Autumn Rose

  Her words succeeded in shutting the older girl up for a full ten seconds. Then Valerie crouched, scowling, and her dress slipped up so we could all see the shadow of her crotch.

  “And I don’t care what you say, you little nig—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I hissed, and in my raised palm a ball of red energy bounced between my thumb and fingers. My blood was hot but there was no red mist. I was in control, and so long as I was, I would not let anybody hurt Tee. “Girls’ bathroom. No prince to shield you now.”

  She took the hint to flee but I had no intention of leaving it at that. As I was hot on her heels, she was fearless, spewing insults about my snobbery, my grandmother, and my title, but I took no notice. I chased her all the way back into the ballroom, where she halted, yanked her skirt down, and settled on her last words.

  “I hate you!” she declared with a totter on her heels.

  I rounded the group until I could see her face, her seething, bloated, red face. I realized I was smirking; pleased that I could invoke such emotion in a person. How stupid she looks at this moment . . .

  “Likewise.” A quick bob of a curtsy, a spin on my right heel, and I was gone.

  I passed through awed stares, weaved through crowds, skirted the mirrors and the other room beyond them; my feet had a purpose but I could not decipher it. When the end of the room was in sight, they halted. One foot crossed behind the other’s heel. My knees bent. I lowered myself.

  “Your Highness.”

  “Would you like me to kick Valerie out?” he asked.

  I shook my head and smiled up at him. “I’ve got it.”

  He looked stunned. But he was smiling. He was smiling and he took my hand in his. We came together, and I could see the throbbing vein in his neck.

  “Dance with me,” he said.

  The music was changing. The heart-pounding bass faded into the tinkering of a piano, and the repetitive vocals blurred with the faraway coo of a woman’s voice.

  “I don’t remember how.”

  “You do.” His lips were on my ear. I smiled a little and shook my head and said no, but he silenced me, not with his words, not with his hands; with his gaze. “Let me lead you. You have no worries. You have no fears. Not now. Not in this moment. Dance with me, Autumn.”

  And then we were moving through the crowd I had parted and I was vaguely aware of Alfie and Lisbeth, but they looked like blurred figures through a misty lens. I only truly saw Fallon; I felt the warmth and sweat between our interlocked fingers, and I felt the tremor of his footsteps through the soles of my feet. He spoke to the faceless crowd. I did not hear him.

  We broke apart and I curtsied and stepped willingly and eagerly into his hold, and he led me in a slow waltz that I knew so well I could focus totally on the light press of his unscarred cheek on mine, and close my eyes to the faceless fishbowl crowd.

  “I want to say something, but I can’t; it’s as though if I were to say it, you would break.” His voice cracked on the very last word and the hand on my hip slipped around to rest on the small of my back, pulling me tightly to his torso.

  “Then don’t say it,” I sighed, resting my cheek on his shoulder. “Please, spare me the pain.”

  “Always, little duchess. Always.”

  I felt him bear up, straightening and pushing his chest up and lifting his head so the skin tightened where I rested my head.

  I knew I should be content. But it wasn’t like that. It was as though we were being pursued—by what, I didn’t know—and I had been chased right into a lake, and I was drowning. The music rose and fell, reaching my ears in slow, distorted waves. My feet did not feel the floor, and I rocked with the current in his arms. I opened my eyes. The people were now watercolor figures, extending far into the depths of the mirrors.

  And I knew it would always be like this, if I never left his arms. I knew I would always live in a fishbowl, and that the only way to escape the pain was to drown in deception, and to lie to myself, and to die pretending.

  I did not care.

  And then we broke apart and I knew that it would always be like this. He spoke to the crowd; thanked them for coming as the music fell silent and the lights started to brighten. People began dispersing, and servants began directing, and I disappeared into the mass, suddenly exhausted and wanting nothing more than my bed. But a hand caught mine. It was Fallon.

  He squeezed my palm between his thumb and fingers. “Good night, duchess.”

  He let go and, feeling suddenly lost, I clasped both hands together across my middle. “Good night, Your Highness.”

  His gaze flitted to the ground and back up, like he couldn’t bear to look away; when our eyes were level again, his lips upturned and he reached forward for my left hand. When he had it, he bowed forward and kissed the finger where a ring would be placed. Straightening, he nodded, once, slowly, and walked away, hands clasped behind his back like he was lost, too.

  In a stupor I watched him leave, heart exploding as my mind screamed at what had just happened; something I had seen done in Athenea so many times, when the teenagers had seemed like adults, and the adults like giants.

  He paid court to me!

  A pair of arms clamped down around my shoulders and jolted me up and down. “Did that just happen? Did that just happen? You are going after him, aren’t you?” Jo screamed, pushing me toward the door.

  “Do you think I should?”

  “Yes!”

  Cautiously, I started toward the door, glancing back over my shoulder at Jo, who nodded encouragingly. But outside, he was nowhere to be seen, and when I knocked timidly on his bedroom door, glancing nervously over my shoulder in case I was spotted trying to enter his bedroom, there was no answer. Coming back down to the gallery, I ran into Tee and a servant leading her up to one of the rooms, because she was staying the night.

  “Have you seen Prince Fallon?” I asked.

  “He went down that corridor there.” Tee pointed below the stairs and beamed a knowing smile that had me blushing.

  “He wished to be left alone, my lady,” the servant bristled and left, forgetting to curtsy.

  I stared at Tee’s back. “I bet he does.” I whirled on my tall heel and made my way down the stairs; I was back in the fishbowl and the leaving guests were staring. I did not care. In fact, I enjoyed it, just like I had enjoyed tormenting Valerie. My shoulders squared; my head raised.

  Nobody could hurt me in that moment.

  It was a moonless night beyond the glass room, and the only light and warmth came from the out-of-place stone hearth, where a fire roared, feasting on a freshly laid, tall pile of logs. On the oak coffee table stood a decanter and two glasses.

  He was in the shadows, half concealed by tall potted plants with vast, waxy leaves. I waited for him in the doorway. He turned to look back over his shoulder and, after a pause, his body followed, and he trod the floor like he owned it, very deliberately but very slowly, closing the distance between us as though I were a wild animal that might startle.

  He stopped about two meters short. “You understand what I meant by that.”

  It wasn’t a question, more a command to answer.

  Shaking, I lowered myself as gracefully as I could to the floor, coming to a rest in a bow with one knee raised, my weight resting on the other. I felt my dress ride up my thighs.

  “I never thanked you, Your Highness, for inviting Jo to Burrator. She was humbled to meet you.”

  There was a warm tint in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before, and without ever tearing his gaze away from my lowered body, he took a long drink from the glass in his hand, which contained what looked like brandy.

  Abruptly, he spun and headed for a sideboard to my right. I heard him set the glass down and risked watching him. His hands gripped the furniture’s edge and his head was bowed in submission to the rushing waterfall beyond the glass.

  “I didn’t invite your friends for the sake of their social standing.” His tone was irritated. I stayed d
umb. The knee flush to the floor was beginning to numb. He glanced back at me after several seconds of silence. I could hear him raking a breath in.

  “Lower your knee.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Lower your knee, Autumn!”

  I did as I was told. Kneeling tall, fighting for balance as my legs quaked, I felt like a fool. I didn’t feel like I was bowing before my prince.

  “Fallon?” I whispered to the chorus of the crackling fire. “You’re scaring me.”

  One by one, his fingers loosened their grip on the wood and he swallowed, hard, rising and turning back to me. In a breath, he was in front of me, his hand cupping the back of my head, his fingers intertwining in my hair, and my forehead resting against his thigh, almost level with his crotch. My eyes flicked right. My throat tightened.

  “You can’t answer me, can you?” he asked. His voice was chillingly calm.

  “I—”

  Nothing came.

  His hand clenched in my hair. He took a few deep breaths and then spoke. “Come sit with me.”

  He helped me up with a hand in mine, while my other tugged my hem as far down as it would go. Oh, Lisbeth, why this dress?

  He sat down and nestled into the corner of the sofa in front of the fire, and I sank into its folds, knees clamped together. We settled at right angles to one another. He watched me, one leg crossed over the other, hands on the back of the sofa, free foot hanging; casual, like the earlier tension in his arms had flowed through his hand into me as I had knelt before him.

  I was rigid. The fire was the only place I could look.

  “I tried,” he said. “I tried to be selfless. I know that you need to heal before you can offer me what I want, and I’ll help you. But I’m still a man, and seeing you tonight . . . seeing you so beautiful, so confident . . . I just had to know. I had to know if there’s any hope.”

  I didn’t look at him. How can I? He’s right. But the tone of quiet acceptance . . . it broke me. I found his gaze. His jaw tightened and he leaned forward, taking the decanter in his hands.

  “Christ, you’re not even legal,” he breathed, dry, humorless, hand and voice shaking as he poured out two glasses of red wine.

  I stopped fiddling with my hands. “I will be in a week,” I said slowly, eyes darting right.

  “Don’t suggest something I know you can’t give me. Heart first.”

  He handed me a glass, touching his own against mine and taking a sip. As he did, he leaned back and the light from the fire chased the shadows from his face. For the first time, I realized just what was scaring me, and why his eyes were so warm: each iris was as red as the crimson liquid in his glass.

  Why does that scare me? We had just been talking about it, about those kinds of feelings, I could see the sweat running down his neck, and I wasn’t an innocent: I knew why he had crossed one leg over the other.

  “Do you know the effect you have on men? Do you have any idea how people see you, revere you?”

  I shook my head.

  A hand returned to the back of the sofa and he took my gaze for his own. “You are beautiful; you know this. But you are too innocent to know the power you wield. I doubt I’m the first, and I will definitely not be the last who wants your heart and more. And I wish I was strong enough to be content with just your companionship, but I need more than an untouchable glass ornament on my arm. My family; your family; the court . . . they need more than that.”

  I shifted and set my glass down, staring at its delicacy. “I’m not an ornament, am I?”

  He also set his glass down, empty now. His eyes had faded to their usual blue. “You are. You are a deity. You should be kept safe in a cabinet, pure and protected from the pain.”

  It was in a sudden surge of courage that my hand settled on his top leg and pulled it from across the other until both his feet rested flat against the tiled floor. And it was with a rush of something new, something injected into my chest and back, abdomen and neck, something that felt like magic but wasn’t, that I rose onto my knees on the sofa and straddled him, hands coming to a rest on his shoulders.

  “Autumn . . . what . . . what are you doing?” He had to take a breath between every other word, and his eyes had dropped right back down to red.

  “Why? Why do I have to be kept pure?”

  His hands settled gingerly on my hips, where they had rested so many times when he had hugged me, or just now, when we had danced. It was different this time.

  “You don’t. But you’re too important to hurt; to lose your mind. It’s why I’m afraid of breaking you. We need you.”

  I slid forward a few inches. “Because I’m a seer?” I insisted.

  He nodded and swallowed so hard I could hear the gulp. “Autumn,” he choked. “Autumn, you need to move back.”

  He might as well have jammed a needle right into my heart. I shuffled back, and my arms fell away from him; instead I wrapped them around my stomach and stared at the arm of the sofa.

  “Hey,” he whispered, untucking a few strands of hair from behind my ears. “It’s a compliment. I just like you far too much to ignore the fact you’re sitting in my lap.”

  “Sorry,” I murmured, embarrassed and ashamed at what I had done, because I hadn’t achieved . . . well, what? What had I been trying to achieve? I don’t want to be with him like that, so why did I do it? Flirting with feelings so strong that I was rejecting them with all my might . . . that was dangerous. That was stupid. That was exactly the gossip the press wanted. Goose bumps rose on my arms at the thought.

  “You’re cold,” he muttered, and, with a wave of his middle finger, a patchwork throw tossed on an armchair floated over and settled around my shoulders. He pulled it right around me, reached down with his hands, and, one by one, took my heels off.

  When he was satisfied that I was comfortable, almost sitting cross-legged in his lap by now, he allowed himself to lean forward a little, until our foreheads were nearly touching. “I can’t pretend I see you just as a friend, or as a noblewoman, not anymore. I just want to hear that you need me, need me as much as I need you, even if you don’t want a relationship.”

  My hands wrapped around the back of his neck and chest, quivering, closed the distance between us so our foreheads touched. “I need you. When you first came, it got worse, you damaged all my walls, but—”

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “But now you make it better, I’m so much happier now and yet I still hurt, I hurt too much and I can’t let go, I just can’t. Please understand, please.”

  I couldn’t hold tears back any longer, and he pulled my head down onto his shoulder.

  “I’ll wait,” he said. “And we’ll get you better. I’ll wait.”

  I didn’t really hear him, as a sudden, sharp stab of pain darted from my right temple to the left, like an arrow had been shot right through my head.

  I let out a sharp breath and rose from his shoulder a little. He went to hush me but another, even more painful stab penetrated my forehead, and with a muffled shriek, I recognized the pain.

  “My head hurts. My head hurts so much. I think it’s a vision.” My nails dug into his arms through his jacket, and he pulled me tight. “It is, it’s a vision!” The sobs heightened and I tensed up, gripping him as the pain intensified and moved from my temples down to my eyes, blackness infringing on the outer rim of my vision. “Please stay, please stay, don’t go!”

  A hand stroked my hair. “I’m right here,” he cooed. “I’m not moving.”

  “The servants . . . the servants . . . they’ll gossip . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”

  “It hurts! It hurts so much!”

  “I know, duchess.”

  “Don’t let go. Don’t let go of me.”

  “I won’t. I’ve got you.”

  “I need you. I need you, Fallon Athenea.”

  Darkness.

  So it’s true. Athenea has been right all along.

  Violet Lee thra
shed in her bedclothes that night. The sweat-stained circles on her shirt, and her feet, twisted up in sheets with just her toes poking out, dripped.

  “Have you heard the Prophecy of the Heroines?”

  My view of her slipped left and right across my vision as hazy outlines of cloaked men in a clearing jostled for attention.

  “It’s a load of destiny crap made up by Athenea. Not worth your time or mine.”

  I could feel her curiosity burning as a constant pull back to her room, but I was definitely in another’s mind, and yet even as I tried to work out just whose mind, the scene spun and I could see a figure among the treetops, looking down on a group of gathered slayers and rogues.

  It was an uneasy scene, where every creature wanted to rip out the other’s throat. They spat venom back and forth and the trees suffered as the rogue punished the bark with his nails, and the branches of the trees silently bore the weight of the mysterious onlooker.

  Was she dreaming this? I thought as what was presumably her bedroom flickered back into the center of my gaze. And if she was, did that make this scene real or not?

  “They’ve found the Sagean girl of the first verse. The Prophecy is true.”

  Whose heart paused for a moment there? Mine or hers?

  “They have found the first Dark Heroine. But, after all, you don’t believe it, so don’t trouble yourself. We’ll let Lee know before Ad Infinitum is over.”

  There it was. The Prophecy the vamperic council thought Lee might use as an excuse. Finding the first girl . . . that was his excuse.

  Violet Lee finally came to a rest in her bed, but even in my unconscious state I could feel my weight bearing down on the prince, and feel the heaviness of my limbs slumped against his.

  I was going to be alive to see the Prophecy of the Heroines finally, after so many millennia, be fulfilled . . . and, hopefully, the danger and fear we were in ended, and the war so many prophets had seen coming stopped.