CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Autumn

I sorted out all the riding gear myself when we returned to the stables, happy to delay returning to the palace for as long as possible. I was calm. Really calm, or maybe just numb.

After I led Infanta back into her stable, I hung around in the entrance to the building, leaning against a post and staring out at the strange mix of the pink sky and the falling snow. It was eerily empty, and quiet, until from behind the wings of the palace several tiny dark figures emerged, running so fast they all blurred into a group. I squinted and then cast a vision-enhancing spell.

It was Kaspar Varn, his younger brother, the American, Felix, and Charity Faunder, all in dark clothing and sprinting at their incredible vamperic speed along the road that led to the east gate. Each carried a small backpack, and they were unguarded.

As they disappeared out of sight, I felt my heart sink, and was bombarded with confusion and pain as Violet tuned in live to my sight.

I can’t look after you, not tonight, I thought. My friend was murdered.

She didn’t withdraw—she couldn’t—but she threw a few angry thoughts my way and faded a little.

“They’re going hunting,” someone said from behind me. It was Fallon.

I half turned but didn’t uncross my arms. I was too cold and too numb to do anything about it.

“I figured you would still be out here,” he continued, pulling me into him so my cheek rested against his warm chest. He reached down to unfold my arms.

“Your hands are like popsicles,” he murmured, waving his hand and casting a jacket into them, which he wrapped around my shoulders. He then lit a small flame that hovered between us, instantly defrosting my hands. “It’s December. You need to wear more layers,” he gently chided, fussing with my damp, frizzy hair so it parted neatly down the middle.

“I like the cold,” I whispered, peering up at him through my snow-adorned lashes as a flurry of the stuff blew into the stable.

He chuckled. “It fits your name. Cold to the touch, but fire to look at.”

My lips attempted a smile but only managed a flat line. “I think my grandmother looked into my eyes and saw my whole life mapped out ahead of me when she named me. I think she knew all of this.” I sidled into him, pushing the flame aside, and slotted myself in below his armpit so my back was half-pressed against his chest. He wrapped both arms around me and rested his chin on my shoulder. It felt safe.

“We’ll never know,” he whispered, squeezing me.

“We might. Violet sees the dead vamperic queen.”

He stilled, lifting his head up again. “Autumn, we don’t know enough about her powers yet to get hopes like those up.” He began gently rubbing my arms. “Don’t let yourself be hurt again. Let her go.”

“I have,” I assured him, doubting the statement myself.

“Good.”

The snow was definitely getting heavier, and though it wasn’t yet settling, I could see sludgy melt dripping from the gutter but never reaching the ground as it turned to ice right before my eyes.

“I want to go back for Tee’s funeral,” I said after a while. “It’s the least we can do.”

“I’m not sure we’ll be allowed, but yes, let’s try.”

“Tammy . . . Tammy will hate us. W-we let this happen,” I stuttered, feeling like I was actually going to cry. After everything she had done to help me . . .

He whirled me around and, with a finger, tilted my chin up toward him. “No, don’t play the blame game. The only evil in all this are the Extermino, and we won’t let them go unpunished. Tammy will understand.”

He kissed each cheek right below my eye, catching the first tears as they started to fall. Then he moved to my lips and caught them.

He suddenly pulled away and reached into his pocket. “I got you another charm for your bracelet.”

He unfurled his fingers to reveal a circle of gold threaded with black, about the size of a ring, and hanging from it a tiny black butterfly. Picking it up I could see there were tiny red roses engraved into its wings.

“Thank you,” I breathed, as astounded by the intricacy as I had been when I first received the bracelet.

He took it back from me and fiddled about, attaching it to one of the links of the bracelet I never took off.

“You’ve metamorphosed; left your chrysalis. That’s why I chose a butterfly. Sometimes I can’t even remember how you were oncea caterpillar,” he muttered as he finally got the clip to catch on a ring.

I lifted my wrist into the light of the stable. “Is that a pick-up line?” I asked, admiring my new charm.

“If it works, it is,” he retorted smugly. “But you’re an adult now, that’s the point.”

I lowered my wrist and took hold of his hands, wrapping them around my neck so he pulled me closer. “Can . . . I come back to your room, tonight?”

He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head slightly to the side. “What are you after?”

“Nothing,” I whispered, reaching up to kiss him but he got there first, placing a finger between our lips.

“You’re lying. Don’t lie to me.”

I nodded, moving his finger aside, and finally pressed my lips to his. Then I tore myself away and headed out into the snow, turning my back to the palace so that I could face him as I walked.

“Everything, Your Highness. I want everything.”

One side of his lips curled upward into a smirk, and with a click of his fingers, the lights in the stables dimmed. He pushed off from the wall and I whirled to walk in the direction of the servants’ entrance, hands outstretched to catch the snow, pursued by the prince in the chilly, December, Athenean air.

He was still asleep when I woke up the next morning. I didn’t know how long I had slept—judging by the effort it took to sit up, not enough—but Tee’s bloody face, hanging behind my eyelids, had woken me. She’d been gone, the evening before, as gone from my mind as she was dead, but at night, when his arms weren’t around me, she came back.

I pushed my hair out of my eyes and examined him, splayed out across the very edge of his huge bed, toes curled around the rails at the end, sheets thrown off his na**d body so they double-layered me. He was breathing heavily, so I eased myself very slowly out of bed and took the pure white sheet with me, wrapping it around myself like a towel. It was crude coverage, but I was hot and sweating, and I needed the cool air outside.

I opened the door to his balcony just as carefully and shut it again once both feet were on the snowy stone. It was freezing, painfully so, and I danced across the paving until I found a patch that was relatively clear to stand on.

Athenea was blanketed in white. The woods to my right had been frosted, the lake in the distance was frozen, the mountains were now snow cones, and the plains were covered in snow so deep and untouched I felt the wild urge to jump from the balcony and sink into it, to see if it was as soft as it looked.

It was magical—there never was much snow in London or Torbay—and even though the birds were still singing their chorus, I longed to get dressed and play.

Just as I went to turn away, a flash of light caught my eye. It flickered in and out of existence, right at the peak of the nearest mountain, and then suddenly grew, a bright orange flame against the white. Within a minute it looked like the whole mountain peak was on fire.

There was no mistaking it. It was a beacon; the last beacon, only ever lit after all twelve burned in the dimension. They were only ever lit in times of crisis . . .

The time of the He**ines had come, and the Extermino were making their move to drive a wedge between us and the humans . . . and Violet and I were the only forces stopping them.

I swallowed hard, and stared as an all-too-familiar stab shot through my temples. Like an arrow passing through, it didn’t stop hurting; it got worse, working its way up toward excruciating. I tried to scream for Fallon, but moving my jaw sent the pain spiraling down my neck and into my chest. All I could do was grip the railings as my body sank toward the ground and my vision tunneled to a focus on the beacon.

Inside, a clock struck the hour.

“It was a vision . . . of a girl,” chri’dom breathed. He lay splayed out across the floor, fragments of a shattered glass scattered in a puddle of red liquid near his hand. “Fetch Crimson and Pierre. Quickly!” he ordered his advisors. They fled the room, but he called his protégé back.

“Is it done? Is one of her school fellows dead?”

The protégé nodded.

chri’dom mustered the little strength he had to take the man’s hand. “Your loyalty to me is proved in blood. Fate did indeed choose you well. Now, help me stand, for the quest begins this day for the third He**ine of the Damned. I have seen her, Nathaniel; I have seen her, and she is human.”