Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel (16 page)

“You struck a bargain.”

He winced. “We never meant it to last. It was just supposed to be a few dates and some pictures of us kissing. And it worked: the paparazzi went crazy for the first few weeks, and then everything died down. I took her back to Athenea over the summer and she was able to network. My family liked her. They helped her. But I think they knew what was going on. They knew it wouldn’t last.”

“But it did last.”

He laughed nervously and ran a hand down the back of his head, ruffling his slightly damp hair—there was a fine mist in the air. “I guess neither of us wanted the hassle of a breakup. And we were . . . we were sleeping together at this point.”

“Ah. And you’re sure you had no feelings for her?”

Again, he chuckled. “Please stop looking so perceptive. It’s making me feel like a naughty schoolboy.” I didn’t know what expression my face held for him to say that, but I smiled bashfully at the path. He carried on. “I admit that I had some. I cared for her, and would protect her, but there was never any passion or need involved. We spent almost two months apart during the summer of last year, but it wasn’t painful. We didn’t yearn for each other.”

We had finally emerged from the veranda and I gave a gasp—not that he or I could hear it over the rush of water plummeting thirty feet down the cliff, and then even farther down through a hole in the ground. I could hear it hitting stone, great splashes bounding back up. It reminded me of the storm the prince had driven me home in.

“This place is an old quarry!” he shouted over the water as he came to a rest against the railing that ran in a crescent around the drop. He placed his elbows on the metal and swayed back and forth on his heel slightly—he was such a fidget. As I watched him, he spoke again, though I could only see his lips moving.

“What?” I yelled back. He only looked bemused and repeated whatever he had said. I laughed. I couldn’t hear a word he was saying and tried to tell him so, but he just started laughing as well.

Bending down, he tucked my hair behind my ear and spoke, still quite loudly, from right beside me. “Would you like to see the view?”

I froze as his hand made contact with me, aware of how, if I leaned just slightly to the right, my shoulder would be touching his chest. My eyes focused on the white shirt he was wearing, framed by his tan jacket. I could see him breathing. I nodded.

He pointed skyward and started backing around the waterfall, narrowly avoiding a splash of rebounding water that appeared to curve in an arc over the railings and toward him. The affinity it showed for him snapped me out of my trance and I laughed, batting the water back as it tried to reach me, too.

Suddenly, with a running leap, he had disappeared into the fine mist. I carried on a little farther beyond the dampness and bent my knees, springing directly up. Even this far away from the waterfall there was vapor, and I broke through the suspension, spotting the prince standing behind another set of railings along the edge of the cliff. I dropped down beside him.

I was glad I took his suggestion. The view was magnificent. The cliff was high enough to look right over the top of the house and down into the hollow with the meadow at its bottom. The pine-tree perimeter looked like a funnel from our vantage point, tapering toward the road. In the distance, I could just make out the green line becoming gray and disappearing back toward Princetown.

The lively stream that plummeted down into the old quarry was to my left, and I traced its path upriver, turning behind me. It ran down a gentle incline across moss and scrubland; in the distance, I could see gorse and faraway granite tors.

I lowered my brow and felt my right cheek tug at the outer corner of my lips as I circled to take in the full panorama. “Are you not a little vulnerable here?”

He grinned in his usual cheeky way and crouched down. His hand brushed the ground until he closed his fingertips around something. Standing up, I could see it was a small stone. He lobbed it from waist height in the direction of the nearest tor.

Abruptly, it halted in midair and dropped to the ground. With its sudden stop came an eerie crackling sound; and with that, a humongous dome shield revealed itself. The point where the stone had struck looked like it was fracturing, splitting into shards, divided by lightning-like forks of bright blue; these faded and it glowed paler, like it was healing. I could see its quickly disappearing boundaries stretching right across the quarry and stood in awe of the setup they had. It was like Athenea—it, too, had massive dome shields, through which nothing but the elements could pass without permission.

When the shield had become invisible again, I leaned down on the railing and debated how to steer the conversation back toward Amanda. The whole thing intrigued me: they had pulled it off very well, and his story was a revelation. But in hindsight, it made sense. They had never appeared to be
that
lovey-dovey.

“So when you and Amanda broke up, it wasn’t as big a deal as the papers made out?”

He looked surprised that I had returned to the topic. “Essentially, yes. Technically, it was me who ended things, but it was all on good terms. She knew I wanted to come to England and I think she was ready to move on, too. We’re still friends. Just friends.” He blushed very deeply again, though it didn’t reach his eyes.

A buzzard hovered at our height to the left of the house, and I admired its brown plumage, determined not to seem too intrigued by my next question. “Your Highness, why are you telling me all this?”

I heard him exhale. “Remember what I told you about treating you as my equal? I didn’t want you to be under the same illusion as the rest of the world.”

I was flattered; properly and wholeheartedly this time, unlike in the car. He seemed to be ashamed of this particular chapter of his life, and definitely embarrassed about telling me, but he had still done so despite that.

“Thank you,” I murmured, unable to actually tell him I was glad he had recounted his experience, but wanting him to know I didn’t think any less of him; that I was grateful.

“For what?”

“Just thank you.”

A drop of water landed on the end of my nose, and then another on my hand, and I looked up, immediately exposing my face to several more droplets. “It’s starting to rain,” I muttered. “Perhaps we should go back inside?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose we should,” he said with a sigh.

Fallon

I
sat down in the armchair nearest the fireplace and watched as my uncle placed a glass of brandy and lovage on the wooden table beside the arm of his own very upright chair. He had picked up the habit of drinking it as his preferred winter beverage while traveling in and around Devon as a younger man, and swore by it for “settling his stomach.” I thought that if Devon could assign itself a particular taste, that drink would be it.

Autumn had excused herself not long before, saying she needed to complete some homework. I knew I should probably do the same, but struggled to find the motivation. Her dedication seemed odd compared to her tendency to miss school—something I, and clearly her parents, too, had noticed.

My uncle opened up his newspaper and, as usual, the front cover was dominated by a picture of Violet Lee and an accompanying headline. The shock had not died down, and I doubted it would until the whole thing was resolved. My aunt, reading over his shoulder, clicked her tongue and muttered something very derogatory about the vampires.

I frowned, and both Lisbeth’s and Alfie’s eyes flicked up, questioning.

My aunt walked around her husband’s chair and sat down opposite me. “The Varns have issued gag orders. All the papers can print is that the vamperic council is still refusing to negotiate with any of the British governments.”

Alfie stood up and strode over to the liquor cabinet, pouring himself a glass of port. “Gag orders are like super-injunctions, aren’t they? For all the blood in B.C., why would they need those?”

“Precisely,” my uncle said, folding the paper up along the creases. “
Why?
”

“Do you think something has happened?” Alfie asked, with his back to us.

“Most likely.” My uncle threw the folded paper on the fire, which groaned and began to eat away at the paper, turning it into a honeycomb lattice of smoldering holes and print. It took only a few seconds for Violet Lee’s face to be turned to ash. “I am just very glad that we are not at court. Even missing out on the council meetings seems a fair exchange for escaping the stress this whole mess brings.”

He reached his arm over the chair and took my aunt’s hand, squeezing it, his face glazing over with peace as he did. Farther back, out of the fire’s warm circle, Alfie and Lisbeth sat quietly talking. I averted my eyes. Life as a singleton was not something I had yet fully adjusted to.

Eventually my aunt released her husband’s hand and reached forward to sip at her tea. “Autumn Rose seems mature, and very well-mannered.”

She was trying to banish the heavy mood in the air, I knew, but at the same time, I knew my family was desperate to discuss the duchess—yet what we really should discuss, we couldn’t. Not with Lisbeth around. Even telepathy was too risky to use with such a delicate matter.

My uncle took a sip of his drink, too, peering over the top of the mottled glass at me, his eyes twinkling. “And every bit as beautiful as we thought she would be.”

“And every bit as wealthy,” Alfie piped up from the table.

Lisbeth playfully slapped him on the arm. “Nice to know what you look for in a woman!”

It was too shadowy to see his expression, but he pulled his girlfriend from her seat and onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her, cooing sweet nothings. Even if I did not know my cousin well, I would be able to tell he was utterly infatuated with her—and, I hoped, she with him.

My uncle was still staring at me pointedly, a small smile playing on his lips. I pretended not to see it until I was saved by Lisbeth.

“I heard she looked a lot like her grandmother, even when she was a child.”

My uncle craned his neck to look in her direction, then turned back and put his glass back down. “Oh yes. I had quite the shock when she came through the doors. A spitting image of the late duchess.”

“She barely ate at dinner though, poor thing.” My aunt sighed. “And I shouldn’t think her mother is vegan, so she must not eat very well at home. Does she eat much at school?” she asked, directing the question at me.

“I don’t think so.” When I thought about it, I didn’t think I had ever even seen her eat; she only seemed to drink coffee.

“Perhaps you should keep even more of an eye on her,” my aunt tentatively suggested, soft enough so that Alfie and, more crucially, Lisbeth, wouldn’t hear. “After everything you have told us . . .” She trailed off, and she did not need to finish.

I nodded, but still thought that Autumn had coped better than I had ever dared hope. She was talking, laughing even; a vast improvement on the weeks before. But I did wish she would let me
in,
in some small way—ideally, into her mind. It was extremely rude to push against the barriers around another’s consciousness, but with that thought, I couldn’t stop my own mind from wandering upstairs in search of her. I found her quickly, as always, her scent seeming to leave a trail of burdens wherever she went. I was met with concrete and mortar.

“Fallon . . . Fallon? Dear me, Ll’iriad’s children do tend to space out.”

I snapped my gaze up from where it had been resting on the fire to find my uncle grinning.

“Now where on earth did you wander off to?”

I pretended to have no idea what he was talking about and adjusted my expression accordingly. He hummed in amusement and disbelief, and I was sure he would have made another comment if my aunt hadn’t been glaring at him.

“I think I’ll go and do some work,” I announced, standing up. It was getting too hot sitting beside the fire, but the shadows full of candy hearts and sickly sweet flirting didn’t seem too appealing, either. My aunt’s glare darkened, but she nevertheless wished me a good night, and so did the other three, though I’d had plenty of sleep the previous few nights and had no intention of getting any more.

Working my way back along the left wing, I was dimly aware of how swift my pace was, and how eager the echo sounded in the entrance hall as I bounded up the stairs. I
did
have intentions to work; just not on my own.

I justified my steps toward the end of the house opposite to where my bedroom was located by thinking about how English literature was my worst subject . . . I needed the help.

The servants had chosen not to light the lamps fixed to the walls, the moon bright enough to light the whole hallway from a single window. With every passing door, my footfalls became lighter, urged along by the feeling, yet again, that I was infringing upon Autumn’s territory; if I stopped, I would be caught.

I hardly dared pause to knock when I reached her room, and even as my knuckles hit the wood I rocked on my heels to maintain some movement. When no answer came, I knocked again, softly calling her name. There was still no answer several knocks later, and I took that as an invitation to go in.

Inside, it was empty; neither the chandelier nor lamps were on, and again, the only light came from the moon. The curtains were still tethered, and her bag had been left on the sofa where I had placed it. It was open, though, and some of her clothes were spilling over the edge. Automatically, I walked over and reached out to stop them from ending up on the floor. Just as mechanically, I snapped my hand back, realizing they were her panties.

I pushed deep down thoughts I would not permit myself to have about her, doubting they would stay in their chained box very long. Giving the sofa a wide berth, I wondered how she could seem to have no idea of her potential power over men.
Maybe it’s her age. She’s only fifteen,
I reminded myself.

But another, more uneasy explanation hovered in a part of my mind I didn’t like to venture into.
Maybe it’s the depression.
Acknowledging that meant acknowledging the fact that she might not accept, or even recognize, feelings beyond those created by the parasite that fed on her misery.