CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Autumn

The next two weeks were pandemonium. In many ways it was a fate-send, because it kept my mind occupied. First there were the Al-Summers apartments to inspect and overhaul. They were beautiful—an exact match of my room at Burrator—but I wanted to wipe away as much of my grandmother’s mark as I could. The sheets were replaced with those I had received for my birthday; the heavy beige drapes with white ones; the gold leaf, which had turned almost brown but coated everything, was cleaned.

Then I was put in charge of Violet Lee’s room, which would be adjacent to my own; the younger vampires were to be put in the same wing, but toward the back of the palace, thankfully. Why they thought I would know what an eighteen-year-old-human-turned-vampire liked in her room, I didn’t know.

Next came the doctor’s visit, which was the single most humiliating experience of my life. They asked about my migraines; at first I thought they might prescribe something to help me with the vision-induced brain torture, but no. Next thing I knew, I had a contraceptive implant slotted into my arm.

Council meetings? I was a deer among a wolf pack. The first two meetings I attended, the sole topic was what exactly I was saving the world from. This was worrying, because I didn’t know quite how I was supposed to be saving the world.

The counseling was . . . odd. The counselor, a Sage who couldn’t stop talking about how she had attended Freud’s lectures, asked me about my childhood incessantly. All I wanted to talk about was the kingdom’s impending doom and figure out a plan for some help controlling my visions.

And Fallon . . . Fallon spent a lot of time in my room.

The heels the maids had forced me into hurt the balls of my feet. The whole ordeal of being assembled and coifed that morning had reminded me of being dressed by my grandmother—when I was six. Uncomfortable, stuffy clothing, hair tugged into braids and scalp poked with hairpins—what was wrong with magic?

And all for a king who had almost murdered my fellow He**ine.

I wasn’t the only malcontent in the packed entrance to the palace. Councilors yanked at their sashes to straighten them; the youngest Athenean children, lined up like little soldiers in front of their parents, jostled one another and complained to their mothers. Athenea’s ever-eager heir apparent had even stretched to putting down the book he always carried in order to show off his scowl.

“Public relations isn’t exactly the vampires’ forte, is it?” Fallon muttered beside me, gazing around the room with a carefully perfected neutral look. It was an expression I was working on, following my first dealing-with-media lesson the day before.

“At least people aren’t staring at us for once,” I whispered back, not bothering to turn and look at my boyfriend.

“Whoopee, no paparazzi speculating on our sex life. But don’t worry, here, have a bunch of vampires invade your home instead! They haven’t been to Athenea in decades, why do they have to come now?”

Because of Violet Lee, of course. The bitterness in his voice was hard to miss. Maybe I just wasn’t as tired of the press yet, because I hadn’t been in the limelight so long; Fallon, on the other hand, kept darkly muttering about Amanda.

“You were fine with the vampires the other weekend,” I pointed out.

“There were eight of them then, and we were on their territory. This time, there are three hundred and on our home turf!”

“At least we know Violet Lee isn’t an arrogant bitch like most of them.”

I was still staring resolutely ahead but I could feel Fallon’s glare. “We have no idea how turning will have affected her. She’s tied to the biggest dick in the land, after all.”

I smothered a burst of laughter with a fake cough—being around Fallon’s older siblings had definitely corrupted me.

Fallon glanced my way and then rolled his eyes. “Oh, Lords of Earth, I’m never going to get that image out of my head now . . .”

He didn’t have time to, because at that moment a manservant slammed down his staff and roared out an announcement.

“His Majesty King Vladimir of the second dimension and the Lady He**ine Violet Lee.”

And all the rest.

I hadn’t seen the king of the vampires since I was a very small child, and I had been terrified then. But now he seemed no less tall or intimidating; his hair was graying and his eyes, which I had always remembered as light and piercing, were very dark and set back in wrinkled hollows. His entourage flooded around him; the room—myself, Violet Lee, and the two kings excluded—sank into a bow.

The two kings approached each other and Violet shuffled behind her king, her eyes darting left and right and up and down, to the two kings and back to me. Wherever she looked, I could see those eyes, now surrounded by shadows so purple they outshone the eyes themselves. I was taken aback: that was not the telltale ghoulish, slightly yellowing look of a vampire. It was the look of somebody who was ill.

But I marched along beside Ll’iriad and shook the vamperic king’s hand with a wide smile as though this were the most joyous day. Violet Lee’s cracked lips didn’t move. She didn’t even notice that Ll’iriad was standing two feet in front of her.

“Autumn,” she croaked in a voice that struggled to even reach a whisper. She stared at me with the wide eyes of somebody seeing a ghost.

“Violet,” I said softly. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run away. She shuffled closer, her dress swaying around her knobby knees. She looked better in jeans. She didn’t reply, just pushed her bangs across her forehead.

Next to her, stooped low, was Kaspar Varn. His hands were pushed forward like he was on the verge of launching himself forward to catch her. His eyes were black and angry, regardless of whom he looked at.

Suddenly there was a commotion at the back of the room and two figures appeared standing in the eave of the arched entrance. Hissing and snarling erupted, as though a pantomime villain had entered.

It was like a cold blast of wind hitting me in the warm, gently vibrating air, which was so full of magic. They were human. One a man, middle-aged, dressed in a suit. Michael Lee. The other was a girl a little bit younger than myself, as haggard as Violet but with a pink patterned scarf wrapped around her head.

She glared right at me. “Witch!” she cried. “Look what you did to my sister!”

Kaspar sprang up instantly and shifted between the girl and Violet’s line of sight. “Lillian Lee,” he muttered apologetically to me. “We should leave, if . . .”

Lillian Lee? Nobody told me they were bringing her father and her sister!

“Of course. There’s a little food laid out—”

Violet moved faster than such a frail frame should be able to, turning to me. “No! I mean . . . I’m not thirsty—I mean, hungry. I’d just like to rest.”

In all the fuss and gasps that Lillian’s outburst had caused, and the rush to stand up that had followed it, nobody noticed us sandwiched between the two ruling families. Ll’iriad did, and when I glanced at him he gave us a little nod. Knowing there was a small back passage that we could escape through, I went to take Violet’s elbow and steer her through the crowd.

At first I thought it might be an electric shock, from static. But the initial twinge of pain continued all the way up my arm and into my shoulder. I wanted to let go of her, but I couldn’t. My hand was glued to hers as my mental walls, supposedly foolproof, crashed and burned. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t probe and no box that didn’t spring open the minute I cast an eye on it. It was a barrage of images and emotions, things I didn’t want to see—personal things—hitting me in wave after wave. The feel of a wrist pressed to her lips, the salty taste of blood, and the pang of reluctant loathing that surfaced when Lord Fabian Ariani passed through my mind. And the most frequent image was of Kaspar Varn. Kaspar Varn and her. Kissing. Holding. Fucking. That was her word. It wasn’t mine. It was her word in my head.

We both froze in the crowd until Violet slowly ran her hand down my wrist and into my palm, and then tugged me into a tight embrace. She was taller than me, but she stooped so her mouth was near my ear.

“The dead vamperic queen is behind you. She says we’re connected. She says you can talk to her through me,” she whispered. Her voice shook and, pulling back an inch, I could see her eyes were fixed over my shoulder. I turned slightly. It was an empty spot.

Though my eyes saw nothing, in my head flickered an image of an empty entrance, in which Violet and I were joined by only one person: a strikingly beautiful woman in an emerald-green dress, the deceased queen of the vampires and Kaspar’s mother . . . and one of the innocents who had died for Violet.

I thought “Your Majesty,” and immediately Violet had spoken the words.

“Lady He**ine,” the figure in the image replied. “Violet cannot see me for long. I pray, save her. She is fading . . . you know of the darkness of the mind. Save her. She cannot keep my kind from war without your support.”

I can’t save myself! I can’t stop a war here! I barely know what enemy I face . . .

“My lady, you and Violet are one and the same. You have both seen death and been upon the brink of it. You know of the hatred between human and dark being. You both have powers beyond anything that has gone before. Think, think how you are similar. You grow stronger every day, and so can she.”

The figure in the image began to fade, and though Violet still held me, our connection seemed to weaken.

“Fallon,” I called out, feeling him and Kaspar catching up with us. “There are still boxes in my mind, right? It’s still defended, isn’t it?”

“Of course. What happened? You looked terrified.”

“I’ll tell you later.”

It was a long way through the palace to the far corner of the west wing, where our rooms were. The journey was silent, other than a few mumbled comments on Violet’s behalf about the size of the palace. The thread between us bounced our nervousness and the awkwardness of the situation back and forth.

What the hell was that? Was it her necromancy? But how did I see it? And where is Eaglen when you need him?!

I pushed the door open into a reception room much like my own, only decorated in richer colors. The windows faced east, rather than south as mine did, and the view was of landscaped gardens rather than the mountains and lakes I was lucky enough to look out on.

Three maids and the palace housekeeper awaited us. They dropped into low curtsies and the housekeeper introduced herself.

“And these are my lady’s maids, who will assist your ladies-in-waiting, when you choose them, of course,” the housekeeper said.

Poor Violet Lee blanched and looked to me for help as the housekeeper continued on with her explanation of the room’s amenities.

“It’s like a ruddy hotel,” I heard Kaspar mutter.

“I think we’ll just settle in for now,” I interrupted, effectively dismissing the staff. The housekeeper, too professional and efficient to be ruffled, gathered and hurried the maids out of the room.

Kaspar walked over to the large table recessed into a bay window and poured two glasses of blood from the clear, stoppered bottle that had been set out, along with wine. With a grim expression he took one over to Violet.

“Did you see Mother again? What did she say?” he demanded.

Violet nodded, and meekly told him, “Nothing important.” I fought hard not to catch her eye, as I felt her decision to lie flow into my mind as though I had made it.

“I’m not thirsty,” she croaked when he held the glass out.

Vampires would be dead if they didn’t have magic in their veins and didn’t consume the energy of others. Their hearts didn’t beat. They didn’t breathe. They only sucked in air to express emotion, as if some inherent instinct told them oxygen would make things better. But it was a placebo to a vampire. Every Sagean child knew that. So hearing Violet’s breathing pick up made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

Kaspar’s expression darkened. His eyes hadn’t ever left black. “Violet,” he growled.

Fallon entered but froze in the open doorway.

“Drink it,” Kaspar said flatly, seizing her shoulder. She let out a muffled squeak and attempted to step back, but he held her in place. She shook her head slightly and sucked her lips in like a toddler refusing food.

She was several inches taller than me, but she looked so small and frightened I wanted to reach out and rip her out of his grip, yet as he raised the glass toward her lips, I realized it was the blood that terrified her, not the tormented vampire she was tied to.

Disgust was pumped across our connection. I had no issue with vampires drinking blood but I wanted to do nothing more than tear the glass away and throw it from a window; pour the contents down the sink. I will make myself sick, if I have to. Eat normal food . . .

With a strangled cry she choked down a few sips, coughing out a lot of it, which Kaspar wiped from her chin with his sleeve. “This has got to stop, Girly,” he muttered.

I felt myself recoil. Girly? How patronizing—

The thought was subsumed by a flutter in my chest, which wasn’t my own. The fear fettered into nothingness, at least for now, but it was always in the distance, a gentle ebb and flow of an incoming tide.

“Why are you still here?”

The sound of Kaspar’s snapping wrenched me from my—Violet’s—thoughts, and I blinked a few times in mystery up at him. Towering a full head over me, he glared in my direction, one hand still on Violet, the other holding the half-full glass.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” an equally menacing voice replied. Fallon, moving at a speed that would surely match the vampire’s, flitted to my side and wrapped his own hand around me, gripping my waist. “She’s a He**ine, not one of your miserable subjects.”

Kaspar very slowly and purposefully set the glass down on the coffee table and took a step up to my prince. “Do you have a problem with the way I run my future kingdom, you little mearc’stapa?”

Fallon, though a little shorter than his vamperic counterpart, refused to be intimidated by the insult and took a step closer. “This isn’t Varnley anymore, Your Highness,” he snarled. “We play by the rules here because we can’t hide, like you, behind secrecy. You don’t have secrets anymore. Just remember that, when you’re around the only true friends you’ve got in this fate-forsaken situation!”

Kaspar let out a short breath through his clenched teeth and hummed in acknowledgment. “See? This is why I hate this place,” he said, turning to Violet. “Fucking teenagers moralizing everywhere.”

Her lips widened into the first smile I had seen her wear since she arrived. “Good to know you value my moral opinion so highly then,” she sneered, before folding her arms and storming off to the bedroom. The door slammed behind her and I could feel the vibrations ripple across the floor beneath me.

“Oh, and look what true friends you are, really helping the situation,” Kaspar said in just as sarcastic a tone as his girlfriend’s, and followed her deeper into the apartment.

“Welcome back to Athenea, leeches,” Fallon muttered under his breath and stomped out into the corridor.

I remained in the middle of the reception room, perplexed. I could hear the raised voices from the next room, and feel the anger across mine and Violet’s mysterious connection, but I found now she was some distance away it was easier to block out, though as strong as ever when I decided to embrace it.

I think fate is taking my role as peacemaker a little too seriously . . .

All of a sudden the room spun, and I grabbed the nearby sofa to stop myself from falling over. Pain shot across my forehead and circled my eyes, forcing them closed. I just about managed to feel my way around to the seat of the sofa before I was transported away from the room entirely.

chri’dom paced the length of the room, muttering to himself. He had been doing the same thing for an hour.

Suddenly, he raised his voice and swerved on his heel, facing Nathan on the sofa. “How can Violet Lee not be dead? How can she be in Athenea? How can things not have unfolded the way I foresaw them?”

Nathan’s eyes resumed watching his leader traverse from one wall to the other. “You said yourself that Autumn Rose’s seeing gift would soon outstrip your own. Maybe it already has, and she saw your plan and outwitted you.”

The younger man froze as chri’dom stalked toward him. “I know that. I’ve had two weeks to come to that conclusion.” Nathan backed as far as he could into the chair, remembering too late that it was wise to always keep a shield up around the other man. “That’s why I need Autumn Rose. She’s powerful enough to fight fate and stop a war, and yet we need her alive, because she’s the only one who could bring down the Athenea. Why else would I have murdered her grandmother, if not to trigger her granddaughter’s power?”

Nathan relaxed as chri’dom sat down next to him and poured a drink out of the decanter in front of him, offering it to his protégé. “But I thought you were against interfering with fate? Isn’t that why you want to stop the He**ines? Because you believe that our fate is to have a war, so that we can have a clean start?”

The seer eyed the young man for a moment, marveling at the juvenility of his statement, briefly wondering how much longer such a childish view of the world could persist . . . and how he could destroy it. “What have I told you about the death of humans? It is collateral damage. So is having to alter the fate my ancestor Contanal laid down.”

chri’dom jumped to his feet and went to stand by his favorite window. It looked out over a canyon that formed part of a plate boundary, where the earth opened up and spewed hot steam, shrouding their ever-growing community in constant cloud.

“But it was fate for you to cross my path. It cannot be a coincidence that a human who shares my politics and is so close to our Lady He**ine should cross my path. This is fate, and it is you who shall bring her to me.”

Nathan stood and crossed the floor to join him, hardly able to quell the warmth spreading in his chest, lit from a flame that becoming an Extermino had given him.

“I won’t fail. I’ve seen what the current system has done to her, how depressed she became . . . things must change.”

chri’dom placed a hand on Nathan’s shoulder, almost in a fatherly way. “And things will change.”

My eyes opened to see Violet Lee leaning over me, holding a glass of water. But her eyes were as glazed over as the water that gently rocked in a wave from one side of the tumbler to another.

Slowly, she seemed to notice that I was coming around, and she shook her head slightly. Across our connection, I felt her concern.

Instinctively, I just thought the answer. “It was a vision. Did you see it?”

Her hand began to shake slightly. “They’re coming for you.”