CHAPTER TWENTY

Autumn

Somebody had clearly fought their way into the English block, as my bag was sitting on the floor of the car. I dove for my phone and had to suppress a groan of frustration when I realized the battery had died. So when we pulled up outside my house, I ran straight out before Edmund could even finish his sentence about being quick. He followed me in, leaving the driver to turn the car around.

“I know it’s small,” I said the minute I got through the door. Edmund’s eyes, which had been wandering, briefly met mine as I kicked my shoes off, and then went back to eyeing every corner. I excused him in my mind on the grounds that eyeing things was his job.

Upstairs I plugged my phone in, threw my damp jumper in the wash, and emptied my weekend bag out onto the bed, starting to throw fresh clothes and underwear into it. By the time I had returned from my hunt to find my other uniform, my phone was buzzing with message after message. There were four texts from Tammy alone, three from Tee, and one each from Gwen and Christy; Jo had sent two short, stern e-mails demanding to know why I hadn’t answered her novel of a message from Saturday. I quickly sent conciliatory replies to Tee and Tammy, telling them I was going back to the prince’s—Fallon’s—place, and then sent a near-identical one to my father. I didn’t mention the Extermino. No doubt my mother would be annoyed at “my” decision, but I needed to tell them so they didn’t try ringing the landline.

When I was done, I took a deep breath, sinking onto the bed. I squeezed my eyes shut, and then opened the Facebook app. As soon as my news feed appeared, I went straight to my friends list and typed in “Nathan Rile.” The three bars that indicated loading blinked on and off, on and off, on and off, and with every pause my hand tightened around the phone.

No match has been found.

“What?” I breathed at my phone. Maybe he changed his profile name. I tried Nate and Nathaniel. I tried guessing his middle name. I checked the whole list, searching out all the surnames beginning with R. I tried a regular search, in case he had deleted me. There was nothing. But it was only when I went to my profile and scrolled down to July (where I knew he had posted a message wishing me a good summer in London) that I actually registered what had happened. The message was gone. And so was he.

“My lady, would it be possible to leave sometime in the next day?” Edmund snapped up the stairs.

“I’m coming!” I shouted back, looking one last time at the line between posts where Nathan’s message should have been, then threw my phone and the charger into my school bag and a few books and my toiletries into the larger bag. I would have to change when I got there.

Bolting down, I cast away the larger bag, locked the door behind us, and then cast my school bag with the keys in it into my room at Burrator. When I got back into the car, the prince—Fallon—was fiddling with his own phone, though I doubted it was with Facebook. Royalty didn’t have personal profiles, as my friends from Kable had found out when they had tried to Facebook him.

He saw me looking and handed the phone over. The screen was dominated by an article from Arn Etas, titled “Suspected Lee–Pierre Pact Remains Unconfirmed by Interdimensional Council; Human Contingent Refuses Support to British Government in Second Dimension.”

I scanned the article while we waited for Edmund, who was outside talking to Richard and his sister. It was much of the same with the humans. In each different country, in each different dimension, members would be elected to the Inter dimensional to form a single representative body for that country, regardless of dimension, and together, all the representatives formed the human contingent. They had the same voting weight as any other dark-being kingdom, despite being larger, but if they chose to throw their lot in with Michael Lee, one of the few humans of his dimension who knew about our existence (and only because of his position, because the ignorant humans didn’t vote in his dimension), then we would be in trouble. Thankfully, none, not even the British contingent, had, because of his involvement with suspect groups like the slayers and, according to the article, rogue vampires.

“When did rumors about Pierre and Lee get out?” I asked Fallon.

“No idea. Old news now anyway,” he replied in my mind. “We could have a Pierre-Extermino pact on our hands.”

“Perhaps today was just a one-off,” I suggested, trying to be uncharacteristically optimistic. He looked at me like my scars had gone bright blue. I grimaced and handed him his phone back. As he closed the app, I could see that the screen was topped with the words FALLON—PERSONAL (SECURE). I was reminded, quite suddenly, of his explanation of why he had come here: the quiet life.

I watched him tuck the phone into his pocket and Edmund get back into the car. He couldn’t truly escape who he was.

I sighed, buckling up before leaning my head against the window. Fallon had withdrawn and I let Nathan emerge from his box in my mind. Never mind a pact. How about the Extermino turning humans? Stories of humans becoming Sage were so rare . . . it was dangerous. It was absurd.

I knew that at some point, I was going to have to tell them about that, but for now I was content to create a compelling argument to convince them—I wouldn’t believe me if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

Closing those very eyes, I found Nathan’s face staring back. As I watched, vines crept across his face and settled as clawed fingers across his cheeks. They were not a work of art, like a true Sage’s scars. They were poison ivy. He had been tainted. Tainted gray.

It was not an image I could shift, and even when I fell asleep, he would not leave me be.

I awoke when arms slid their way under the backs of my knees and my shoulders, and I felt a few drops of rain nestle themselves in my hair. I let my eyes flutter open only to close them again when I caught a glimpse of an off-white shirt and russet scars. I spent most of the journey inside trying to fake sleep and work out why I was fighting the urge to let my eyes go pink.

“What is going on? Alfie and Lisbeth came back early, they said something about Extermino . . . Lords of Earth, what happened to Autumn?!”

“Relax, Aunt, she’s just asleep,” Fallon said. My head was resting on his shoulder in the hollow beneath his jaw, and I could feel the tension in his throat adjust as he spoke. It made something burn in my chest.

“You will have to wake her up. You need to tell us what happened,” I heard Prince Lorent say.

“Give me a minute then. And have some chamomile tea ordered. Trust me, we need it.” The footsteps retreated and I heard a door open and close before I was placed on a chair. He sank down into the cushions beside me.

“Autumn, I’m sorry, but it’s time to wake up.”

Then move me off your shoulder, I thought. Nevertheless, I wriggled a little, opened my eyes, and slowly sat up, taking in our surroundings. We were on the sofa in the drawing room, which was empty. No fire had been lit and the room was still and cold, and the gentle tapping of rain on the windows, the ledges of which very nearly brushed the floor, didn’t help to warm the place up.

“Hey there,” Fallon said, placing a hand on my shoulder. I looked at him, bleary-eyed. “Sweet dreams?”

“No. Not particularly.”

He removed his hand. “Did you have a vision?”

I shook my head and flattened the bloody pleats of my skirt. Thankfully, none of the blood had passed any higher than the hem of my blouse, so nobody had questioned how it had got there. It just looked like it was from my leg.

“You can get changed once we have explained what happened. My father . . .” he waved his hand, “I mean, the king, will need to know about this.”

I nodded. He leaned back into the sofa and closed his eyes, ignoring the bustling as maids and manservants entered and the fire was lit and the tea poured. When Chatwin came over with the tea, I thanked him and avoided eye contact, because I knew he kept glancing at my skirt. When he had gone, I eyed the liquid in the cup skeptically. It was golden and looked like something I would never drink.

“It’s calming,” Fallon reassured. He seemed quite happy to take gulps of his, and no sugar had been added, so I took a few sips. I was nervous anyway. Anything that might help me explain about Nathan had to be a good thing. It tasted fruity, and reminded me of the herbal drinks my grandmother had brewed when I was a child, to ward off my headaches.

Edmund entered and took a seat in one of the upright armchairs nearer the fire, waving Chatwin over with what I was quickly realizing was characteristic arrogance. He, too, took a cup of the tea, downed it, and then sighed into the empty cup. He drank another when Chatwin brought it.

When the prince and princess entered, followed by Alfie and Lisbeth, that ego was eclipsed as he jumped up and bowed. I tried to do the same, but Fallon grabbed the side of my blouse and I got no farther than placing my hands on the cushions to lift myself up. Edmund sat back down but nobody else seemed inclined to do the same.

“Well?” Prince Lorent said to Edmund. He was not happy. He was using the same tone of voice as when the news about Violet Lee had arrived.

“They used a hybrid of block and elemental hexes to conceal themselves. We never felt it coming until a mist appeared. When we consumed that mist,” he turned to look at me, and everybody’s eyes followed, “we stood little chance. Thankfully, so did they. Whatever it was, it was new and extremely powerful.”

He emphasized the last sentence, clearly on the defensive, because what had happened had crushed his professional pride.

“Did you get a sample?”

Edmund looked a little more pleased with himself this time. “Alya has already gone to test it.”

“How many were there?”

“Five,” Fallon answered.

“Six,” I modified.

“Eight,” Edmund corrected. I jolted my head back down to stare at my lap. If I had known there were that many, I never would have gone near that mist. “Two fatalities, one injury, on their part.” I looked straight back up again, practically begging Edmund with my eyes not to elaborate. I couldn’t have them knowing I had done that. “But two were human.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “And it appears that they were not only human, but slayers. A Giles and Abria of the Pierre clan. Richard is trying to profile them now.”

Alfie’s lower lip curled slightly as his jaw dropped. “Slayers. As in, the Pierre clan . . . with Michael Lee . . . slayers?”

His mother was more direct. “What on earth gives you that idea?”

“This,” Edmund said, and cast the stake into his hands. Everybody gasped. “Autumn found it, shall we say, when it cut into her leg after they had crossed the borders. Hence the blood.” He pointed at me and I nodded.

He took it over to the table, and each person examined it in turn. My heels began to bounce with nerves. The tea hadn’t worked.

Prince Lorent ran a hand down his face and turned to his wife. “I don’t think we can delay speaking with Ll’iriad.”

“To Athenea it is.” She sighed, picking up the stake. “Don’t go far, Edmund; he may want to see you, too.”

The man bowed and Fallon went to stand up, too. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath, letting it go with a rush of words. “There is something else!”

“Oh?” Prince Lorent tilted his head. Edmund caught my eye and shook his head slightly. I ignored him. I was not going to say what he thought I was.

I closed my eyes. “It sounds crazy, but I think I knew one of the Extermino.”

“Knew one?” When I opened my eyes again, Fallon’s uncle was advancing on me, and I dug my feet in to push myself back into the chair.

“Yes. I . . . when he was human.”

“Human?” he echoed, stopping. “Duchess, what are you implying?” His tone was so accusatory that I couldn’t look directly at him.

“I knew him from work, he was a cook, and . . .” I trailed off, screwing my eyes tightly shut as I realized that—

“I may have . . . er . . . forgotten to mention your job,” Fallon filled in. He pursed his lips and chewed on them, running a hand down the back of his head.

“That’s not of any consequence. Just carry on with what you have to say,” his aunt said impatiently.

Of course it’s of consequence. It wounds your honor more than mine. Nevertheless, I continued. “He stopped turning up about a week after you arrived at Kable.” I looked at Fallon. “And then quit, without giving notice. I didn’t think anything of it, but then he appeared right in front of me in the mist, covered in their gray scars. He was so close I could have touched him. And he didn’t attack me.”

“You were utterly defenseless against the block hex. You could have simply been confused,” Edmund offered, playing devil’s advocate. But I could see it in his features that he believed me, and that he was genuinely worried.

“No! I’m sure!” I insisted. “I checked his Facebook profile just now. He’s deactivated it. And he has a really unique voice. You heard a strong Devonshire accent in the mist, didn’t you?” I pleaded to Fallon and Edmund.

“I did,” Fallon said, and Edmund nodded.

“If the Extermino have started turning humans, then a full investigation will be launched at the highest level. Are you completely and utterly sure of this?” Fallon’s uncle demanded.

I was just short of positive. “Yes, I am.”

“What is his full name, and when was the last time you definitely saw him human?”

I turned to Edmund. “Nathaniel Rile. The first Saturday of September.”

The Athan’s next leader shifted his weight onto one foot, cupping his right elbow with his left hand and resting the index finger of his right at the corner of his lips. He frowned at me. “Presumably you had him as a friend on Facebook. Were you close?”

I blinked a few times and recoiled. “No. We just worked together. I hardly even saw him over the summer.”

He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Duchess, I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but when you were together, did he ever show interest in you? Flirt, perhaps?”

I blushed very deeply and felt my lips part of their own accord into a small o. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Did he say or do anything that ever made you uncomfortable or wary?”

I fiddled with my hands in my lap. This was all turning out far worse than I had imagined it would if they had decided to believe me. “He found out that another Sagean family had moved to the area. One of high status.” I didn’t plan on mentioning I had as good as told him that. “And I guess you could say he hunted down my title online.” I looked up. “I never told anyone I was a duchess before Fallon arrived. But you forgot to mention that, too, didn’t you?” I grimaced at the prince sitting next to me. He grimaced back.

My bodyguard-turned-interrogator hummed in response, then began drumming his fingers against the top of the chair he had sat in when he first entered.

“Edmund?”

He turned to the princess. “The Extermino have deliberately chosen someone close to the duchess. If she is indeed correct and this Nathaniel has been turned, then it would logically follow that he had a motive in wanting to become a Sage. It is inconceivable that any human could survive a Sagean turning unless he truly has the will to do so. He was not forced, I can tell you that.”

Fallon and Alfie were both staring at me. “You think the duchess was his motive?” the former asked.

“It’s a possibility.”

“And the Extermino’s motive in turning him?”

Edmund gave the two young princes a pointed look, and the elder occupants of the room frowned with worry.

I examined Prince Alfie, then the youngest prince, having lost track of the conversation at their vague exchange. “But surely, by picking someone near to me, they knew they could get to you? I am so sorry. I know you were trying to get away from all this.” Yet again I found myself slumping toward my lap.

“You had no part in this. And life is nothing but for a little excitement,” Fallon’s uncle consoled, though the tone of his voice was weary. “Edmund, I would still like some sort of security set up around the duchess’s home. Until that is in place, she will stay with us.”

My head popped up, but I knew better than to argue with Prince Lorent. Edmund had resumed using the glare I seemed to incite in him, but Fallon was fighting a smirk. I chose to ignore it, trying to block out the feel of him on top of me, because it was putting the tint of my eye in jeopardy.

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 aline 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?”

Edmund nodded, once, very gradually. “An unlikely trio. But they were best friends.”

My eyes shot up and my breath rushed out in a rasp. Eaglen I had known about, but Adalwin Mortheno? The Athan’s leader? I looked back down at the picture. It was easy to see that what Edmund said was true. All three were laughing and none looking directly at the camera, as Eaglen watched my grandmother and pointed toward something outside of the frame, the other two squinting in that direction, my grandmother’s hand gripping the sleeve of Adalwin’s jumper as though trying to tug him toward her. They were standing in front of a circular pond, and judging by their style of dress, the photo had been taken before my father was born.

Edmund started drumming his fingers again. “How much do you know about your grandmother’s life prior to the time you spent with her?” I shook my head. “Not much?” He hummed; more in thoughtfulness this time. “You must know that your grandfather died when your own father was twelve, yes? And are you aware that my mother and father divorced some years before that?” I hadn’t known the latter, but nodded anyway. “What about the fertility problems in your family?”

My eyes lowered down to my lap. Yes, I know about that all right. It was the reason I was the only Sage left in my family. Most members had been unable to have children, or had only had one or two, and generation by generation, the House of Al-Summers had withered and now teetered upon death.

“Don’t look so downcast. By the time you come to have children—if you wish to—things will be better,” he reassured, and I managed a small smile. I would have to have children or name an heir to prevent the duchy from dying out.

He took up the picture and began absentmindedly smoothing out the creases, smiling at its image. “What you do not know is that after her mourning period, your grandmother very seriously considered marrying my father.”

I choked on the air that I inhaled. “What?!” I shook my head. “I mean, pardon?”

His smile widened and I noticed he was looking not at me but the space above my right shoulder again. “All platonic, before you get any ideas. They both sought companionship, and your grandmother also wished to bring security to your family name. It was apparent she could have no more children, and her only heir being born human had been quite a blow, I assure you.”

I didn’t know where to look, but I found my eyes could not settle on him when deep in the pit of my stomach I felt a slight resentment as I pieced together what he was saying. “Your family are not titled. So you would have taken the Al-Summers name and your family would be heir to my duchy!” I glared accusingly at my lap, which clearly didn’t have any impact on him, as he chuckled.

“Your grandmother was not as silly as you. In the draft of the marriage contract she ensured that her title, lands, and fortune would all pass to your father on the event of her death, and then, upon his death, to his child, if his heir were human, or directly from her to her grandchild if said child was born Sagean. If that child inherited during his or her minority, Vincent Al-Summers would control the finances in lieu of his child until such child turned eighteen, and the Athenea would become their proxy on the council until the child turned sixteen.”

“But that is exactly the agreement we already have with the Athenea, so what was the benefit of a marriage—”

He waved a hand to silence me. “One subtle difference. One single clause.” Surveying me through eyes pinched at the corners, he waited until I had taken several breaths, edging forward on my seat with every rise of my chest. I had to hand it to him: he was a good storyteller.

“If they had married, my father and my entire family would have retained the name Mortheno, except in the case of one eventuality. If you had been born human, and you produced no heir, or a human one, the duchy of England would have passed to my father in its entirety, and I would be next in line.”

No wonder he is so short with me. He must hate me! I ruined the chances of his family to climb! “Y-you gold-digger!” That wasn’t what I had planned to say, but it more or less summed up my thoughts.

He closed his eyes, shaking his head. I took the opportunity to switch to a seat nearer him and snatch the photo out of his hands, thinking, for one heart-stopping moment, I had torn it. I hadn’t.

His eyes snapped open and he jolted away from me in surprise, before his expression softened again. “No. None of us really wanted your title. It would have meant leaving Athenea and Canada—our home—and giving up kicking anti-Athenean backside, as your teacher so aptly put it. We are all quite old. We do not like change. But keeping one of the most powerful independent dukedoms in all the dimensions, and one of few not infiltrated by royalty, out of the hands of the Athenea was important to your grandmother, and we were willing to help her achieve that.” A smirk started to form on his lips and I saw him run his tongue across his bottom teeth. “Even if that was only until it could be returned and a young heiress could amalgamate with the Athenea on her own terms through, say . . .” He shrugged his shoulders casually and let his eyes wander around the veranda teasingly. “Marrying a young, attractive Athenean prince.”

I slapped the photo back down and crossed my arms. “Shut up, Edmund! I’m only fifteen.” All worry that I had felt the minute before faded with my flushing. They didn’t seem the type to want to become nobility, and in any case, the marriage had never occurred. Why the marriage had never happened was my next question.

He tugged his lips into a grim smile. “Yes. It was around the same time that your father started to become troublesome. Wanting to attend human university, go into banking and whatnot. Your grandmother felt marrying another Sage would only inflame the situation, and took the time to work on coaxing him back. When he married a human, we as good as started planning for my father and your grandmother to renew the agreement. But she insisted she wouldn’t give up, and remained with your parents through years of fertility treatment, and eventually ICSI and IVF. You have no idea of the sigh of relief my family and the entire kingdom breathed when you were born. No idea.” He ran a hand down his face in an even more dramatic fashion than Fallon always did when he was stressed or in shock.

I surrendered myself into the curved back of the chair, allowing everything he had informed me of up to his last few sentences—which I had already known about—to sink in. He waited for me, quite patiently, only moving when he stabbed the photo to the table with his index finger as the wind tried to carry it away.

“So, earlier, when you said you remembered me . . .” I probed.

He gave a single, slow nod. “You were four when you first came to court, and you and your grandmother stayed not in your apartments in the palace, or in one of your villas in Athenea, but with us. You spent much of the first week screaming for home and keeping us all awake. It played havoc with our shifts.”

I opened and closed my mouth, though my lips remained parted in a rueful pout of a smile. That sounded like my younger self—not that I could remember such events. I struggled to remember anything of living with my parents before starting at St. Sapphire’s around my sixth birthday. I had apparently attended preschool with Christy and Tammy until I had been driven out by angry parents, but when I strained to place their faces, I only found blank spots. This revelation was just another metallic tile in a gray mosaic.

“I seem to recall that when you attended at age eight and ten, you would often run off and hide with the Athenean children so your grandmother couldn’t take you back home. On one occasion, the queen found you, Fallon, and Chucky in a closet. You had apparently cornered them in a game of good-bye kiss chase.”

The unappealing shade of red my cheeks turned was embarrassing in itself. I clapped my hands to my face, burying my cheekbones into hollows created by my palms. He laughed.

“But why don’t I remember you featuring in any of this?” I groaned through my fingers to cut him off. It worked.

“Largely because as you got older it became important to immerse you in society. And we work in the background. It meant we saw less of the pair of you.”

“And the Athenea? Do they know about our connection?”

I opened up gaps in my fingers to watch him. His brow had lowered a fraction.

“The older generation certainly do. I suspect Fallon does not. But when we were making plans to come here last week, the concern that Alya or I might be . . .” he trailed off and his frown deepened, “. . . emotionally compromised . . .”—his gaze settled on the table after a pause—” . . . by your presence was not raised. So I can only assume those that do know have either forgotten or see it as irrelevant.”

“Emotionally compromised?”

“Yes. To modify your earlier statement: I am not just staff. I was almost your step-uncle.”

When he put it like that, the whole story took on an entirely different meaning. He wasn’t just an almost-heir. He was almost family. In the back of my mind I made a note to search Burrator’s library to see if it kept marriage records, to verify what he was saying. Because if it really was all true, then in them I had an ally.

His eyes flickered shut and he craned his neck in the direction of the door.

“You have to go.” I reluctantly pushed the photo back toward him.

“Keep it.” He heaved himself up to his tremendous height and took a step away but then changed his mind and returned to my side. “You are not an exile, you know. There are a lot at court who would gladly see you back, especially when you are old enough to sit on the council.” Then, to my bewilderment, he leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of my head, cupping one cheek, plastered with wet, crimped hair, in his right hand. “So let go and learn to make decisions, little almost-niece.” Then he wagged his finger at me. “But first, go and get changed before you catch a chill.”

And then he was gone. As I stared at the open doors, a smile crossed my mouth and then I began laughing under my breath, silently almost. When I had first been whisked down to Devon after my grandmother had died, I had wished to the silence of the garden outside my bedroom window that some unknown, forgotten, distant, Sagean relation would come and restore my life and banish my grief . . . just to stop the unending loneliness. Now I was older I knew that had been a ridiculous notion, yet this . . . this was the next best thing.

And then . . . then I felt happy. I was at peace with the day’s events. Because without them, there would have been no explanation required of me, and no need to run, and Edmund would never have followed me.

But I refused to feel pity for the man I had killed. That I reserved solely for Nathan and the fate he had tied himself to. His doleful expression, his silent answer to my own disbelieving features; that would not leave me. That clung. It was how I knew Edmund was wrong; it was not too late for me, and I still had enough blood and fat and tissue to keep on going.

I felt pity for Nathaniel Rile, because his innocent humanity had been butchered.