Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel (28 page)

“Of course.” He charmed a letter opener into his hand and started on the nearest envelope. “There is no way I would text details around, even on my nonpersonal cell, if Gwendolen Daniels is going to get hold of them.”

He shuddered and I had to hold back a snort of laughter, which quickly slithered back down into my throat when I caught sight of the actual rectangle of card the details had been printed on.

“You used my coat of arms!” I accused, snatching it from him and taking a closer look. On the left was the formidable Athenean insignia, a stylized A with three thin wings on each side, and on top of that, pointing skyward, a sword with an elaborate guard, which, as a child, I had been convinced was supposed to resemble an eagle. Now I knew it symbolized both the Death’s Touch rose and the Canadian maple leaf. However, on the right of the card was the shield of the duchy of England, surrounded by banners bearing mottoes and topped with three roses. If the insignia had been in color, I knew, from left to right they would bloom golden, black, and then a blend of red and white: a withered rose, a Death’s Touch, and a Tudor rose.

I looked back at him, and I couldn’t help the tint of black reaching my irises.

“It is your party—”

“It’s not my party!” I protested, creasing the card with my firm grip. “I only agreed to this because you promised not to throw one for my birthday.”

My narrowed eyes must have worked, because he slumped into the backrest and took up another envelope. “Your name isn’t on the invitation, and I haven’t marketed it to anyone at school like that. Happy?” he asked, with a sideways look that was a cross between a smile and a glare. One or the other brought the dimples out in his cheeks.

“No. You’ve invited Valerie Danvers,” I sulked, waving the invitation in his face.

He repeated his sideways look, but this time it was one of reproach. “And if I left her out do you think she would be any better toward you?”

I didn’t appreciate the admonishment and went back to opening the invitations, pulling out many names I didn’t recognize. Every single one of them had agreed to come. “How many did you invite?” I finally asked after my tenth envelope.

He shuffled the pile around a bit, examining the addresses. “Your whole grade, most of my grade, and a few of the year twelves. Tammy’s cousin, too. So about eighty in total.” He separated the pile out, pushing all the invites for my friends toward my end of the counter. “But I doubt everybody will be able to make it, though I made sure with the housekeeper we could accommodate twenty if all the ones we invited to stay the night do. And there are enough cars to take the rest back home.”

He seemed to have it well under control, and I almost didn’t want to burst his organizing bubble by saying that every single person he had invited
would
turn up, even if they had to drag themselves through peat bogs wearing nothing more than their underwear. I already knew that Gwen had arranged to stay with Christy the entire mid-term break, forfeiting her chance to go on a family holiday to Spain, just so she could attend. Christy herself had given up her waitressing job when they refused to allow her time off, and Tammy had constructed an elaborate lie about an overnight ballet workshop so that she and Tee could escape their overprotective parents. This, of course, was strictly confidential and a no-no for gossip, as the entire Kable population was determined to keep their cool in the face of the biggest and most exclusive house party Devon had ever seen. The reality, however, was that the girls were breaking down in the toilets over outfits and the boys . . . well, the rumor went that the school nurse had run out of free condoms.

I sighed, swiveling in my stool so our knees were touching, just as they had been when I explained about my latest vision. He paused in the middle of tearing an envelope.

“Fallon, you do know who you are, don’t you? You’re an interdimensional royal celebrity hosting a party at your mansion. Everybody is going to come.”

He rested an elbow on the counter and placed his cheek in his hand. “Well, when you put it like that . . .” His smile—cheeky enough—turned million-dollar, proving my exact point. “My siblings have hosted parties. I know what they are like, and can get like. But I’ve got everything covered,” he continued, straightening up and placing his hands down on all the envelopes. “Your early birthday party will run without a hitch.”

Fallon

T
here was a spring in my step when I got back to Burrator. I could finally banish the ugly green-eyed monster for good, due to Edmund’s explanation of his closeness to Autumn. The party preparations were going well. And Autumn was happy. Not even her vision could take away from her growing strength.

I knocked on Alfie’s door, expecting him to tell me to go the hell back to Athenea, so was pleasantly surprised when both he and Lisbeth called for me to come in. I found them both in his reception room, Lisbeth wrapped in a blanket on the sofa with her feet poking out onto Alfie’s lap. He was painting her toenails.

He briefly looked up to appraise the grin I had plastered on my face. “Autumn? Just let me do this little toe and then you can start babbling.”

Lisbeth shook her head with a smile, paused the movie playing on the massive plasma TV, and offered me a slab of chocolate, which they were surrounded by. I hovered, watching the domestic scene with interest and envy. Seeing Alfie participate in pampering was nothing new, because he had a steady hand—his minor had been in art—but seeing him do it so willingly and lovingly just reaffirmed in my mind how much he cared for her. It was strange as well to see Lisbeth looking so feminine, with her hair loose and framing an easy smile. It was a simple kind of pretty. An approachable, rosy-cheeked kind of pretty. Nothing like Autumn’s regal, otherworldly, out-of-your-league beauty, which scared most people away.

Alfie finished and left for the bathroom with the polish remover for his hands, and Lisbeth cleared space for me to sit down.

“Lovesick,” she stated with a knowing smile as I flopped down and buried my head in my hands.

That was all she needed to do to open the sluice gates on a rant. “I’m
so
into her, and I don’t even think she notices,” I began, talking much faster than the optimum for coherence. “It’s so strong, she’s all I think about, and not all of those thoughts are polite,” I admitted through clenched teeth, and I could see Lisbeth was forcing herself to calmly nod, when all she probably wanted to do was laugh like Alfie from the other room.

“And they called it puppy love . . .” he sang in a booming baritone between heaving guffaws, coming out to tidy the coffee table.

I glared at him, and if I hadn’t been such a nice cousin I would have pointed out that he had been exactly the same the first time he met Lisbeth. Instead, I continued to pour my heart out. “And yet I have no idea how to act on it. What to say to her, what to do, how to even try not to be clumsy around her . . .”

“Not possible,” Alfie replied, dropping down in the seat to the left and stretching his arms out to rest on top of the feather-filled, perfect-for-slouching sofa cushions. “You are inherently clumsy. It’s incurable.”

Lisbeth crushed several pieces of chocolate wrapper into a ball and threw them at Alfie. “You should be yourself, Fal. And if that includes being clumsy, then be clumsy. She can only love you for you.”

“Yes, but being me means being a prince! And you must have noticed how averse she is to everything House of Athenea.” My head dropped into my hands again. “She must be the only girl in this dimension who feels like that, and I fall for her.”

Lisbeth brought a hand up to rest on my shoulder and rubbed my back in slow circles. It was comforting, and even though I wished it was somebody else’s hand, it helped me rewind to how I had felt entering the room.

“At least you know she isn’t friends with you just because you’re royal.” She sighed. “I think you should tell her how you feel.”

I raised my head in horror and Alfie immediately caught my eye, shaking his head discreetly as Lisbeth plowed on.

“It will put an end to this limbo. There is a risk she won’t feel the same way,” she admitted, yet the knowing smile was back. “But I don’t think that’s likely. Even if she doesn’t now, once she knows she might develop feelings. It happened to me after Alfie declared his undying love over the summer.”

She leaned over the arm of the sofa so she faced Alfie, and then half turned back, frowning. “Uh-oh. I know that look. Private prince time.” She tapped her toenails and, satisfied, got up to kiss my cousin. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“The bed is going to be cold tonight,” Alfie sung in halfhearted baritone, watching her close the door with the blanket and chocolate tucked under her arm.

I thought I should apologize and opened my mouth to do so, but he got up and retrieved two bottles of beer from his mini-fridge. Casting a quick spell that sent the metal caps flying, he resumed his place on the other sofa.

“You’re turning into an alcoholic.” I laughed, but neither of us missed the uneasiness in the way I abruptly cut off. I took the other beer and gripped the neck tightly.
Everybody copes differently.

“What Lisbeth said about being yourself was great, but you shouldn’t reveal how you feel unless you’re absolutely sure Autumn will return the sentiment. There is too much at stake for you to screw up—”

“I know.”

“We
need
her. We’re fucked if she isn’t on our side.”

He slammed the bottle down on the glass table and the sound chased my intake of breath. His eyes were a milky white.

“I’m scared, Al,” I blurted before I could censor my words. Feeling a fool, I added, “Not just of telling Autumn. Of everything.”

He sighed, picking the bottle back up and coming to sit down next to me. He rested his arms on his knees and stared blankly at our reflections in the glass. We could be brothers. Even our thoroughly white, worried eyes matched.

“We knew what we were getting ourselves into when we came here.” He sighed.

“I had no choice. Father made me.”

“Fal, if nothing progresses with Autumn by Christmas, I’m going to move into the townhouse in London. With Lisbeth.”

I took a few sips of the beer. It was horrible.

“This hellhole is sucking the life right out of me, and it’s unfair to make her travel down from Hertfordshire every week.”

I took a few more sips.

“I’m not as strong as you. I won’t be fate’s pawn. I’m sick of this chess game. Of the waiting. And I won’t drag Lisbeth into it, either.”

I finished the bottle off in two gulps. “I’m only this strong because I have to be by her side. I don’t have a choice.”

“That’s the spirit,” he chuckled, getting me another beer.

“Al, she had a vision of Kaspar Varn and Violet Lee having sex.”

He had his back to me, and made no reply other than a very quiet grunt, which might have just been a response to a cap hitting him in the forehead.

He lay down on his original sofa of choice, head propped up on the arm and his legs flailing over the edge. He raised his fresh bottle. “To English girls!”

I snatched the other bottle from where he had placed it on the table. “To English girls!”

Autumn

T
he party did not go without a hitch, because the small matter of politics got in the way. For the first time since Queen Carmen of the vamperic kingdom had died, Varnley called an interdimensional meeting.

And for the first time since my own grandmother had died, I found that I longed to be sixteen, so I could take up my place on the Inter.

But,
I reassured myself while making yet another kitchen visit to approve of the preparations,
parties don’t organize themselves.

Fallon, Alfie, the duke, and the duchess were all gone, and Lisbeth wasn’t returning from London until the afternoon, so I was left in charge.

And that meant bolting around like a startled horse, constantly bumping into Chatwin and finding myself firing off a series of yes/no answers, before moving on to have him ask the same questions ten minutes later, wearing the same rattled expression, carrying the same stack of silver trays balanced with champagne flutes.

If I had known throwing a party Athenean-style was this stressful, I would have offered Fallon a helping hand earlier.

The grandfather clock in the duke of Victoria’s study—which more or less kept time—struck on my way back from the basement kitchens, telling me it was more or less one o’clock, and with an exasperated sigh I realized I had been awake for over thirty-six hours. Initially, I had thought my newfound ability to sleep only half the nights in the week like the rest of my kind was the most wonderful thing to happen to me since Fallon had invented black coffee laced with maple syrup, but now I wasn’t so sure. The London Bloodbath had made rocking a vamperic look very un-vogue.

“Oh my, the place is spotless!” I heard the princess say from the entrance.

With a horrified look at my midriff, I tore at the apron strings fastened around my waist and threw the maid’s clothing into the hands of the nearest servant. Then I made a dash for the entrance hall, patting my hair and distantly hearing myself snapping something managerial—like “Walk with me!”—to Chatwin when he appeared again.

I skidded into a curtsy to find that, with the exception of the duchess of Victoria’s polite exclamation, my efforts had gone either unnoticed or unappreciated. And coming up the steps with what seemed like no intention of pausing to remove his light tan jacket, at odds with the regalia underneath, was Fallon, who headed straight for me and dragged me toward the back of the house. Edmund followed silently.

“Last night, Kaspar Varn and Violet Lee slept together,” Fallon growled, telling me he hadn’t had much sleep, either.

That explained the pointed expressions of the older Athenea, but I still struggled with the concept. Never mind the fact that I had seen such an event no less than three times—the latest, hours before, apparently in real time, fully awake, with a headache that had Chatwin ordering all sorts of spell-infused brews.