Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel (42 page)

“Short of restraining and force-feeding her, there’s very little we can do. This is what she has chosen.”

I scoffed. “She doesn’t have a choice. She’ll die if something isn’t done! I’ve seen someone die already; I won’t let the same happen to her. And I’ve seen her visions of the dead, they can help us. There’s a reason we’re connected. I can’t do this without her!” I was echoing the vamperic queen’s words before I even realized that was where I had sourced them from. “Do you want a war? Because that is what will happen if one of us dies.”

Eaglen didn’t react. He interlaced his fingers and placed the heels of his palm on the oak. He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

“Have you made any progress with this connection?” Edmund asked from opposite me, eyeing the two of us impassively.

Eaglen shook his head. “I doubt this library contains anything pertaining to it. I’ve never heard of anything like what you are describing. I have never come across visions as uncontrollable as yours, Lady Heroine. And I have never met a necromancer with such a diverse range of skills as those Violet possesses. Some things can’t be explained.”

Edmund grunted. “Useful.”

I slumped into the curved back of the chair. Beyond the seclusion of the alcove, curious lamp-lit faces retreated into the shadows as my eyes fell on them, all except one. She stared back with an expression I couldn’t place. It wasn’t hate, yet it belonged to the same spectrum. It was painful to look at, and my gaze left the unhappy blonde in favor of Edmund, who continued to watch her. She blushed, returned to her book, and fumbled with the pages beside her.

“Who is that?”
Edmund asked in my and Eaglen’s minds.
“I don’t know all of the vampires yet.”

“Charity Faunder,”
Eaglen answered glumly.
“The girl whose position in the young prince’s bed was usurped by Violet Lee.”

“The court slut? What is she doing in a library?” The words were whispered before I could hold my tongue.

The first I knew that Edmund had moved was the book slamming to the ground at my feet. I started, so did every reader in sight, and Charity Faunder blushed deep-red.

Edmund very slowly and deliberately reached down to retrieve the book after his sudden burst of movement, rising again to meet my eyes. “Apologies, my lady. I didn’t realize that enjoying sex and pursuing academic interests was an impossible combination.
My mistake.
” His eyes were red, actually red.

“I haven’t met a slut who has managed it yet,” I hissed back, equally as icily. I
hated
Edmund’s lectures.

“Right here,” he countered.

“You lose your temper too easily, Mortheno. She’s only young,” Eaglen interjected and Edmund’s gaze broke away.

“Too young.”

“Still here.” I rose abruptly and the two men followed suit. “If she doesn’t start drinking blood in the next twenty-four hours, have her restrained and fed. And I want answers on this connection within the week.”

With that I left, sweeping past Charity Faunder’s desk without ever looking at her again. Behind me, I could hear Edmund’s heavy footsteps, mutterings of “Too young, too young” following me out like an echo.

Autumn

Necromancy.
1.a.
n.
The act of conjuring dead spirits in order to predict or influence the future.

Necromancers can roughly be divided into two categories: the passive and the active. The latter is generally considered the more common, particularly among dark beings who possess the ability to wield magic, as active conjuring of a phantom likeness was once a branch of study frequently pursued within universities. The practice, however, was outlawed with the signing of the Terra Treaties in 1812, and reports of likeness apparitions have declined as a result . . .

My fingers impatiently dragged across the hundredth page of a book that had largely proved to be useless. The lamp above me flickered, and with a jolt I was pulled back to the room and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. It was past midnight but I was determined to stay awake. I took another sip of the bitter caffeine cocktail next to me and carried on reading, trying to ignore the surge of emotion from Violet, which was steadily driving me to delirium.

The passive necromancer is a rarer breed, and the last comprehensive study of the gift in 1950 suggested that upon becoming fully fledged (N.B. in line with human laws at the time, the fledging developmental stage was believed to continue until age 21), one in every ten thousand Sagean children was found to have the gift. Prior to the Great Cleansing of the Damned, a 1891 census revealed that as many as one in every thousand fledglings possessed the passive form of the gift upon reaching adulthood; by 1950, only two thousand children were tested, and just one (sterilized) child showed any ability to conjure. Among other dark beings, the gift is believed to be extinct.

Abilities of the passive necromancer vary. According to the 1950 study, constants include: the inability to voluntarily conjure likenesses, at least one experience with a likeness of the deceased that includes communication, and a subsequent noncoincidental altering of events.

“Among other dark beings, the gift is believed to be extinct,” I murmured to myself, tracing the line with my finger. But chri’dom definitely said she was a necromancer, and I definitely hadn’t imagined what happened when Violet arrived: that had been the late vamperic queen in her mind—in my mind, speaking to me!
And the dreams. What on earth were her dreams about the cloaked figure to do with?

I shut the book after several more minutes of scanning the same paragraph, vainly hoping new information would appear from between the printed lines. But the curiosity burned, relentless, as my grandmother’s words bounced from one side of my skull to another:
Time is your enemy.

I gathered the thick volume in my arms and quietly made my way out of the room so as not to wake Fallon, who was asleep in the bedroom. The hallway outside, white, airy, and well lit in the day, was now deserted and gloomy; the double-door entrance to the west wing was guarded, and nobody but those who slept here entered or left at this time of night.

I passed through the green drawing room, dressed floor to ceiling in paintings and crowded with green furniture, at the moment seating several of Kaspar Varn’s friends, before I got to the door of Violet’s huge apartment. The outer doors were unlocked, and I stepped into the small anteroom, where the next set of doors were ajar. My knuckles were already brushing the wood when a groan slipped through the crack.

It was a soft croon of “no.” My hand wouldn’t drop even though I suddenly felt the urge to run; instead my knees had locked and through the gap I had full view of Violet as a mass of limbs in Kaspar Varn’s arms, pressed up against the wall like her weight was supported by hooks.

The frightened squeal that escaped my lips was drowned out by the crash of something heavy hitting the floor, the accompanying frustrated groans and the steady
thud, thud, thud
of a body hitting the wall, over and over.

Neither wore any clothes; her head never left the pale walls but her back did in anticipation of every groan, as her eyes flickered open and shut . . . My torso withdrew but my feet were rooted as her eyes fixed for a brief second too long on the door. Her lips broke into a smile and then parted into an O, and then she sank, lowered to the floor, but Kaspar might as well have not existed because I saw through him—the connection between me and her turned him transparent, as I fell deep into her contentedness. It was the first gasp of fresh air after a week belowground, in the darkest depths of her mind and mine.

“Beautiful, isn’t it, Duchess?”

I would have shrieked if it wasn’t for the force of a hand on my shoulder pushing me down. My first instinct was flight, but when my foot stepped back it hit a leg.

“Now, why is a sweet thing like you perving? Didn’t have you down as the type.”

“Get off me, Felix,” I snapped in an unforceful whisper with a shrug that did nothing to dislodge his arm. “And don’t call me ‘sweet.’ ”

The hand around my shoulder squeezed tighter and my stomach churned. Felix was one of Kaspar Varn’s friends, and had a reputation of being a lecherous noble in the court . . . and he was one of those who had been present at the London Bloodbath.

“Oh, I think you would taste very sweet. Maybe your prince would let me find out.”

He wouldn’t drink from me, would he?
Surely not?
But I didn’t like his sickly tone and the way I couldn’t turn so we were face-to-face. I reached up and tried to slide his fingers off my shoulder but they had sunk deep into my skin.

“We have a game, Lady Heroine, back at Varnley, which we all like to play. I wonder if you’ve heard of it? It’s called the cunning linguist.”

I shook my head while running through potential spells that would incapacitate him long enough for me to get one of the guards. There were hundreds, yet my mind was blank and all I could focus on was the gap in the door, and Violet collapsed on the far side of the room.

“No? We should really teach you. You would
love
it.”

The flash of green light bounced off the walls and dazzled me, but the satisfying thump of the vampire’s body hitting the ground told me my restraints had worked. Clutching the book to my chest as though it were a suit of armor, I jumped over his convulsing body and sprinted down the hall, turning to glance back only when I heard a shout of anger chasing me. It was a dressed Kaspar Varn, and when I turned around again, Fallon was standing at the other end of the drawing room in only a pair of pajama bottoms, looking ready to murder someone. He started forward, and when I went to grab his arm he repelled me with a small shield that sent me tumbling into a chair. I sprang back up again, book abandoned on the floor, and pursued him as he yanked Felix’s twitching body up off the floor and the culprit green strands around the fire-headed vampire limbs retreated. He slumped into Fallon’s arms, and the prince threw him against the wall by his collar.

“What did you do to her?
What did you do?
”

Felix’s lips moved, but the only sound that emerged was a blubber and then a squeal as Kaspar ripped Fallon off and began beating the paper-thin shield around his skin; both men grunted. Violet, covered only by a long T-shirt, rushed out and tugged at her boyfriend’s sides to no avail, and I could do nothing but clap my hands to my mouth in horror as more vampires appeared and tried to pull the two princes apart.

“Kaspar! Kaspar, get off!”

Screams of “Fallon!” were erupting from my mouth but they were falling on deaf ears, terrified soprano among a roaring river of sound, of groans, of grunts, of panicked voices and whines and the soft purr of Felix, who had folded into a laughing heap on the floor.

Violet’s tears soaked the carpet.

“Stop.”

Such a simple word, so sharply spoken, froze the scene. Catharsis smothered my emotions as two kings glided through the room we had tumbled into, melting those they passed so their faces warped into expressions of horror.

Kaspar, so strong, so tall, was thrown back onto the bed by his father as though he weighed no more than his younger sister, who had followed her king in. The other patriarch grabbed a fistful of Fallon’s hair and pulled him off his knees so he was stooping, head lowered in a warped imitation of a bow.

I could only stare, hands clamped to either side of my head, eyes wide.

“It might come as a surprise to you, Kaspar, given your lack of political understanding, but murdering your Sagean counterpart is a disadvantageous move.”

Kaspar sprayed spit across the duvet as he hissed in angry acknowledgment; Fallon didn’t even reply to his father. Everyone else maintained an eerie silence that needed filling to distract me from the tension in the air. Only Violet showed any composure. Her expression had returned to blank; irises the gray they had rarely ventured far from since she arrived.

“Words. Words are wonderful things. Words avert wars. Words make friends. Words prevent fights. Try using them.” Ll’iriad Athenea released his son and left, voice never raised but barely restrained, his limbs lightly shaking as he made his exit.

The vamperic king barked something in a language I couldn’t understand, totally ignored Violet, and indicated for Fallon and me to leave the room. As soon as he had shut the doors to the anteroom behind us, he sighed and ran a hand down his face.

“They’re violent,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Stay away from them.”

He turned on his heel as my lips parted slightly; heart beating wildly, still convinced we had been on the verge of a reprimand.

Fallon grabbed my wrist and we hurried back to my room, necromancy book abandoned on the floor of the drawing room. His grip was tight, muscles still tense, and I didn’t dare ask him if he was okay—he looked like he might set fire to something if I did.

He didn’t cut me loose in the sitting room but tugged me all the way into the bedroom, lying down on his side and pulling me with him, tucked safely away with my back to his chest.

We stayed like that, breathing in time together as he gradually calmed. It was at least five minutes before he spoke.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No,” I breathed. “He just said some odd things.”

His arm around me tightened and he slotted his knees in behind me, hugging me close. “What kinds of things?”

“He said I would taste sweet. And that he wanted me to play cunning linguist.”

I felt his head rise slightly. “Pardon?”

“Cunning linguist. Do you know what game it is?”

He propped himself up on his elbow. “It’s cunnilingus, Autumn.” His lips and chest trembled with silent laughter that slowly faded as he continued to examine my expression.

No, he definitely didn’t say that.
“Why are you laughing? What is it? Tell me.”

He stroked my hair, still with slightly curled lips. “I’d do better to show you.”