‘Just the second verse then.’ Fallon shrugged his shoulders and took a long swig from his can of beer. Finishing it, he crushed it in his palm, the metal disappearing beneath the crevices of his fingers. When he opened them again, all that was left was dust, which he scattered onto the fire.
Autumn glanced his way and then began to speak in her native tongue, Fallon weaving a translation in-between.
‘Her fate is set in stone,
Bound to sit upon the second throne.
Destined to betray her kin; she lives in his past sin,
Bathed in the blood of the black rose above.
No birth, no time, no choice,
So as martyrs, two innocents must die,
For the girl, born to impassion the nine.’
Her last words were spoken with a severity and urgency there hadn’t been before and she gave a small gasp, as though surprised at herself. Fallon didn’t question her behaviour, but lay there patiently, his eyes roaming across the dark sky, as though counting the stars. With her gasp came silence, the fire the only one to speak as the wind raced through its mouth, sighing through pursed lips as the air escaped and hurried on, zipping between the trees and leaving only a whistle behind.
I nestled further into the tree and stared up too, wondering whether, perhaps, with its strange, airy, even earthy language that the stars were more familiar than the first dimension and its even stranger inhabitants, the Sage.
Fallon sighed and propped himself up on his elbows. ‘That verse is a true declaration of war.’
‘But this is peacetime?’ I questioned, confused.
‘No, Miss Lee,’ Fallon cooed again. ‘If this were peacetime, you would not be sitting here, a prisoner of politics, faced with a decision you hardly dared to consider until recently.’
My eyes lowered to the ground.
‘If this were peacetime, no child, whether a descendent of magic or not, would starve.’
My hands clenched together.
‘We have not been at peace for millennia. I highly doubt we ever have and things are now coming to a head. You just can’t see it yet, Miss Lee.’
Autumn’s eyes lowered to the ground.
‘And you’re hoping that the He**ines will sort it all out?’ I snorted. ‘Good luck with that!’ Chuckling, I leaned back against the trunk of the tree. A quickly stifled laugh came from Kaspar beside me, who sobered as soon as Fallon disapprovingly looked his way.
‘Was that some sort of backhanded insult, Miss Lee?’
I shook my head innocently but rather exaggeratingly winked at Kaspar who resorted to biting his bottom lip with his fangs to mute his laughter.
‘I don’t see this as a laughing matter.’
‘I-it’s not,’ I choked, trying to subdue my giggling. And it wasn’t funny, I was just glad to see Kaspar smiling and laughing again. ‘But seriously, if I know anything about people with power, they’d rather die than accept change.’
Suddenly, Autumn stood up and muttered something that sounded like ‘tired’ to Fallon who replied in their native language. She shook her head and began to walk away but in one fluid movement he had stood up and grabbed her hand, stopping her mid-step.
Immediately, I stopped laughing.
Fallon called after her and she stopped, her back to us. ‘You forget yourself, Autumn. You are in the presence of royalty, remember.’
Her shoulders rose gradually and fell as though she was sighing, before she slowly turned and in a show of manners or mockery, I wasn’t sure which, bowed to the ground in a full curtsy.
‘Your Highnesses. Lords. Sirs.’ Her eyes glided across each person until they came to me. ‘Madam.’
Her gaze turned to Fallon, reproachful, and lingered there for a moment like she was searching for his approval. But she didn’t wait for it because she sprang back up, her hair flung from about her neck to her back and in one leap; she had disappeared into the thick canopy of leaves.
There was stunned silence at her departure. An acid-y, sickly feeling settled in the back of my throat. I had only met this girl a few hours before, but I felt as though I had insulted a close friend; the jealousy I had felt when Kaspar had shown her kindness earlier seemed trivial; my thoughtlessness childish.
Fallon stared into the forest and slowly turned back to Kaspar, a rueful look on his face. Niceties were exchanged as he apologized profusely for her behaviour – ‘So inappropriate’ – before he turned into the darkness after her with the assurance the vampires would keep watch for the night.
The last thing I saw before sleep enveloped me sometime later was Fallon’s swirling scars through the many lashing, lusty tongues of the fire as he returned and a hand – Kaspar’s hand – creeping closer to mine, palm facing the stars.
FIFTY-FIVE
Kaspar
The hands of my watch moved achingly slowly as the night wore on, tiresome and troubled. Below me, Violet’s soft breathing was the complete opposite: calm and even but still agitating.
I had kept my hand near hers for the first half an hour or so, but was forced to move it as she rolled over in her sleep and moved dangerously close. We were many miles from my father but he would know. And even if he didn’t, I couldn’t touch her. The King was right.
My responsibility was not to Violet. It was to another. It had always been to another. I may not have known about it, but it was my duty. It was Prophecy.
Here Violet was, prepared to sacrifice her humanity for me and what did I have to give her in return?
I was a fool for letting her get this close. A fool for not stopping and realizing what was happening. A fool for not realizing what I felt for her until we were apart for two weeks. It’s crazy, it’s wrong and it’s going to hurt her.
Yet she brought you back, Kaspar. She brought back the ‘you’ your mother knew, my voice reasoned.
And what me was that?
It did not answer.
I looked down at Violet’s frail frame and felt a pang of guilt. I had wronged her and worst of all I couldn’t bring myself to tell her why. I knew I would never work up the courage either and that she would find out the hard way: as fate played out.
It was so close now. So real. Athenea had their He**ine, whoever she was, wherever she was, and the second would follow.
Sighing, I pulled a crumpled, roughly folded piece of paper from my pocket and opened it, thumbing the darker parts of the page where tears had fallen. Mother’s letter. One of a pair.
Dear sweet Beryl,
I didn’t have to read on to know what it said. I had studied it so many times now that tiny tears had appeared along the folds where I had repeatedly folded and unfolded it. It was the other letter I was interested in, which I extracted from the crumpled mass and flattened out on my bended knee.
‘My dear beloved son, Kaspar,
A warning, sweet child: I leave for Romania in a week and I will not leave without entrusting what I know to you. But I would advise that you don’t read on until you must – if you are at peace, my son, do not turn the page. I know you are wise and true enough to heed my words.’
I had been in possession of that letter since the day she died; the first time I ever turned that page was when father had given me her letter to Beryl – one we all treasured.
‘That letter is one of a pair,’ he had said, resting against the stone atop Varns’ Point, the morning after I slept with Violet. ‘It is time for you to read the other.’ And then he told me. Everything. Why we couldn’t touch. Why he was sending me to Romania.
I ran the whole way back, taking the stairs two at a time, bursting into my room, maids bowing and making hurried excuses as they dropped the dust sheets from their hands, fleeing from my snarls as I flung the white coverings away, pulling drawers from their runners until I found the second letter. Flinging my mother’s letter to me onto the unmade bed, untouched since she had slept in it. Reading it. Hearing Violet’s heartbeat as she slept next door, collapsed and stunned, not peacefully as she does now.
That letter changed everything. Even as I realized that Violet was no longer just a prize won and thrown away, but one to be treasured and revered – she wasn’t just another notch on the bedpost. That letter changed everything.
I took the second, hidden part of the letter with me to Romania, along with her last letter to Beryl. Drinking myself delirious. Drowning my sorrows. Selfishly hoping she would return my feelings but knowing it would be so much better for her if she didn’t.
Returning, desperate to see her before the ball but distracted and swept up by the politics as the news that sealed so many fates fell upon our ill-prepared ears.
They found her. The first girl. The Sagean He**ine.
Athenea closed their borders and refused to give news. But the ball went on. I’ll never forget her face, as my father sunk his fangs into her neck. Never.
The locket should have been farewell. I should have let her go, but I couldn’t. Not when Father announced her feelings for me.
I can’t let her go and I can’t break her heart.
After a while I realized I couldn’t sit there and listen to her sleeping. So I got up, crushed both letters into a ball in my pocket and walked away, leaving the questions of the others unanswered as they called after me.
FIFTY-SIX
Violet
The forest brims with life this night, he thought. Not that life is quite the right word.
Gone were the rogues and the slayers, driven away by Varnley’s guards in anticipation of Ad Infinitum. Forgotten by the council too, for a few days at least, was Michael Lee’s plan to rescue his daughter. To replace it had arrived lore and legend: the Prophecy.
He sighed. Leading a double life had left him weary. It was a relief simply to walk in the forest as his true self, and not the cloaked figure the forest had learned to fear.
The persona he had taken on in his younger years was gone. He’d taken to this life to become as much of a rogue as he could – a rebellion, perhaps, against authority – but it had backfired and the ultimate irony was he had become exactly what he had been trying to escape: a man, not a boy, ready to shoulder that authority.
A rabbit scampered by his feet, but he ignored it, not thirsty after drinking from the doe earlier.
He vowed, silently to himself, that the days where he would prowl the catacombs and the marshes would be only memories now. He had exacted enough revenge on the slayers and hunters of the forest.
His mind reeled. He was sure it wouldn’t be long now before Michael Lee came for his daughter. It had been months and he was a man of strategy – this was the perfect opportunity to attack, whilst the Kingdom’s back was turned to face the He**ines. Violet Lee would not be forgotten, as she had forgotten them.
Home was the best place for her.
But she would never move on; never let go. How could she? A whole world-within-a-world, so near to her grasp: one she almost joined.
But Varnley will be a worse place for her.
The old part of the forest gradually became new as the cloaked figure – no longer cloaked – began to slow as he approached the clearing. And knowing she would hear him, he spoke in his mind, his voice more than familiar to her.
Forgive me, Girly, please.
Forgive me, Girly, please.
I sat bolt upright. The air left my lungs in one breath, suddenly leaving my chest painfully empty. My eyes flew open and reluctantly the light flooded in, revealing the scene before me.
Kaspar. It’s Kaspar.
Ten pairs of concerned eyes drank me in and I immediately became aware of one set: emerald and belonging to a figure strolling back into the circle.
He can’t be. How can he be?
Kaspar, uncloaked, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his black jacket, the collar still upturned, slipped past the fire, almost unnoticed by everyone but me. Their attention had returned to their work as they doused the fire and gathered empty beer cans … everyone’s attention but one: Autumn’s gaze still burnt into my back.
Kaspar cannot be the cloaked figure. It just isn’t possible.
My mind reeled. But my heart tugged. I knew the voice that had rung in my head just seconds before. It had called me ‘Girly’.
Nobody else calls me that.
But the rational side of me spoke the loudest. I believed in my eyes and my eyes had seen Kaspar and a cloaked rogue in the very same room just before we set off for London, a couple of weeks before. It didn’t make sense.
My eyes bore into him as he rounded the remains of the fire. I scrabbled up.
‘Don’t stare, Girly, it’s not very polite.’
I knew my gaze was one of an accuser, but I hoped I would see confusion in his face, or at least some sort of recognition at my anger; even the pleading eyes of a man who had just begged for my forgiveness. But there was nothing. His smirk faded and he shrugged his shoulders, setting off after Alex and Charlie who were already carving a path away from the brook.
I watched him go, the outline of a figure swathed in a black cloak pursuing him towards the hill. In the figure’s arms was the limp form of a half-naked girl, neck pierced and dripping blood.
Faintly, I saw a golden blur pass and I shook the image away, my eyes focusing to see Autumn Rose, flinging a cloak about her shoulders and hurrying to catch the others. Taking a deep breath I pushed the dead girl’s name from my mind and followed.
Please God, don’t let it be Kaspar.
* * *
With one last painful step I broke from the trees into the clearing that was Varns’ Point, which continued to grow to a shallow mound of earth topped with an enormous boulder. The ground was covered in heath and was damp with an early morning frost. It crunched beneath my feet, gradually retreating from the light as the sun rose. That light slid along the boulder, twice as high as it was wide, casting a long shadow. Grooves were chiselled along its side – just large enough to be hand or footholds.