Your father is weak. He has always suffered with his nerves.
But he has such a stressful job.
I folded one leg under me as I dropped onto my window seat. I could hear the crunch of gravel and looked down to see my father walking along the path, what looked like a ham sandwich clamped between his teeth. He opened the trunk of his car and pulled out several box files, anchoring them under his arms before haphazardly making his way back toward the house. I smiled.
His nerves are not as bad around humans. And he has a human job.
But what does that have to do with my mother?
She is domineering. She was willing to take over so he did not have to make decisions. That is why he married her.
What kind of decisions, Grandmother?
Decisions that mean they are not a part of society, and never visit court.
I knew that eventually I would have to go downstairs to collect the homework the prince had delivered, but I felt no sense of urgency. There was no way that I would cancel work at such short notice to accept the prince’s invitation—my boss had already cut me off the evening-event shifts list for missing the Thursday I had detention—and so I could do the school work on Sunday. Instead, I went over to my laptop and set about answering the slew of e-mails Jo had sent me.
“Grandmother, do you love my mother?”
The older woman had bent down, untucking her granddaughter’s ringlets from behind her ears and cupping her scarred cheek. “Of course I do, child. Without her, I would not have you.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Autumn
“You just won’t die, will you, Violet Lee?”
I felt my palms burn in shame at those words, and I knew my mouth was open, screaming, but there was only the sound of flesh being torn from flesh, and blood being slurped from the offal that stained the white gravel rosy, and bones clattering to the ground, over and over, rhythmic, until the sound became the ticking of the clock.
A child fled the gagging human, her dress trailing in the breeze. She knelt by the corpse of a woman and knelt as if to kiss her hand . . . instead, her teeth sank into the palm.
I could not see faces, because they were buried in corpses, eating them, but I knew what these creatures were. They were vampires; vampires eating vampires.
And Violet Lee lurched, and swayed, and fell crashing to the ground as the cry of “Stop! Stop!” went ignored.
Yet even as she lay in a pool of her own vomit, the prince of the vampires, blood staining his shirt, sleeve used as a cloth to wipe his face, picked her up with all the gentleness of a lover. He brushed the bangs from her eyes, tipped her head back, and carried her away, hugging her like she might slip away from his arms at any second and never return.
I couldn’t put my finger on why I chose to accept the prince’s invitation a couple of weeks later. Maybe it was simply to defy my mother; or maybe it was because work had crossed the line into being unbearable without Nathan around. He had resigned without warning. My boss couldn’t give any explanation.
Maybe it was because the prospect of the whole thing didn’t seem so awful now. It was my duty to pay them a visit, and in any case, it was becoming harder and harder to keep in my head the thought that they were withholding information about my grandmother’s death, mainly because a multitude of reasons were forming in my mind to explain why they might do that. Reasons that made it harder to justify the distance I had thus far maintained.
I checked my packing one final time. A couple of books, my school bag, and a fresh school uniform were folded and ready for the following Monday at the bottom, followed by underwear, two spare outfits, and riding clothes, which I had ordered especially when the prince had mentioned we might venture out. I did have a full riding habit from when I was younger, but I didn’t want to ride sidesaddle, and I doubted it would fit anyway.
I had rushed home after school—the prince had to stay later even though it was a Friday, but I still only had an hour to get ready. Yet miraculously, by 4:20 P.M., I had showered and dressed and sorted my hair out, twisting it into a spiral bun on the side of my head. A few curls had been left to fall around my face. I looked in the mirror and tugged my skirt down, hoping my outfit was formal enough. The skirt was pleated and patterned, and the reddish-brown of my tights was probably pushing it, but my tucked-in blouse and jacket looked quite smart. I could curtsy in it. That was all that mattered.
I took my bag and placed it at the base of the staircase, then sat down myself on the lowest stair, waiting. A few minutes later, I heard the gate opening and clicking shut again and bounded up. My nerves were making me jumpy, and the only comparison I could make was to the time I had been summoned before the principal at St. Sapphire’s. This occasion, unlike that one, truly mattered.
The bell rang. Before I could cross the distance to the door, however, my father had stepped in front of me. He came from nowhere and I faltered, unsure of what he wanted. I had already had the lecture from my mother.
He hesitated, too, and then placed a hand on each of my cheeks and tilted me forward, kissing the top of my head. “Be good. Stay safe.”
And, with that, he disappeared into the living room, shutting the door behind him. I stared at the wood panels in astonishment until the sound of knuckles rapping the tinted glass broke me from my reverie.
I opened the door to find the prince, smiling. “Ready?” he asked. I nodded and went back in to collect my bag, which he stooped down to take from me before I could protest. I didn’t look back as I got in his car, afraid that my resolve might weaken.
“You don’t need to be nervous,” the prince said as we pulled away.
“I’m not nervous.”
“You’re shaking.” His eyes left the road for a second and focused on my hands. I looked, too. He was right, and I clasped them together in my lap.
The journey progressed largely in silence, and it was almost an hour before we reached the moors, where his family had taken up abode.
Ahead of us the road weaved across the landscape as a gray scar, seeming to disappear completely in places as the land dropped into gullies. I could see for miles—and for miles, there was nothing. A blanket of gorse, burned in places, and thick tufts of elephant grass suffocated any other shrubbery, save for the odd staff of wood that had once been a tree. Dartmoor, I could remember thinking as a child, must be the loneliest place on earth, because here you could walk and walk and never see another living soul.
We came over the crest of a hill and descended, and suddenly, through the mist that had sunk into the valley, there appeared the gray outlines of several huge granite buildings. Their walls were sheer, with hardly any windows; from the roof protruded tall chimneys. A chill ran down my spine. They looked like slaughterhouses.
“Dartmoor prison. Hound of the Baskerville territory, huh?”
I thought it more apt to think about the way the town we were passing through was called Princetown. But my attention didn’t linger long on such a depressing place, as the ground leveled out and pine trees began to appear, lining the road for a good mile. Suddenly the car swung left through a gap in the trunks that I would totally have missed if we hadn’t entered it. The trees were tall around us, and if the mist had chosen to descend here, I doubt he would have been able to pick out the narrow lane that eased itself between the wooden pillars and low branches. But there was light ahead, and we moved steadily toward it until the trunks fell away to be replaced with a conifer hedge arch, complete with gates thrown wide open.
I gasped.
We were in a narrow meadow. The ground was completely coated in green, with patches of purple and orange and pink peeping from between the grasses; there was even a small aqueduct running down one side. The drive weaved through its center, enclosed by more of the same trees, which formed a vast evergreen gorge.
It swept around a shallow corner, so I couldn’t see what lay beyond us, but when the trees formed a neat row again, the view was as picturesque as the meadow.
The house looked Georgian, with a central wing lined with four engaged, partly embedded columns, and wings on either side. It was only two stories high, and whitewashed. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a beautiful building in beautiful surroundings, but considering who its owners were, it was very modest.
The drive widened to form a turning circle, and a chauffeur stepped out of a small door just below the raised ground floor of the main house. The prince cut the engine and undid his seat belt, but didn’t move, turning to me with the corners of his lips upturned.
“Welcome back, my lady.”
He didn’t give me a chance to answer or ask what he meant as he grabbed my bag off the backseat and got out. I followed, waiting to move until he had rounded the car. It pulled away from behind us, the chauffeur driving. I watched it retreat, sincerely wishing that I was still in it. But I wasn’t, and that meant I had to face this.
Decorum, child, is everything.
I started to walk forward and the prince quickly overtook me by a stride, leading the way up the steps to the large door, which was already thrown open. I took a quick breath and clasped my hands in front of me to stop them from shaking, and then followed him across the threshold.
I didn’t get much chance to take in the interior, because my eyes went straight to the four people standing in the center of the hall. The prince stopped just short of them and I drew up beside him and then did something that, a month ago, I didn’t think I would have to do for many years yet: I dropped into a full, deep curtsy.
“Your Highnesses,” I addressed to the well-varnished floor. It seemed like a very long time before an address came back.
“Lady Autumn.” I straightened back up, trying to tell myself the worst part was over. “How wonderful to see you again.”
Prince Lorent, the duke of Victoria, the king’s older and closest brother, stood before me, smiling. Immediately my mind was delving through images of the king, reconciling the appearance of the two men. The king had made an impression on me when I was a child, and in his older brother I recognized the same ash-blond hair and, of course, the Atheneas’ blue eyes. But despite being older by several decades, this man looked far younger than I remembered his sibling. There was no gray hair, and the creases in his skin were clustered around his mouth—they were from laughter, not stress.
“You remember my wife, and my youngest son, Prince Alfie.” It was not a question, and I smiled at each of them. Prince Alfie I definitely remembered—I could remember him teasing me at court—yet I was startled to see how adult he looked these days. He must be around twenty-one, but he certainly hadn’t slowed down in his aging, despite being fully fledged. I was shocked, too, by how much he and the other young prince, Fallon, had grown to resemble each other. They could be brothers, not cousins. Even their idea of a smile was identical: lips upturned at the edges; flat in the middle. In contrast, I could barely recollect seeing his wife, the princess and duchess, save for hazy images of her in a black veil at my grandmother’s funeral.
That left only the young woman at the end of the line. She certainly didn’t look like one of the Athenea; and in the back of my mind, I thought her features seemed familiar.
Prince Alfie stepped forward a fraction, taking the woman’s hand. “And this is my girlfriend, Lady Elizabeth Bletchem.”
I was aware of a strangling noise in the back of my throat, which was all too audible in the silent hall, and berated myself for not making the connection sooner. This was the Lady Elizabeth Bletchem: the woman who had toyed with the affections of one of the human princes for the past year. Evidently, she had lost interest in him.
If she noticed my surprise, she chose to ignore it. With her fingers still clasping the prince’s fingers, she bobbed into a shallow curtsy. “Lady Autumn, I am so pleased to finally meet you. My father knew the late duchess of England, and always spoke so highly of her.”
I forced a smile. I never knew what else to do when my grandmother was mentioned in such a context. I saw Prince Fallon glance my way, and wondered how much he had told his family about me.
The lady Sage waited for a reply, and when none came she let go of her boyfriend’s hand and leaned down—she towered over my short frame—and, to my utter astonishment, pecked me on each cheek. “I hope we can become very good friends,” she whispered.
I didn’t move. It was not normal to be that intimate with people when first introduced, and the feeling I was left with was identical to when the prince had put his hand on my knee while giving me a lift home. It left a burn; a burn just like the ones I had felt in each palm in my most recent dream.
The older woman spared me the necessity of replying. “Fallon, why don’t you take the duchess upstairs and show her to her rooms? Then meet us on the terrace. I’ll have some tea and coffee ordered.”
“Sure.”
I bobbed into a low curtsy, and the youngest prince picked up my bag, carrying it toward the staircase.
“Fallon, Chatwin can take that up,” the princess said, beginning to move away.
Her nephew slowed and turned on his heel, walking backward toward the stairs. I was a few paces behind him, and so could see how wildly he was blushing. His eyes widened, as though trying to communicate something to her. “I’ve got it, Aunt,” he said in a tone clearly supposed to make her sound stupid for suggesting he not carry it.
There was a roar of laughter from the retreating back of his uncle, to which the youngest prince responded by blushing even deeper; even his eyes tinged pink, which was unusual, as Sage could mostly keep enough of a check on their eye color to prevent emotion showing. When he saw me staring, he chewed on the corner of his lip and half raised his shoulders, then quickly turned and headed for the stairs.
I was amused but glad the prince wasn’t looking to see my expression, as I didn’t want to humiliate him further. I could only wonder how awful it would be to belong to a group of dark beings that didn’t have the control of magic we did: those whose magic, like the vampires’, was used only to keep them alive, albeit as predators. Their eyes must betray every thought.
The gleaming mahogany staircase we ascended branched into a gallery at its summit, and then into hallways that led into each wing. He led me down the one to the right. It was light and airy, the walls pale yellow and lit by a window at the far end. On each wall were four generously spaced doors. We stopped at the one on the right at the very end.
It was white and paneled; the joints of each section covered in what I thought might be gold leaf, but I didn’t have the chance to take a closer look as he opened the door and stepped inside. I followed.
The modest exterior and hall had been a deception—and that was still an understatement. Only one thing prevented me from gasping, and that was the prince’s presence. Instead I gulped hard.
We were in a sort of reception room: Two large, pale-gold sofas faced each other, separated by a coffee table made of the same dark, highly varnished wood as the staircase. They stood on a large sky-blue rug, decorated like a paint-flecked canvas, with thousands of gold flowers and fleur-de-lis. Three windows, their sills reaching almost as low as my knees, lined the far wall, looking out, in reverse, on the same view I had been enchanted with as we arrived. Yet it was the ceiling that caught my attention: above the sofas, it resembled an upside-down tray, with a chandelier of tens of glass uplighter shades hanging from its center. Within the indent, a mural of pale-blue sky and ivory-white clouds had been painted; around the base of the chandelier, the clouds were tinged peach from the sun, which shone on a cupid on one side.
“You have one of the best suites. It’s peaceful,” the prince said, and I snapped my head back to eye level. He placed my bag on one of the sofas. “We are all in the other wing, and Alfie likes to play his music ridiculously loud,” he continued, as though he felt the need to explain his
initial wistful statement.
I paid little attention, eyeing an archway in one corner of the room and a door in the other.
“Dressing room and bathroom,” he said, following my gaze.
I whirled around to face the other wall. To my left was the entrance, but there was a third door. I watched the prince through the corner of my eye, seeking permission. He smiled and that was all the permission I needed to bound away and nearly tumble with eagerness through the door.
A magnificent double bed faced me, framed by a half-tester made of tethered champagne drapes and a massive headboard of the same material, which stretched halfway up the wall. There was a dressing table—definitely gold leaf—and the tray ceiling looked like it was layered with the same expensive coating. Embedded columns surrounded the windows all along the front wall and those in the back wall; there was so much light that it bounced off the white walls and gold leaf and made the wooden floor look like it was covered in shards of glass.
My initial sentiment that nothing could have prepared me for the grandeur faded as I took in the details, the color schemes, the grotesque extravagance, because the palace at Athenea was decorated with near-identical taste.
Excitement diminishing, I reminded myself of what I was going to have to endure in exchange for staying in such a room and reluctantly took myself back through the door.
The prince was waiting. “I wanted to apologize for them.” He pointed down at the floor and I assumed he meant his family. “They are very . . .”
He opened and closed his mouth a few times.
“Very House of Athenea?” I finished, hoping that he didn’t take that as an insult.
He exhaled, finishing with a slight chuckle. “Yeah. That. And very not House of Al-Summers.”
It was my turn to smile, rather sheepishly.
“You have a lovely smile. You should use it more often.”
The very smile he complimented faded, and his eyes widened as he blushed yet again, as though he was surprised at his own words. I tugged on a strand of loose hair.