It was a soft croon of “no.” My hand wouldn’t drop even though I suddenly felt the urge to run; instead my knees had locked and through the gap I had full view of Violet as a mass of limbs in Kaspar Varn’s arms, pressed up against the wall like her weight was supported by hooks.
The frightened squeal that escaped my lips was drowned out by the crash of something heavy hitting the floor, the accompanying frustrated groans and the steady thud, thud, thud of a body hitting the wall, over and over.
Neither wore any clothes; her head never left the pale walls but her back did in anticipation of every groan, as her eyes flickered open and shut . . . My torso withdrew but my feet were rooted as her eyes fixed for a brief second too long on the door. Her lips broke into a smile and then parted into an O, and then she sank, lowered to the floor, but Kaspar might as well have not existed because I saw through him—the connection between me and her turned him transparent, as I fell deep into her contentedness. It was the first gasp of fresh air after a week belowground, in the darkest depths of her mind and mine.
“Beautiful, isn’t it, Duchess?”
I would have shrieked if it wasn’t for the force of a hand on my shoulder pushing me down. My first instinct was flight, but when my foot stepped back it hit a leg.
“Now, why is a sweet thing like you perving? Didn’t have you down as the type.”
“Get off me, Felix,” I snapped in an unforceful whisper with a shrug that did nothing to dislodge his arm. “And don’t call me ‘sweet.’ ”
The hand around my shoulder squeezed tighter and my stomach churned. Felix was one of Kaspar Varn’s friends, and had a reputation of being a lecherous noble in the court . . . and he was one of those who had been present at the London Bloodbath.
“Oh, I think you would taste very sweet. Maybe your prince would let me find out.”
He wouldn’t drink from me, would he? Surely not? But I didn’t like his sickly tone and the way I couldn’t turn so we were face-to-face. I reached up and tried to slide his fingers off my shoulder but they had sunk deep into my skin.
“We have a game, Lady Heroine, back at Varnley, which we all like to play. I wonder if you’ve heard of it? It’s called the cunning linguist.”
I shook my head while running through potential spells that would incapacitate him long enough for me to get one of the guards. There were hundreds, yet my mind was blank and all I could focus on was the gap in the door, and Violet collapsed on the far side of the room.
“No? We should really teach you. You would love it.”
The flash of green light bounced off the walls and dazzled me, but the satisfying thump of the vampire’s body hitting the ground told me my restraints had worked. Clutching the book to my chest as though it were a suit of armor, I jumped over his convulsing body and sprinted down the hall, turning to glance back only when I heard a shout of anger chasing me. It was a dressed Kaspar Varn, and when I turned around again, Fallon was standing at the other end of the drawing room in only a pair of pajama bottoms, looking ready to murder someone. He started forward, and when I went to grab his arm he repelled me with a small shield that sent me tumbling into a chair. I sprang back up again, book abandoned on the floor, and pursued him as he yanked Felix’s twitching body up off the floor and the culprit green strands around the fire-headed vampire limbs retreated. He slumped into Fallon’s arms, and the prince threw him against the wall by his collar.
“What did you do to her? What did you do?”
Felix’s lips moved, but the only sound that emerged was a blubber and then a squeal as Kaspar ripped Fallon off and began beating the paper-thin shield around his skin; both men grunted. Violet, covered only by a long T-shirt, rushed out and tugged at her boyfriend’s sides to no avail, and I could do nothing but clap my hands to my mouth in horror as more vampires appeared and tried to pull the two princes apart.
“Kaspar! Kaspar, get off!”
Screams of “Fallon!” were erupting from my mouth but they were falling on deaf ears, terrified soprano among a roaring river of sound, of groans, of grunts, of panicked voices and whines and the soft purr of Felix, who had folded into a laughing heap on the floor.
Violet’s tears soaked the carpet.
“Stop.”
Such a simple word, so sharply spoken, froze the scene. Catharsis smothered my emotions as two kings glided through the room we had tumbled into, melting those they passed so their faces warped into expressions of horror.
Kaspar, so strong, so tall, was thrown back onto the bed by his father as though he weighed no more than his younger sister, who had followed her king in. The other patriarch grabbed a fistful of Fallon’s hair and pulled him off his knees so he was stooping, head lowered in a warped imitation of a bow.
I could only stare, hands clamped to either side of my head, eyes wide.
“It might come as a surprise to you, Kaspar, given your lack of political understanding, but murdering your Sagean counterpart is a disadvantageous move.”
Kaspar sprayed spit across the duvet as he hissed in angry acknowledgment; Fallon didn’t even reply to his father. Everyone else maintained an eerie silence that needed filling to distract me from the tension in the air. Only Violet showed any composure. Her expression had returned to blank; irises the gray they had rarely ventured far from since she arrived.
“Words. Words are wonderful things. Words avert wars. Words make friends. Words prevent fights. Try using them.” Ll’iriad Athenea released his son and left, voice never raised but barely restrained, his limbs lightly shaking as he made his exit.
The vamperic king barked something in a language I couldn’t understand, totally ignored Violet, and indicated for Fallon and me to leave the room. As soon as he had shut the doors to the anteroom behind us, he sighed and ran a hand down his face.
“They’re violent,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Stay away from them.”
He turned on his heel as my lips parted slightly; heart beating wildly, still convinced we had been on the verge of a reprimand.
Fallon grabbed my wrist and we hurried back to my room, necromancy book abandoned on the floor of the drawing room. His grip was tight, muscles still tense, and I didn’t dare ask him if he was okay—he looked like he might set fire to something if I did.
He didn’t cut me loose in the sitting room but tugged me all the way into the bedroom, lying down on his side and pulling me with him, tucked safely away with my back to his chest.
We stayed like that, breathing in time together as he gradually calmed. It was at least five minutes before he spoke.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I breathed. “He just said some odd things.”
His arm around me tightened and he slotted his knees in behind me, hugging me close. “What kinds of things?”
“He said I would taste sweet. And that he wanted me to play cunning linguist.”
I felt his head rise slightly. “Pardon?”
“Cunning linguist. Do you know what game it is?”
He propped himself up on his elbow. “It’s cunnilingus, Autumn.” His lips and chest trembled with silent laughter that slowly faded as he continued to examine my expression.
No, he definitely didn’t say that. “Why are you laughing? What is it? Tell me.”
He stroked my hair, still with slightly curled lips. “I’d do better to show you.”
My eyebrows knitted together. “Why? Just tell me.”
He placed the hand that was stroking my hair on my shoulder and rolled me fully onto my back, before placing it on the other side of my body. “Do you trust me?”
I could see his sky-blue eyes becoming tinged with red, and they scrutinized me while my skin heated up under the intensity. “Yes,” I managed to breathe.
Slowly, he rolled over so his knees were straddling my thighs, arms locked straight, hovering a few inches above me.
“Tell me if anybody, including me, ever says or does anything that makes you uncomfortable, okay?”
I nodded as he pressed his lips to mine. My heartbeat was speeding up, lips parting wider and wider as what had begun as an innocent peck became something more urgent, more ardent. My arms reached up and around his neck, my legs parted and one tucked itself up toward my torso; the gulf between his forefinger and thumb secured itself around the underside of my knee, and held me there.
“Autumn, your eyes are red.”
Suddenly, I felt fire creeping across the thread dangling between me and Violet, fizzing and hissing like a fuse. Her mind had opened up like a book that had flipped open and whose pages were flapping in a breeze. She was alive again, really alive, and in the second my eyelids closed to blink I had been assaulted with images of her in a half-unbuttoned shirt beneath Kaspar Varn. I felt like I was tumbling in her mind and wrapped in her desire, bathed in her warped love for this man and the security that their tied bond provided. Fallon’s weight above me grew heavier, and I was sure that if I opened my eyes it would not be a blond who was draped across me.
By the time my eyes had opened again to find Fallon there, it had become obvious that in that moment, there had been no partition between Violet and me. We were not separate entities; we had been one. But why? Fate, why give us gifts and no answers?
Hands fumbled with the buttons of my blouse, undoing them one by one. His warm fingers and the cool air raised goose bumps and I closed my eyes.
He kissed the plain above my breasts. He kissed me again, lower, and lower.
Far away came a whisper. “Sweet, Girly. So sweet.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Autumn
Crossing the threshold into the chamber of the interdimensional council was like walking down the aisle at my wedding.
The night before, all injunctions had been lifted and the media had exploded with images of me and Fallon as our relationship was announced as “official” for the first time.
Outside the crescent-shaped building a sky-blue carpet had been laid, and along its length, from the road where council members dismounted their horses to the wooden doors, journalists jostled, fighting for a position where they could press their stomachs into the enchanted barriers and thrust cameras and microphones into the channel through which all had to pass.
“Lady Heroine! Over here! For Arn Etas!”
“Lady Heroine, are the rumors true that Prince Fallon was secretly living in Devon in order to be with you?”
“Lady Heroine, this is your first official appearance since the funeral of the late duchess. How are you coping with her legacy?”
I smiled and pouted on command, turned and spun and shook hands, played the part of somebody walking a carpet that should be red. It was dazzling, it was glamorous, flashes bouncing off the pale golden stone of the chamber and catching my dress of the same hue. But it was a fishbowl.
Eventually they released me and I continued inside, flanked by Edmund and Jo. The moment my foot trod upon the brass plate that marked the threshold, my heart gave in to a tremor, and I was suddenly terrified. This was the largest council meeting I had attended yet, and it was a gathering of the entire interdimensional council, and it was about Violet Lee. Withering, wilting Violet Lee.
Why do I have to be here? Why?!
We passed ushers waiting with tall golden staffs to which banners were attached—eleven: one for each dimension, one for the humans, and another for me. Violet’s was absent. The breeze from the open doors was making each banner sway, sending a draft billowing down the scaffold tunnel of gold through which we were walking. My hair stirred, the loose strands lifting from the back of my neck and those that were pinned threatening to shake themselves from their pins.
Edmund anticipated my stumble before I even knew I was going to momentarily halt. His hand cupped my elbow and firmly ensured my progress forward and not right back under the banners, where the hopeful part of my heart was running.
“I can’t do it,” I muttered. “I can’t.”
“You have no choice.”
He pulled me into the room and Jo dutifully dropped back behind me.
I stifled a gasp. I had never seen a room like it.
The passage in the middle was long and lined with benches, upholstered with the same shade of pale blue as the carpet outside. Every so often there were armrests, gilded with gold, and in front a thin table ran, just wide enough to place a book. The benches ascended in rows, and around the walls ran a gallery full of yet more seating. The ceiling far above us was painted to resemble the sky on a bright day and the whole place was flooded with light filtered through stained-glass windows.
Along the curved wall, raised above the pew-like seating, was a row of high-backed wooden chairs, made comfortable with cushions rather than leather. There were about thirty of them in total, and in them sat the heads of state for each dimension and being: monarchs, regal and isolated; presidents and their deputies, rearranging their notes and still finding their seats; even an entire small council from the third dimension. Royal families, remaining inner councillors, prime ministers, religious figures, and the scribes were assembled in the seating below them. The lower benches were packed with their contingent.
I paused at a stand containing a closed copy of the Terra and swore an oath while Jo kept hold of my hat. Then I ascended the steps to the high-backed chairs and took my place at the far end, so far along the curved wall that the king of Athenea sat sideways to me. Jo took her place on the bench below me, next to Alfie and Fallon, whose arm reached back so I could take his hand.
He gave me a reassuring squeeze. The instant our hands made contact, the cameras that whirled around of their own accord high above us descended uncomfortably close, and our tender moment was suddenly broadcast to millions.
Beside me Edmund growled loudly, and the cameras skittered away from us like startled animals.
The benches were almost entirely full, just the last few humans filling up those in the middle, and a microphone zipped down from its lofty position to come to a rest in front of the Athenean king.
His welcome and introduction were long and the preamble even more tedious, and I let my mind drift.
It was an incredible spot to people-watch from. I could see everyone I knew: from the Athenean family below me to Lisbeth in the Sagean benches, now one of my ladies-in-waiting and sitting with her parents, a small frown on her face as she listened to the king. Directly opposite were the vampires, the enemy; the assailants the chamber would soon attack. Because who else could possibly be to blame for Violet Lee’s depression? Where else could be the root of this withered tree? It was not me. No one would blame me, bearer of bad news. The awaker. The ilaea.
I wondered, wildly, what it would be like to not have the state of one’s mind disclosed to the world. How it would be if confidentiality meant something exclusive, not me, you, and all the council. What it would be like to lean forward and wrap my arms around Fallon’s shoulders and inhale his fresh scent without making the front page of the paper. It seemed ludicrous.
I thought those things as the king went through the list of Violet’s illnesses; it puzzled me how a public forum was going to remedy any of them.
Eventually, Eaglen wearily got to his feet and I dragged my mind back to the room. He shuffled a few papers on the table in front of him and looked up like he was announcing a death sentence.
“I have, as a humble servant of my king and a seer of fate, been tasked with the unenviable task of deciphering the powers of our young Heroines. I have but few conclusions and can only present the facts and hypotheses. Firstly, and I can confirm this after witnessing her seeing both the late Queen Carmen and her deceased brother, it should be known that Violet Lee is displaying all the signs of being a necromancer.”
The silent room exploded with noise and the cameras buzzed excitedly, capturing the shock.
A bolt of horror shot from my heart to my stomach. My gaze rose from where I had been staring at the floor to meet Eaglen’s, whose eyes were enlarged. He held my gaze, as t
hough trying to transmit an apology.
“Secondly, it should be known that the two Heroines share a connection that defies the limitations of telepathy . . . that is, they share emotions, memories, and experiences without barriers and without consent.”
My cheeks were hot and flushed and I felt like a fire had been lit in my chest. Leaning forward, I stared at the kings of the first and second dimensions, searching for surprise or remorse. Both refused to meet my eyes, and watched their subjects with set resolution. How dare they? How could they?! It is dangerous for people to know about this!
“Lastly, it should be known that I have belief that the Lady Heroine Autumn Rose is developing the powers of a conventional seer alongside those used to awaken the Heroines. The reason for such an accumulation of gifts remains as yet unclear, and my recommendation is we leave them to develop naturally. I can do no more. This is known to be the truth.” He finished with the traditional closing of a speech, his voice fluttering away to a murmur. He slumped, defeated, into his seat.
It took a lot of clenching of fists and a rude word from Edmund to keep myself seated. I had heard about the backstabbing of the Inter, but this? Revealing our powers to the whole world! It was stupid.
I narrowed my eyes at the king of Athenea as he stood up. I thought you were my ally. “Thank you, Eaglen. Now we shall hear from the doctor in charge of Violet Lee’s care . . .”
It was excruciating. Just one long exposé of how she would not drink blood unless manhandled and forced. And then the blame game began.
“Surely it is the responsibility of Athenea, as the host and protector of this young Heroine, to ensure her recovery from this unfortunate bout of insanity?” The speaker was a Sage himself, a councillor I had never seen, let alone spoken to.
The vamperic king didn’t move a muscle but snapped a reply. “As talented as your court healers are, they don’t drink blood. This is problematic when trying to understand the nuances of the mind of a newly turned vampire.”
Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel Page 33