gentle ebb and flow of an incoming tide.

  “Why are you still here?”

  The sound of Kaspar’s snapping wrenched me from my—Violet’s—thoughts, and I blinked a few times in mystery up at him. Towering a full head over me, he glared in my direction, one hand still on Violet, the other holding the half-full glass.

  “Don’t talk to her like that,” an equally menacing voice replied. Fallon, moving at a speed that would surely match the vampire’s, flitted to my side and wrapped his own hand around me, gripping my waist. “She’s a Heroine, not one of your miserable subjects.”

  Kaspar very slowly and purposefully set the glass down on the coffee table and took a step up to my prince. “Do you have a problem with the way I run my future kingdom, you little mearc’stapa?”

  Fallon, though a little shorter than his vamperic counterpart, refused to be intimidated by the insult and took a step closer. “This isn’t Varnley anymore, Your Highness,” he snarled. “We play by the rules here because we can’t hide, like you, behind secrecy. You don’t have secrets anymore. Just remember that, when you’re around the only true friends you’ve got in this fate-forsaken situation!”

  Kaspar let out a short breath through his clenched teeth and hummed in acknowledgment. “See? This is why I hate this place,” he said, turning to Violet. “Fucking teenagers moralizing everywhere.”

  Her lips widened into the first smile I had seen her wear since she arrived. “Good to know you value my moral opinion so highly then,” she sneered, before folding her arms and storming off to the bedroom. The door slammed behind her and I could feel the vibrations ripple across the floor beneath me.

  “Oh, and look what true friends you are, really helping the situation,” Kaspar said in just as sarcastic a tone as his girlfriend’s, and followed her deeper into the apartment.

  “Welcome back to Athenea, leeches,” Fallon muttered under his breath and stomped out into the corridor.

  I remained in the middle of the reception room, perplexed. I could hear the raised voices from the next room, and feel the anger across me and Violet’s mysterious connection, but I found, now that she was some distance away, it was easier to block out, though as strong as ever when I decided to embrace it.

  I think fate is taking my role as peacemaker a little too seriously . . .

  All of a sudden the room spun, and I grabbed the nearby sofa to stop myself from falling over. Pain shot across my forehead and circled my eyes, forcing them closed. I just about managed to feel my way around to the seat of the sofa before I was transported away from the room entirely.

  chri’dom paced the length of the room, muttering to himself. He had been doing the same thing for an hour.

  Suddenly, he raised his voice and swerved on his heel, facing Nathan on the sofa. “How can Violet Lee not be dead? How can she be in Athenea? How can things not have unfolded the way I foresaw them?”

  Nathan’s eyes resumed watching his leader traverse from one wall to the other. “You said yourself that Autumn Rose’s seeing gift would soon outstrip your own. Maybe it already has, and she saw your plan and outwitted you.”

  The younger man froze as chri’dom stalked toward him. “I know that. I’ve had two weeks to come to that conclusion.” Nathan backed as far as he could into the chair, remembering too late that it was wise to always keep a shield up around the other man. “That’s why I need Autumn Rose. She’s powerful enough to fight fate and stop a war, and yet we need her alive, because she’s the only one who could bring down the Athenea. Why else would I have murdered her grandmother, if not to trigger her granddaughter’s power?”

  Nathan relaxed as chri’dom sat down next to him and poured a drink out of the decanter in front of him, offering it to his protégé. “But I thought you were against interfering with fate? Isn’t that why you want to stop the Heroines? Because you believe that our fate is to have a war, so that we can have a clean start?”

  The seer eyed the young man for a moment, marveling at the juvenility of his statement, briefly wondering how much longer such a childish view of the world could persist . . . and how he could destroy it. “Wh
at have I told you about the death of humans? It is collateral damage. So is having to alter the fate my ancestor Contanal laid down.”

  chri’dom jumped to his feet and went to stand by his favorite window. It looked out over a canyon that formed part of a plate boundary, where the earth opened up and spewed hot steam, shrouding their ever-growing community in constant cloud.

  “But it was fate for you to cross my path. It cannot be a coincidence that a human who shares my politics and is so close to our Lady Heroine should cross my path. This is fate, and it is you who shall bring her to me.”

  Nathan stood and crossed the floor to join him, hardly able to quell the warmth spreading in his chest, lit from a flame that becoming an Extermino had given him.

  “I won’t fail. I’ve seen what the current system has done to her, how depressed she became . . . things must change.”

  chri’dom placed a hand on Nathan’s shoulder, almost in a fatherly way. “And things will change.”

  My eyes opened to see Violet Lee leaning over me, holding a glass of water. But her eyes were as glazed over as the water that gently rocked in a wave from one side of the tumbler to another.

  Slowly, she seemed to notice that I was coming around, and she shook her head slightly. Across our connection, I felt her concern.

  Instinctively, I just thought the answer. “It was a vision. Did you see it?”

  Her hand began to shake slightly. “They’re coming for you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Autumn

  Jo, find this book. Check it out under your own name. I want no association with it.”

  I handed her the catalog number I had scribbled on a Post-it and she frowned at the title.

  “Necromancy?”

  “Chief ladies-in-waiting don’t ask questions. Especially ones I had to get special permission to appoint so quickly,” I snapped, and she bobbed into a curtsy and hurried away, glancing back constantly. While I waited for her to disappear from sight, I inhaled the stagnant air. It was air that had not been outside the library walls for centuries, and to it clung dust and musk, wafted from the floor to the catacomb ceiling by the silent toiling of hundreds of students, academics, and councillors. Behind us, in the palace entrance to the sprawling underground archives of Athenea, echoed the steady beep, beep, beep of the security gates opening and closing; in front lay shelves that ran for miles, slotted into the vast space where the dead used to lie.

  “Where is he?” I murmured to Edmund, who nodded and set off at a swift pace into the main thoroughfare between the aisles.

  In our wake the silence turned to mutters, as the heads of the students bobbed up and gawked. I did my best to stare straight ahead and not be intimidated. I have every right to be here.

  Abruptly, we turned left and a row of very deep alcoves came into view. Recessed into one of them was an oak table, and sitting at it was Eaglen.

  When he saw us coming, he closed the book he was reading, set it atop one of the many piles he had created, and smiled politely.

  I dragged my chair across the stone floor until I sat right beside him.

  “In fate’s name, why didn’t you warn us she wasn’t drinking the blood?” I hissed.

  His smile didn’t falter. “It’s quite common for turned vampires not to take to our diet immediately.”

  “She turned three weeks ago! She’s wasting away! She hates being a vampire, I can feel it. She feels guilty for betraying humankind.” Even as I said it, I could feel the slow dribble of emotion and memory passing from me to her. I had no proof, but I sometimes felt that I was her food. I was her sustenance.

  “Short of restraining and force-feeding her, there’s very little we can do. This is what she has chosen.”

  I scoffed. “She doesn’t have a choice. She’ll die if something isn’t done! I’ve seen someone die already; I won’t let the same happen to her. And I’ve seen her visions of the dead, they can help us. There’s a reason we’re connected. I can’t do this without her!” I was echoing the vamperic queen’s words before I even realized that was where I had sourced them from. “Do you want a war? Because that is what will happen if one of us dies.”

  Eaglen didn’t react. He interlaced his fingers and placed the heels of his palm on the oak. He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

  “Have you made any progress with this connection?” Edmund asked from opposite me, eyeing the two of us impassively.

  Eaglen shook his head. “I doubt this library contains anything pertaining to it. I’ve never heard of anything like what you are describing. I have never come across visions as uncontrollable as yours, Lady Heroine. And I have never met a necromancer with such a diverse range of skills as those Violet possesses. Some things can’t be explained.”

  Edmund grunted. “Useful.”

  I slumped into the curved back of the chair. Beyond the seclusion of the alcove, curious lamp-lit faces retreated into the shadows as my eyes fell on them, all except one. She stared back with an expression I couldn’t place. It wasn’t hate, yet it belonged to the same spectrum. It was painful to look at, and my gaze left the unhappy blonde in favor of Edmund, who continued to watch her. She blushed, returned to her book, and fumbled with the pages beside her.

  “Who is that?” Edmund asked in my and Eaglen’s minds. “I don’t know all of the vampires yet.”

  “Charity Faunder,” Eaglen answered glumly. “The girl whose position in the young prince’s bed was usurped by Violet Lee.”

  “The court slut? What is she doing in a library?” The words were whispered before I could hold my tongue.

  The first I knew that Edmund had moved was the book slamming to the ground at my feet. I started, so did every reader in sight, and Charity Faunder blushed deep-red.

  Edmund very slowly and deliberately reached down to retrieve the book after his sudden burst of movement, rising again to meet my eyes. “Apologies, my lady. I didn’t realize that enjoying sex and pursuing academic interests was an impossible combination. My mistake.” His eyes were red, actually red.

  “I haven’t met a slut who has managed it yet,” I hissed back, equally as icily. I hated Edmund’s lectures.

  “Right here,” he countered.

  “You lose your temper too easily, Mortheno. She’s only young,” Eaglen interjected and Edmund’s gaze broke away.

  “Too young.”

  “Still here.” I rose abruptly and the two men followed suit. “If she doesn’t start drinking blood in the next twenty-four hours, have her restrained and fed. And I want answers on this connection within the week.”

  With that I left, sweeping past Charity Faunder’s desk without ever looking at her again. Behind me, I could hear Edmund’s heavy footsteps, mutterings of “Too young, too young” following me out like an echo.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Autumn

  Necromancy. 1.a. n. The act of conjuring dead spirits in order to predict or influence the future.

  Necromancers can roughly be divided into two categories: the passive and the active. The latter is generally considered the more common, particularly among dark beings who possess the ability to wield magic, as active conjuring of a phantom likeness was once a branch of study frequently pursued within universities. The practice, however, was outlawed with the signing of the Terra Treaties in 1812, and reports of likeness apparitions have declined as a result . . .

  My fingers impatiently dragged across the hundredth page of a book that had largely proved to be useless. The lamp above me flickered, and with a jolt I was pulled back to the room and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. It was past midnight but I was determined to stay awake. I took another sip of the bitter caffeine cocktail next to me and carried on reading, trying to ignore the surge of emotion from Violet, which was steadily driving me to delirium.

  The passive necromancer is a rarer breed, and the last comprehensive study of the gift in 1950 suggested that upon becoming fully fledged (N.B. in line with human laws at the
time, the fledging developmental stage was believed to continue until age 21), one in every ten thousand Sagean children was found to have the gift. Prior to the Great Cleansing of the Damned, a 1891 census revealed that as many as one in every thousand fledglings possessed the passive form of the gift upon reaching adulthood; by 1950, only two thousand children were tested, and just one (sterilized) child showed any ability to conjure. Among other dark beings, the gift is believed to be extinct.

  Abilities of the passive necromancer vary. According to the 1950 study, constants include: the inability to voluntarily conjure likenesses, at least one experience with a likeness of the deceased that includes communication, and a subsequent noncoincidental altering of events.

  “Among other dark beings, the gift is believed to be extinct,” I murmured to myself, tracing the line with my finger. But chri’dom definitely said she was a necromancer, and I definitely hadn’t imagined what happened when Violet arrived: that had been the late vamperic queen in her mind—in my mind, speaking to me! And the dreams. What on earth were her dreams about the cloaked figure to do with?

  I shut the book after several more minutes of scanning the same paragraph, vainly hoping new information would appear from between the printed lines. But the curiosity burned, relentless, as my grandmother’s words bounced from one side of my skull to another: Time is your enemy.

  I gathered the thick volume in my arms and quietly made my way out of the room so as not to wake Fallon, who was asleep in the bedroom. The hallway outside, white, airy, and well lit in the day, was now deserted and gloomy; the double-door entrance to the west wing was guarded, and nobody but those who slept here entered or left at this time of night.

  I passed through the green drawing room, dressed floor to ceiling in paintings and crowded with green furniture, at the moment seating several of Kaspar Varn’s friends, before I got to the door of Violet’s huge apartment. The outer doors were unlocked, and I stepped into the small anteroom, where the next set of doors were ajar. My knuckles were already brushing the wood when a groan slipped through the crack.