CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Fallon

I sat down in the armchair nearest the fireplace and watched as my uncle placed a glass of brandy and lovage on the wooden table beside the arm of his own very upright chair. He had picked up the habit of drinking it as his preferred winter beverage while traveling in and around Devon as a younger man, and swore by it for “settling his stomach.” I thought that if Devon could assign itself a particular taste, that drink would be it.

Autumn had excused herself not long before, saying she needed to complete some homework. I knew I should probably do the same, but struggled to find the motivation. Her dedication seemed odd compared to her tendency to miss school—something I, and clearly her parents, too, had noticed.

My uncle opened up his newspaper and, as usual, the front cover was dominated by a picture of Violet Lee and an accompanying headline. The shock had not died down, and I doubted it would until the whole thing was resolved. My aunt, reading over his shoulder, clicked her tongue and muttered something very derogatory about the vampires.

I frowned, and both Lisbeth’s and Alfie’s eyes flicked up, questioning.

My aunt walked around her husband’s chair and sat down opposite me. “The Varns have issued gag orders. All the papers can print is that the vamperic council is still refusing to negotiate with any of the British governments.”

Alfie stood up and strode over to the liquor cabinet, pouring himself a glass of port. “Gag orders are like super-injunctions, aren’t they? For all the blood in B.C., why would they need those?”

“Precisely,” my uncle said, folding the paper up along the creases. “Why?”

“Do you think something has happened?” Alfie asked, with his back to us.

“Most likely.” My uncle threw the folded paper on the fire, which groaned and began to eat away at the paper, turning it into a honeycomb lattice of smoldering holes and print. It took only a few seconds for Violet Lee’s face to be turned to ash. “I am just very glad that we are not at court. Even missing out on the council meetings seems a fair exchange for escaping the stress this whole mess brings.”

He reached his arm over the chair and took my aunt’s hand, squeezing it, his face glazing over with peace as he did. Farther back, out of the fire’s warm circle, Alfie and Lisbeth sat quietly talking. I averted my eyes. Life as a singleton was not something I had yet fully adjusted to.

Eventually my aunt released her husband’s hand and reached forward to sip at her tea. “Autumn Rose seems mature, and very well-mannered.”

She was trying to banish the heavy mood in the air, I knew, but at the same time, I knew my family was desperate to discuss the duchess—yet what we really should discuss, we couldn’t. Not with Lisbeth around. Even telepathy was too risky to use with such a delicate matter.

My uncle took a sip of his drink, too, peering over the top of the mottled glass at me, his eyes twinkling. “And every bit as beautiful as we thought she would be.”

“And every bit as wealthy,” Alfie piped up from the table.

Lisbeth playfully slapped him on the arm. “Nice to know what you look for in a woman!”

It was too shadowy to see his expression, but he pulled his girlfriend from her seat and onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her, cooing sweet nothings. Even if I did not know my cousin well, I would be able to tell he was utterly infatuated with her—and, I hoped, she with him.

My uncle was still staring at me pointedly, a small smile playing on his lips. I pretended not to see it until I was saved by Lisbeth.

“I heard she looked a lot like her grandmother, even when she was a child.”

My uncle craned his neck to look in her direction, then turned back and put his glass back down. “Oh yes. I had quite the shock when she came through the doors. A spitting image of the late duchess.”

“She barely ate at dinner though, poor thing.” My aunt sighed. “And I shouldn’t think her mother is vegan, so she must not eat very well at home. Does she eat much at school?” she asked, directing the question at me.

“I don’t think so.” When I thought about it, I didn’t think I had ever even seen her eat; she only seemed to drink coffee.

“Perhaps you should keep even more of an eye on her,” my aunt tentatively suggested, soft enough so that Alfie and, more crucially, Lisbeth, wouldn’t hear. “After everything you have told us . . .” She trailed off, and she did not need to finish.

I nodded, but still thought that Autumn had coped better than I had ever dared hope. She was talking, laughing even; a vast improvement on the weeks before. But I did wish she would let me in, in some small way—ideally, into her mind. It was extremely rude to push against the barriers around another’s consciousness, but with that thought, I couldn’t stop my own mind from wandering upstairs in search of her. I found her quickly, as always, her scent seeming to leave a trail of burdens wherever she went. I was met with concrete and mortar.

“Fallon . . . Fallon? Dear me, Ll’iriad’s children do tend to space out.”

I snapped my gaze up from where it had been resting on the fire to find my uncle grinning.

“Now where on earth did you wander off to?”

I pretended to have no idea what he was talking about and adjusted my expression accordingly. He hummed in amusement and disbelief, and I was sure he would have made another comment if my aunt hadn’t been glaring at him.

“I think I’ll go and do some work,” I announced, standing up. It was getting too hot sitting beside the fire, but the shadows full of candy hearts and sickly sweet flirting didn’t seem too appealing, either. My aunt’s glare darkened, but she nevertheless wished me a good night, and so did the other three, though I’d had plenty of sleep the previous few nights and had no intention of getting any more.

Working my way back along the left wing, I was dimly aware of how swift my pace was, and how eager the echo sounded in the entrance hall as I bounded up the stairs. I did have intentions to work; just not on my own.

I justified my steps toward the end of the house opposite to where my bedroom was located by thinking about how English literature was my worst subject . . . I needed the help.

The servants had chosen not to light the lamps fixed to the walls, the moon bright enough to light the whole hallway from a single window. With every passing door, my footfalls became lighter, urged along by the feeling, yet again, that I was infringing upon Autumn’s territory; if I stopped, I would be caught.

I hardly dared pause to knock when I reached her room, and even as my knuckles hit the wood I rocked on my heels to maintain some movement. When no answer came, I knocked again, softly calling her name. There was still no answer several knocks later, and I took that as an invitation to go in.

Inside, it was empty; neither the chandelier nor lamps were on, and again, the only light came from the moon. The curtains were still tethered, and her bag had been left on the sofa where I had placed it. It was open, though, and some of her clothes were spilling over the edge. Automatically, I walked over and reached out to stop them from ending up on the floor. Just as mechanically, I snapped my hand back, realizing they were her panties.

I pushed deep down thoughts I would not permit myself to have about her, doubting they would stay in their chained box very long. Giving the sofa a wide berth, I wondered how she could seem to have no idea of her potential power over men. Maybe it’s her age. She’s only fifteen, I reminded myself.

But another, more uneasy explanation hovered in a part of my mind I didn’t like to venture into. Maybe it’s the depression. Acknowledging that meant acknowledging the fact that she might not accept, or even recognize, feelings beyond those created by the parasite that fed on her misery.

And acknowledging that meant I would have to be utterly selfless.

From the closed bedroom door, I assumed she was asleep and tried to muffle my steps as much as possible as I made my way to the writing desk, where her A-level poetry anthology lay among severalother books—including the one on misogyny Sylaeia had given her and another on American poetry. Her pencil stuck out from between its closed pages, and I went to open it; the creased spine decided otherwise and the pages flipped closed, slow enough for me to see that almost every poem was annotated up to where her pencil had been placed. The book, however, did not completely close, instead stopping on one of the first pages, where there was a handwritten dedication.

To my dearest granddaughter, on her fourteenth birthday.

The page was well worn and there were patches where the wafer-thin paper had been stained darker. Embarrassed, I quickly turned back to where her pencil was. The poem was by James Whitcomb Riley. “Dead Leaves.” There wasn’t a single blank spot around the text; her writing was sprawled across every available inch of space, most of her ideas incredibly insightful, others just wild. As I read them, it seemed as though the meaning was printed between each line . . . it just came so easily to her. It was something I envied. I had practically been brought up a politician, rational and practical. Literature was something I struggled with. But if she could combine her imagination—her focused creativity—with politics, then, well . . .

You’re getting ahead of yourself, I chided. Way ahead.

I turned my attention to the actual poem, rather than her annotations. But by the third line of the section titled Dawn, I was frowning, spine contorting in a painful shudder.

So, Autumn, in thy strangeness, thou art here

To read dark fortunes for us from the book of fate . . .

My eyes dragged themselves along the arrow she had drawn to the very top of the page, where she had written connotations no human would draw from those lines.

I slammed the book shut.

My breathing was heavy, and it was only as the echo died that I realized I had broken out in a sweat. I pushed my bangs off my forehead, running a hand down my face.

Suddenly, a whimper reached my ears and my head snapped in the direction of the bedroom. Another followed a few seconds later. Without any more thought I was at the door, which was slightly ajar. I gently pushed it open just far enough to squeeze through when I sucked my stomach in.

I took a few slow paces inside. She had not drawn the curtains in this room, either, and several of the windows were open, the drapes billowing in her direction. It was freezing, and I was still burning from the fire and the book.

I faltered when the moonlight suddenly emerged from behind the darkening clouds. It cut a strip right through the center of her bed, lighting up everything beneath the tester. Curled up like a fetus, the covers kicked back around her ankles, she lay in even less clothing than she had been wearing the day I had dropped off her homework. There was no robe this time, and I could see the goose bumps running up her leg as far as the crease where her thigh met her torso, and where they reappeared from her tank top amid the valley of her breasts. They disappeared again where her hair was swept around onto one shoulder.

How can you not know what you do, little duchess?

I couldn’t move. I didn’t dare move. If she found me here . . . if I jolted out of this trance and realized what I was doing, neither she nor I would be able to forgive.

But I couldn’t leave her so cold. I didn’t touch the windows—she would know somebody had been in—but crept forward, cringing every time the boards depressed. When I got to the right side of her bed, I lifted the first two layers of sheets right up, using a little magic so they wouldn’t drag across her skin, and replaced them on top of her. She didn’t stir.

I didn’t hang around, heading back to the door as quickly and quietly as possible. When I got there, I briefly turned back. She wriggled and buried her head deeper in her pillow, her lips parting and upturning; it was so slight I thought I was just being hopeful. But her expression was one of utter peace, calmer than I had ever seen it, and that hope cemented itself.

I’ll just have to be content to make you smile for now, Autumn Rose.

I left the door as I had found it and headed back through the reception room. Stepping out into the hallway, I found it totally dark—the moon had gone in again.

“Conthlorno! Stalker!” a voice said, and my feet left the ground as my cousin jumped up from the shadows right in front of me.

“What are you doing, you freaking shifter rip-off?! Are you trying to make me blast you from here to B.C.?”

Alfie folded his arms across his chest and squared his shoulders. “I think I would actually be a very good shifter. And anyway, the question is what were you doing in the duchess’s room at . . .” He trailed off and twisted his wrist to look at an imaginary watch, “. . . eleven o’clock at night?”

I squared my own shoulders and drew myself up to my full height, until we were glaring at each other from the exact same level. “I wanted help with my homework. But she was asleep.”

He raised an eyebrow.

To make a point, I cursed at him in English instead of the Sagean we were using (I had certainly learned a few inventive ones from speaking only English at school) and reluctantly allowed the barriers around my mind down. Pulling up the very recent memory, I let him sift through. He paused at the book, and slid as quickly as possible through what had happened in the bedroom. He hummed deep in his chest, drawing the book back up.

“See?” I said eventually.

He seemed satisfied and let his arms fall from his chest, wagging a finger at me instead in a convincing impression of his mother. Within the confines of my consciousness, he forcibly made my mind linger on a frozen image of me slipping into her bedroom. “Tsk, tsk, Fallon: that is not what princes of Athenea do.”

“Shut up,” I groaned, punching his arm and walking away from him. I could feel my eyes plummeting to pink and was powerless to stop it, the embarrassment was so strong. But what he said was true. We weren’t prudes—a lot of the men in my family definitely weren’t—but there were unspoken rules to conform to, especially when it came to girls like her.

Alfie caught up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder as we walked. “Hey, don’t worry, we’ve all been through it,” he reassured in my mind as a way to answer my thoughts. “At least it’s only me on your trail here, and not the paparazzi.”

For her sake more than my own, I was very grateful for that. But something much more overarching bothered me. “Alfie, do you think I’m doing the right thing? In light of everything?”

He removed his hand from my shoulder as we both sped down the steps to the gallery overlooking the entrance hall. “I’d love to be a seer and be able to give you an answer to that. But I’m not and I can’t. However, if I was to give my own opinion, then yes, I’d say you are.”

I stopped beside the railings and he spun so he faced me, resting one elbow on the wood and lowering himself.

“That means a lot,” I murmured. My voice echoed, bouncing off the high ceiling.

He exhaled sharply through pursed lips and grinned, clapping me over the head with his free arm. “I know, kiddo.”

With those words I felt him withdraw abruptly from my mind. As he did, Lisbeth’s consciousness brushed against mine as she searched for her boyfriend. He frowned, and then the grin returned.

“What do you say to a round of Mario Kart? Al and Fal against the mighty Lisbeth?”

I shook my head. “You two are addicted to that game.”

“I don’t deny it. But come on. She will beat me otherwise.”

I shrugged, starting to move away toward the other hallway. “I don’t know . . .”

I barely made it a few feet before he had flitted in front of me, clicking his fingers so a few sparks fizzled into life at the spot right between my eyes. I flinched. He really is asking for a free flight home to Vancouver.

“Fallon Athenea, even the second in line to the throne on his first diplomatic mission is allowed to let his hair down every once in a while! Now come on. No excuses.”