Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel (25 page)

The finer details of what had happened were discussed, and ideas of what kind of security we would now need bounced around before things drifted off into a natural silence.

“We cannot delay any longer,” the princess hinted to her husband. He took a cup of tea, finished it, and then nodded.

“We will send an envoy when the king is ready to receive you, Edmund. And Fallon, you are to come with us.” The youngest prince tilted his head and I could hear a faint sigh of exasperation. His uncle finished by addressing the remaining occupants of the room, instructing us to have lunch.

I managed to stand up and curtsy this time, because Fallon had gone to join his aunt and uncle in the corner. Lisbeth and Alfie quickly disappeared upstairs. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t feel like I could do anything after what had happened. Instead, I hovered outside the ajar door to the room, deciding.

“So, young prince, what
else
have you not told us about her?”

I jumped. The sound of my virtually ruined shoes slapping against the tiles echoed in the empty entrance, and I clapped my hand to my mouth to suppress a sound of dismay. They were
talking
about
me.
I knew their downplaying of my having a job was false. But that was insignificant compared to what else Fallon knew. He would tell them about the visions, if he hadn’t already. He had only said he would
try
to keep silent. I didn’t mind them knowing. My visions could help. What I was more afraid of was becoming a weapon. That was what happened to seers. Especially seers who could envision (or, like me, couldn’t stop themselves from envisioning) large events. That would mean returning to court and taking up my place on the council as soon as I turned sixteen. Being a duchess in name only would not be enough if the Athenea chose to use my gift.

No, no child! I am a cursed seer. We all are.
That’s what she always said.

The sound of Prince Lorent’s accusation had thrown me into a stupor; the sound of the door being slammed by someone with a thickly scarred hand of midnight blue—Edmund—wrenched me out of it.

Oh, so they are quite happy to force their company and their security on me. They are quite happy to delve for information on me. But I’m not allowed to be that close.
I wasn’t, after all, precious royalty.

That thought hurt. Weeks before, I never thought it would. I still didn’t understand where it was coming from. I wanted to be at home. I
did
want to be at home. But a weekend here had made me feel included. Part of something. I hadn’t felt part of something since St. Sapphire’s.

Yet at that moment all I wanted was to get away, and my feet obliged, carrying me toward the terrace at a pace that threatened to turn into a sprint. I could hear how hard the rain was becoming, but that didn’t deter me. The table and chairs beckoned and I took the seat farthest from the view of the glass French doors. My fingers locked themselves into the gaps between the wrought-iron intricacies and my arms folded, providing my head with a pillow from which I could watch the rain. I wasn’t aware that I was crying until my vision fragmented because of the teardrops dangling from my lashes. I smothered them with the crook of my elbow.

Why won’t the infernal rain stop? Did it not rain enough over the summer?
I wouldn’t mind so much if it didn’t bounce off the lip of the raised terrace, straight onto my shoes. The inner lining was disintegrating beneath the balls of my feet, and it felt as though they rested on slime. My mother had warned me this would happen if I chose nonleather shoes. But I would not wear leather, and she could not understand that.

And a little sun would do me so much good. It got rid of the stupid little bumps beneath my skin, which threatened to erupt into pimples at the slightest sign of stress, and it lightened the auburn streaks in my hair to make them look more blond. It was so much easier to be positive when it was bright.

“Why did you do it, Nathan?!” I demanded from the rain. I tried to smack the table in frustration, but my fingers were trapped between a laurel leaf and a spiral and I just ended up crying out in pain instead. Once I had eased them out, I settled back down.

What did they tell you, to make you do this? How convincing were their lies to make you leave your home, and your family, and your job? What compelled you to place your life on a line made of piano wire? Don’t you know anything about the Extermino? Anything at all?!

The rain didn’t answer. The rain just rained.

The Terra had made a lot of murky things illegal. At the top of that list was turning humans into Sage, or any dark being who could actually wield magic, for that matter. It was dangerous. Massively, massively dangerous. Magic was active in our blood; it could overwhelm humans and kill them if they were exposed. It took somebody of extraordinary power to control a turning, and a human of equal strength to survive it. It was an uncomfortable thought, but I could only think of one person among the Extermino as being able to do it.

Violet Lee had gotten lucky, therefore. A vamperic turning was safe by comparison, as vampires’ magic was dormant, providing their physical abilities and thirst. It was the least painful, the most practiced, and widely accepted. She would become a charge of the royal family, and would not be in want of anything. She had been given a choice, because her captors were vampires.

But Nathan had survived.

The sound of wood scraping across wood in the frame of the door roused me from my thoughts and I rushed to dab at my eyes, briefly hoping it was the prince but just as quickly reminding myself that he had probably gone to Athenea already to deliver the news about the Extermino to his father. When I turned, I found Edmund leaning against one of the posts that held the veranda up. The rain from the gutter was soaking his hair, but he didn’t seem to mind, even if he was shortly going to meet the king. The bangs that he usually kept carefully slicked back had sunk down onto his forehead, and the sun-bleached coils all but covered his very dark, very thick scars, which were about as intricate as a ninety-degree angle. That had clearly not mattered to Gwen, however.

I laid my head back down to watch the rain. I was not interested in his impending lecture. I knew the Terra backward, and I knew that in the eyes of the law, I was practically a hero for what I had done. My bookishness and interest in all things thought to be tedious by others paid off. It always had.

“Killing an Extermino with a death curse at age fifteen. Impressive. Stupid,” he reasoned, and I could imagine, almost hear, him folding his arms. “But impressive.”

I did not look up. I closed my eyes, because the rain was no longer streaking straight to the ground but across the garden in sheets.

“In fact . . .” The chair scraped across the grooved flooring. “If you were not a noblewoman with what I am sure will be a glittering political career ahead of you, I would recruit you on the spot.”

“How do you know I killed one?” I asked my arm.

He laughed. “It’s my job to know about it.”

I finally raised my head and squinted, because my vision was blurry. His outline gradually filled in and I was able to focus. “You didn’t tell them.”

“I don’t think your ability to wield that curse should be broadcast, least of all to the Athenea. Power scares people. If you were not in danger, I would advise you to bury the theory deep. But you are in danger,” he finished in a low murmur, drumming his fingers against the treated iron. His nails occasionally caught a fleck of the emerald-green paint and he would flick it away, staring at a spot just above my right shoulder. “They will want revenge on you for what you did,” he stated matter-of-factly, snapping from his trance. “And yet you are not afraid. You are apathetic toward the notion that you have killed a fellow Sage. None of your rash actions today resulted from the bloody staining of your hands. Why is that?”

He leaned forward so his elbows slotted into a gap in the table, and intertwined his fingers. It was a rhetorical question, and I kept my gaze as steady as I could under his pensive expression, sensing he was enjoying the challenge. He drummed his fingernails together twice more, and then clapped his hands in much the same way as when the fireman had turned him away.

“Ah, I see. You think the Extermino killed her, don’t you?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Get out of my mind.”

“You know full well I am not in your mind, my lady. It was simply a perceptive guess. And your reaction told me I was correct.”

I huffed and swiveled in my chair so my entire body faced the rain, presenting my back to him. “I’m right though, aren’t I? It was the Extermino. You know why, too. They all do.” I gestured awkwardly back toward the doors, earning a painful click of my shoulder as I did.

He didn’t answer, and I could hear the groans of the chair as he shifted.

“You won’t tell me, either,” I snapped, wrapping my arms around the back of the chair and gripping it tightly. I hugged it, using it as an aid to fight the tears from returning.

“Is that why you ran today? Why you push Fallon away? You feel cheated.” His voice had softened and all the taunting had disappeared. He sounded the way I had always wanted my father to sound.
Concerned.
“That is understandable.”

I jolted my head around. “It is?” I breathed.

“Yes. I would feel the same way if I were you.”

I returned to addressing the soaked garden, eyes fixed on the lawn beyond the flower beds, which was collecting water in puddles because the ground was becoming saturated. “Then why won’t you, or anyone else, tell me the truth?”

“Would you believe me if I were to say it is for your own good?”

I shook my head vigorously, frustrated that such a statement had been used to twist my arm twice in one day. I wrapped my arms even tighter around the chair, forcing them to stretch so my hands could reach and grip the sides. The bars dug into the crease between my armpits and breasts, yet the dull ache was the only antidote I had available to prevent myself from crying. And I would
not
cry in front of a man I had only truly known for a day.

He hummed in displeasure, and the chair groaned yet again. “My lady, what I and the Athenea know about the circumstances of your grandmother’s death will not bring you closure, if that is what you seek.” The stern, reprimanding tone of voice had returned, and I felt as though I had been reduced to the status of a child—gone was the fatherly concern.

Do not be so stupid, child! So reckless as to think you are grown enough to bear all my secrets, when they will only crush you.

Grandmother, it is you who stifles me. I wish you would leave, be gone! Then I
could
grow!

“Am I not mature enough to decide whether it will help?” I demanded.

A hand smacked down on the table, and I started. “Autumn Rose Al-Summers, you are in no fit state to make even the smallest decision yourself, because you are obsessed with a corpse. Nobody but you can provide closure, and if you do not let go of death then you will rot with your grandmother until you are little more than flesh on bone. And as you feel nothing, not even a pang of remorse, at killing a man who no doubt had family and committed no crime other than belonging to the wrong faction, then perhaps it is already too late for you!”

I sat in stunned silence, each and every word, delivered with increased volume and tempo, battering my back so it arched painfully. It took me a minute to find my voice, and even then I could only produce a breathy sigh of disbelief. “How dare you? How dare you speak to me like that?”

He stamped to his feet. “I dare because someone needed to whip the black veil from in front of your face.”

“And who are you to lecture me on morals? You’re just staff.”

Then, to my complete and utter surprise, he laughed. A true laugh that I could tell came from deep within his chest, and didn’t seem an adequate response to my venomous words. “I think you have spent far too much time with Fallon. And I am more than just staff to you, Duchess.”

I huffed again, disappointed with his reply. It had not quenched the anger I felt. “Actually, as far as I was aware, we’re not related.”

His laughter gradually faded and he sat back down. “I have something to show you. Which will mean you must turn around and face me, my lady.” The taunt of his first words to me was back.

Slowly, I extracted my arms from the chair and slid around to face him, my eyes firmly narrowed. He waited with his arms folded, leaning back into the chair. Once my knees were tucked back below the table, he unbuttoned his jacket and reached into an inner pocket. I briefly saw a flash of metal, which I thought might be a gun, but then the lapels of his jacket had flopped back down and there was a wallet in his hand. Out of a clear sleeve safely tucked in the third fold he pulled a square of creased paper, and then returned the wallet to his pocket.

“Tell me who these people are.” Onto the table he placed a photo, a few inches wide, which was heavily creased and black-and-white, slightly faded from overexposure around the edges.

He had placed it on the dry part of the table, far from the reach of the rain, and I had to lean across to see it. I didn’t need to do anything more than tuck my sopping-wet hair behind my ears and out of my eyes to be able to recognize the woman in the middle. I had albums and albums of photos of which she was the subject, and had seen many of the portraits of her that hung in the mansions that belonged to the duchy of England. Not that I was in any need of those, either, because it was like looking at a photo of myself: the same fair, tightly curled hair; the same spiraling scars; the same dramatically curvy figure, exaggerated by her short stature.

“That is my grandmother.” She didn’t look as though she had yet entered her late twenties. Even when I had known her, she had been youthful. Her magic had treated her vanity well. I slid my finger to the right of the shot, to where, in contrast, an aging man was standing. “That is Eaglen. And that . . .” I frowned at the third figure, bringing the photo even closer so I could double-check what I was seeing. “Is that your father?”