CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Autumn

“Just . . . don’t make a habit of walking out of council meetings. That kind of thing only makes an impact once,” the king of Athenea said quietly, his eyes constantly darting between me and his daughter Emily, who was playing at his feet, and the two mischievous twins who kept trying to pull her hair. “But what you did worked. We’re indebted to you.”

He rose up out of his chair, and the three children paused, watching their father with nothing but adoration on their faces.

I stood up, too. “She drank half a liter of blood this morning. I didn’t expect to see change so quickly, but it is a fate-send.”

“Indeed. And you, my lady, you are shining. It makes my family and me so happy to see you growing stronger every day. We’ve all adopted you into the Athenean chaos, I think.”

“This does feel like home,” I admitted with a slight blush.

“I am glad to hear it. Now, come, we should return to the drawing room.” The three children obediently began packing up their toys, and once they were done, the king led all four of us out of the room, my heart swelling with absolute delight when Emily chose to take my hand, squeezing it like I was her sister.

The drawing room was very full—it always was. It was more of a family room, where the Athenean children played and socialized, did their homework, or spent much-needed time with their busy parents. It was near the front of the palace, tucked behind the entrance hall where all were free to gather to catch glimpses of the king when he emerged. It was rare that he did—all the private rooms were interconnected, and I could remember running from one to another with Fallon, as a child, without ever seeing somebody who did not have blue eyes.

Fallon sat with his aunt and uncle in a corner of the room. When I came in, he looked up and smiled, and even though I was in a pair of jeans and a baggy sweater, I felt like the only girl in the palace beautiful enough to produce that smile. I wanted to run over to him and throw my arms around his neck and hold on to him like a parasite . . .

I’m happy. I don’t know why but I’m happy . . .

But I didn’t go over, and instead went and sat with Violet and Kaspar at a small table in another corner. She was poring over a glossy magazine, but I already knew it wasn’t gossip that had captured her interest. She looked up when I pulled up a chair, and briefly smiled.

“Okay?” I asked, even though I knew she already was, from the excitement passing across our connection.

“It’s perfect,” she responded, pulling a piece of paper from the back page. “I spoke to a woman from admissions today. She said with my grades I’d get in easy, and I could start in January! Here.” She passed me the sheet and I skimmed what had been scribbled on it—it was about spiritual counseling.

I beamed. “And you couldn’t have picked a better major than politics. It can do nothing but help us.”

From opposite me, Kaspar scoffed. “Yeah, right,” he muttered. Violet glanced his way, her smile faltering, and I took a deep breath. Don’t ruin it, Kaspar. Don’t you dare ruin it.

“Kaspar being weird?” Fallon asked in my mind.

I nodded subtly, assuming he was watching us.

“He was weird with me last night, too.”

I kept one eye on Violet, gauging her reaction—nothing anybody said to me in my mind was private anymore. “Tell me later,” I responded, reminding him to be more discreet. He still couldn’t take in the full implications of this connection.

“So what did you do? I’ve barely seen you since yesterday. Violet’s got a brochure for the university, but I don’t get what’s changed. She’s a different girl!”

I smirked. “She’s applying to a degree program there.”

“Seriously?! Wow! But why does that change anything?”

“Do you remember me telling you about how I could see the vamperic queen? She told me Violet and I were alike, and I thought about what my salvation was: education. I didn’t think anything of it until Antae said about educating her . . .”

Violet shot me a brief smile, obviously listening to every word.

“Being a vampire doesn’t mean relinquishing all of your future plans,” I finished, both aloud and in my head so Fallon would hear. “It gives her a goal to live and to drink for,” I added as an afterthought.

I was so engrossed in my conversation that I didn’t notice the Athan, who had appeared in the room, until the king asked the children to leave. Everybody’s heads shot up and the younger occupants started to protest.

“Go!” the king snapped, and that’s when I really knew something was wrong. I’d never seen him lose his temper with children before; I’d never even heard him raise his voice. It didn’t become him and his strange, placeless accent—not Canadian, like the adopted accent of many in his family, but warm and varying, telling of a man whose home had seen the rise and fall of cultures. It was meant to persuade, not shout.

They seemed as confused as me, and begrudgingly left the room with Alya.

Edmund moved closer to the sofas in the center of the room, clutching an official-looking slip and what looked like the back of a glossy photo in his hand. I wanted to move to see, but I was nailed to the seat, clutching its back. Something bad had happened, something really bad. I could just tell in my heart.

“Autumn, I have some . . . upsetting news,” Edmund explained. His slow, pitying voice spurred my legs into action and I walked to the chair beside the king and his wife, and sat down, feeling as though my body had moved while my mind floated somewhere outside it, watching the scene unfold like in a theater.

Fallon came and crouched beside my armchair, holding my hand. His uncle, aunt, Alfie, and Lisbeth approached, too, but when I looked up, Kaspar and Violet seemed like distant figures across the room, blurry and insignificant.

“Perhaps we could go somewhere else?” I heard the king say.

“Here is fine,” I replied. It didn’t sound like my voice. It sounded too calm.

Edmund took a long, rattling breath.

“The Extermino . . . I’m so sorry. Your human school, they . . . they attacked it, and . . .”

I bowed my head and fixed my eyes very, very hard on the carved maple leaf on the foot of the table, trying to remain detached and avoid the inevitable guilt and dread that began to rise.

“No guardians,” Fallon choked out, voicing my emotions and the horrible, horrible thought that had sprung to mind. No guardians, because we abandoned them.

“Were there casualties?” I heard the duke of Victoria ask.

“Some of the students said there were as many as ten Extermino. It was break time, most people were out on the field . . . they didn’t stand a chance. I—I have a list of the injured. There’s over a hundred,” he said quietly, laying a sheet of paper with names typed on it on the coffee table. My eyes were threatening to water, but I could see next to each name, without exception, there were only the words “critical” or “stable.”

“Christy, Tammy, Gwen, Valerie, and John Sylaeia are all on there . . .”

He said some other names I didn’t recognize but Fallon obviously did, because his hand suddenly tightened around mine.

“They were hit with curses but they’re stable.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the list. I knew why they had done it: to make a stand. Like vultures, they had spotted an opportunity and taken it, shown they were vigilant in their “cause” and that we were not. But how had they done it? How could anybody hurt innocent, human children?

“Nobody was killed? Thank fate,” the duke sighed in relief.

I could hear Edmund swallow, hard. “One person was.”

My gaze shot up as Edmund walked over to the king and handed him the photograph. He met my gaze and then looked away. “Thyme. Thyme Carter.”

My heart burst from my chest, wrenched out from my back, punching holes in my lungs so when I inhaled nothing happened.

“Who?” someone asked, confused.

“Tee,” Fallon breathed next to me. “Tee.”

The world was spinning . . . Tee, little, sweet Tee was dead. Murdered.

“This can’t get out to the media,” the king said shakily, and I forced my oxygen-starved head to lift itself. He was staring at the photo, and slowly turning a faintshade of green.

“Let me see it,” I demanded, pulling my hand out of Fallon’s grip and clenching the arms of the chair instead. “Now!”

He handed it back to Edmund, who clutched it to his chest and brought it around the circle of chairs to me. Every pair of eyes in the room followed him.

“Autumn,” he whispered. “Don’t.”

My shaking hand reached up and my fingers pinched the corner, slowly lowering it down to my lap without moving my eyes from Edmund’s face. Beside me, Fallon wailed in horror and clapped his hands to his mouth, turning away until he was on his knees, doubled over.

I looked down.

It was a back. A child’s back. Tee’s back. There was a festering gash in the shoulder, oozing blood that had matted in the tightly curled hair that was in the shot. Her arm was bent back, broken, bone protruding, and across her wrists there were thick diagonal marks lined up in neat rows, which must have been from the fraying rope beside her hand.

And into her back, letters had been gouged, glistening red against her dark skin. Those letters formed words.

How long can you last, my lady?

We can make it stop, duchess.

We will wait for you, Autumn.

All my love,

Nathan xxx

I threw the photo away from me, not caring where it landed, and stood up. I could not blink. I could not swallow. I stared at the wall for a moment, arid, as the room swayed, and then, for the second time in a day, walked away.

The floor was moving and I put my feet down carefully until the door to the entrance hall suddenly swung open and I caught the scent of fresh air. I followed it, steps quickening.

From behind me, Fallon shouted my name through his sobs. Somebody told him, “No.”

“Autumn?” Edmund asked, drawing level with me. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at him. I blamed him. I wanted him as far away from me as possible.

“Infanta . . . my horse,” I managed to think through the heavy, sick haze in my head.

In the entrance hall, people crowded to the open doors before slowly backing away as they saw their sick, shocked He**ine floating toward them. As I passed through, I felt my clothes fall away as black garments wrapped around me to hide my na**dness, and in seconds I was in full mourning clothes: black trousers, black blouse. Black gloves. Lace around my neck, tied like a collar that bound me to her memory. My hair fell loose, and I hid my guilt behind it.

The huge outer doors were opened for me, and I was greeted with a world on fire. The sky was bright orange and yellow as the sun sank, topped with a thin strip of purple. At the end of the long boulevard created by the wings of the palace, I could see the silhouette of Infanta, held still by a lone stable boy.

She greeted me by tossing her head, and I knew she would keep me company. It was better than flying. Once I was in the saddle, Edmund caught up, taking the reins from the stable boy, who bowed low and scuttled away.

“I’m so sorry,” he breathed. “We should have left them protection. We should have—”

“Leave me alone,” I snarled, kicking into the horse’s haunches so she took off at a furious pace. But he didn’t. He followed me the whole way, sometimes running, sometimes flying, as Infanta fled across the grass plains, my hair streaming wildly behind me.

I wondered what it must look like to those who saw us, a black-and-gray outline against the bright sky, racing away from the palace like the sun was burning it down.

Magnificent, child. Whatever you do, you will be magnificent.

I don’t feel like that now, Grandmother.

In time, you will. Time will grant you magnificence, child.

Somewhere, I was running through the green grass, screaming her name in a tongue as familiar to me as the shadow that the tall gray-stone building cast in my path. Tears streaked my face and I struggled to climb the steps, hearing the babble behind the closed entrance doors, like the stream beside the lodge that would swell after the winter rains. My polished, square, school-approved heels squealed in protest as I burst through the double doors, coming across the same sight I had seen a thousand times: hundreds of faces turning to mine—and then black.

The Athenean Cathedral was a beautiful building. Outside it looked like a typical gothic cathedral, like those dotted around the cities of Britain, complete with gargoyles whose faces were melted from years of suffering at the hands of the elements and a graveyard that stretched for miles, little rounded stones protruding from the earth as far as the eye could see, speckling the greenery with gray. Bells rang in the twilight, and through the open, inviting doors I could hear the sound of a choir singing.

Inside, it was anything but traditional. There were pews, but the space was divided into multiple areas of worship dedicated to most of the major religions; the echoes of the choir came from a small chapel to my immediate left. Most impressive, as far as I was concerned, however, was the ancient tree growing by magic in the building’s center. It was an oak, whose branches sprouted high above us in the spire of the church, sheltering the white tombs scattered beneath its shade.

It was in one of those tombs that my grandmother was buried.

There were a few men wearing brown habits—monks, I guessed—sweeping up leaves from beneath the tree, but I was otherwise left alone by the various religious leaders.

I settled beside her tomb, which was right at the front of the tree and scattered with adornments. There were wilting flowers placed in mildewed jars, which I cast away, and fresher ones, too, placed among fading photographs of her, of me . . . even of the Manderley mansion she despised so much.

I tucked my legs beneath me and rested my forehead against the cool marble. I inhaled, deeply, over and over. Beneath my skin I could feel the gouged letters leaving marks, and it wasn’t long before I was pressing my fingers into them, tracing the words.

“Rebecca,” I muttered as I traced her first name with my index finger, skipping her title. It wasn’t hers anymore. “Rebecca . . . Al-Summers,” I finished, following the flourish of the carved s.

I half expected her to answer, to push the lid of the tomb open, sit up, and snap at me to sit up straight and stop sniveling. But I had sealed her tomb with a spell myself, the last time I was in the cathedral.

I was angry, more so than I was horrified or upset. Angry at myself for never stopping to think about the humans at Kable, angry for being so selfish as to do what I did the day Valerie collapsed—if I had stuck it out, we might have remained in school long enough for replacement guardians to be found. I was angry at the Athan and Edmund, for failing again, for never keeping the humans safe. He sat in a pew in the very back row, watching me.

I was angry at the Athenea; at Violet and Kaspar, because they had distracted my thoughts from my friends and because they were vampires who killed people like Tee without thinking twice.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered to the marble, my lips so close to its cool surface I was almost kissing it. “Why me? I don’t know what I can do to change the world . . . to stop evil like this. I’m still a child. I’m still in your shadow.”

I heard a rustling above me and looked up in time to see several crisp, brown autumn leaves swaying from side to side, gradually falling in miniature cyclones until they were suddenly caught by a bitter draft, scattering across the tomb and turning my world brown for a second.

I shivered. Outside, the first few flakes of snow were beginning to fall.

The icy chill was cleansing, and I wanted to stay and freeze—it was better than thinking about Tee. But Infanta was outside, and she wasn’t as keen on the cold and wet as I was.

I reached up and gripped the rim of the tomb. “I’ll get revenge for you, Grandmother, and for Tee, too. I don’t know how . . . but I’ll have Nathan’s blood on my hands, I promise. I’ll make you proud, as a duchess and a He**ine. Watch me break from your shadow. Watch me grow.”

I hoisted myself up, careful not to knock over any of the flowers, and slowly made my way back down the aisle toward Edmund, who weakly smiled and said, “Ready?”

I nodded. For much more than you can ever know.

Together we plunged back out into the December air.

Child, one day I will be dead, and you will have to walk alone. The day you learn to do that will be an important day. It is the day I will cease to call you “child.”