UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Autumn
“Fallon! This is the Prophecy! The one we have all longed for! This is what could put it all right! Why are you not happy?” I demanded.
His mind was full of its usual blue skies, but every single box had been locked down, and I was greeted with the equivalent of a mental shrug.
“ ‘They’? That must mean your family, surely? They are going to find the first Heroine! Have you not heard anything?”
He was out of my line of sight as he fussed over his horse: a young, lean black mare he affectionately called Black Beauty. As she bucked her head and tossed her mane, I heard a scoff.
“I would never be trusted with that kind of knowledge, I’m too young, you know that, Autumn.”
“I hope it wasn’t just a dream of Violet Lee’s. I hope it was real.”
“You’ll find out soon enough. My aunt went straight to Father.”
I finished saddling the horse I always borrowed—a dappled gray mare called Infanta—and let her drink as I picked up my riding gloves and weaved through the stalls until I found the prince. Gloves on, I lightly and nervously gripped the stall edge.
“About last night . . .”
He pulled his own gloves on and met my eyes. He sighed. “I told you. I’ll wait.”
“But is it enough?”
He came forward and placed a gloved hand against my cheek. I closed my eyes, briefly, and let the velvet warm my wind-battered face. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. With that, he took the reins of his horse and led her out of the privacy of the stables, to where our friends were waiting.
Between Jo, Alfie, and Lisbeth, all the humans who didn’t ride or didn’t have the confidence to take Alfie’s crash course in horses had found riders to chaperone them, and tiny, petite Tee was going to ride with me. Once I had settled in my saddle, Fallon hoisted her up, barely needing the strength of his second arm, she was so small. A few soft words in Sagean to reassure Infanta, and I quickly urged her into a trot toward the northern gate to the estate. The Athan, ever-present, ran on and disappeared ahead of us.
My grandmother had always told me to watch the way a man treated his animals. If he was kind to them, he was a good man, by her reckoning. And as I threw my hair over my shoulder to look back and watch the prince, I could see the tension of the stables melt away into the ground, and a small smile spread across his face as he rubbed his mare’s neck. He eased her into a canter and began to catch up with us.
The air buzzed, and the hairs on my arm, even below my thick riding coat, stood on end. We were approaching the perimeter shield. Tee shuddered below me.
“You can feel that?” I murmured in her ear, which was level with my shoulder. She nodded. I frowned. I had no idea humans could detect magic like that.
If the weather held up, we had planned to take our guests—my friends, Jo, and a couple of Fallon’s classmates from the sixth form—out riding on the high moor, where the views were stunning and we could escape the anguish my latest vision had brought up. And so it was with the intention of a peaceful afternoon that Fallon led the way out of the estate, through the shield and onto the bridle paths that weaved deep into the valleys between the tors. It was a scrubland; another planet, with a dull palette of gray granite and withered, muted greens and browns. The streams ran in troughs and leaked out between the toadstool-tufts of elephant grass, and the air smelled of rot. I stayed ahead of the others with Fallon, keen to reach the higher, fresher ground.
We climbed until we reached a high, flat plain walled in on one side by cliffs that sheltered a natural pool called Crazy Well, which we often rode out to. The water was almost black, the pond was so deep, and it lapped at the muddy banks in tiny waves pushed by the strong wind. As soon as it came into sight, I dismounted and led Infanta on foot as Tee gripped the reigns like her life depended on it. The water comforted the animal; she distrusted the moorland and refused to even enter the deepest gulley. I shuddered. I didn’t like it, either.
We let the horses drink and my human friends, floating on a cloud thousands of feet above our heads, splashed one another with muddy water in spite of the bitter wind that skimmed the higher slopes and soared over our heads and down again. I would have happily joined them if it wasn’t for Fallon’s and Alfie’s countenances. The ride had helped, but they still looked like the sky had sunk onto their shoulders, and I gulped, confused but guilty as the harbinger of more news.
But this is good, isn’t it? I could understand their concern over Lee gaining his excuse, but what was that, what was that, compared to the enormity, the power, of a Heroine? A Heroine I had heard discussed in my visions! The greatest seers would have known long before me—hence the rumors that had been flying around for months—but I still knew I had experienced a great privilege. For the first time I could see the personal benefit of being a seer.
Lisbeth was worried about her boyfriend, and suggested the party make a move. Infanta was anxious; she tossed her head, and backed from the group as we mounted. Tee was apprehensive about getting back on, and while I knew I could calm my adopted horse, I didn’t want to frighten the younger girl and so offered to stay behind and let them both ease up. Edmund agreed.
Tee sat down on a rock, and I worked on calming Infanta down. Nothing I did—stroking, sugar cubes, muttering in Sagean—worked. She could not be moved. I glanced back for Edmund, beginning to feel my own anxiety levels rise. I was good with animals, and she was well trained. But Edmund wasn’t there. He was up on the cliff top, gazing across plains I couldn’t see. Before I could enter his mind, he had entered mine.
“Autumn, block-hex mists! Go!”
Infanta whined, and I hurried to tell her to go, because I didn’t dare ride her. She took off in a panic—she would find her way back. Tee had jumped up and was leaning forward, ready to run, though she could have no idea what was going on. I grabbed her wrist and took off at a sprint, hoping to buy us a few seconds in which I could calculate whether Tee was light enough for me to lift so we could fly. Glancing back, I realized we had no hope.
It wasn’t a mist. It was a fog bank, rising as high as the ash sky, a wall of gray and water. Edmund had been joined by Alya and Richard, and all three were casting, repelling it with a wall of fire. But it seemed to just spread wider.
Tee had frozen, mouth parted in a silent scream of terror.
“Autumn, leave the girl and get out of here!”
But I couldn’t leave Tee, and I yanked her off the path and into the mossy trails between the gorse, heading away from, rather than along, the edge of the hex. I could hear Edmund shouting and glancing back again; I realized the entire fog bank had buckled into a bow shape, totally avoiding the Athan and instead extending in a claw toward us. I set fire to the gorse we ran past but it was to no avail: this was magic beyond even the Athan.
The path suddenly dropped away from below our feet and we were plunged into peat and mud. With that, we were immersed in the silent terror.
“Tee,” I whispered, struggling to stand with mud-covered boots. “Keep hold of my hand and stay quiet.” Once I was upright, I helped her stand and pulled her back to my chest, wrapping both arms around her shoulders with a hand in hers. The human slayers had not fared well in this hex. Neither would Tee.
Edmund had taught me a couple of discreet spells for just this situation. One by one, tiny flecks of light, like fireflies, blinked into existence in a circle around us. I could barely see them, but it was enough to keep the hex away from our faces so we could breathe; light, even in its most minute form, was safety.
And there we stayed, waiting to be saved, or found . . . found by whatever was hiding in the gray landscape.
The only sound was of our breathing. None of the hex reached our lungs, but the total, utter silence was enough to send an
ybody mad . . .
“A Katerina circle. Advanced stuff.”
Keeping Tee behind me, I whirled around. “Nathan?”
The Kater lights around us burned brighter until they resembled tea lights, and the Extermino who had once been human stood outside them, unable to move closer.
“What do you want? Who are you with?”
He looked remarkably well and at ease, given the fact that he had turned just weeks before. His hands were in his pockets and his scars were smooth and gleamed, though they were an awful color. Even his clothes were kempt: his pants and shirt were pressed, and his corduroy jacket looked expensive.
“I’m here to speak to you, my lady, and I came alone for that purpose. But I suppose I can put up with your little friend.”
His accent was less thick and his enunciation had improved; not only that but he pitched forward in a fanciful bow that verged on mocking.
The spell that I released the moment his eyes looked toward the ground did nothing. It was absorbed by a shield pulled in tight to his body, and he stood up straight again, smirking.
“Play nicely, duchess. We’re friends.”
“We’re not friends. We never were.” I took a discreet step back, cursing the shards of slate that cracked beneath our feet, wishing we were still in the lowlands with the mud. “Who are you with?” I demanded again.
“As I said, I’m alone.”
“No, you’re not. Nobody could create a hex as powerful as this alone.” I was buying us time, talking my way through the seconds until the Athan found us.
“I can, and more. chri’dom is an exceptional mentor.”
He flattened his hair, still very curly but folded back away from his forehead now to reveal the scars that were oddly blue in color, more gunmetal than pure gray. They were extremely thin and twisting; perhaps even more curled than my own. He was everything I did not expect from a turned human: healthy, powerful, calm, handsome.
“So you’re his puppet now.”
“His protégé.”
“Is that the lie they used to convince you to turn?”
“You are such an opinionated girl. You should learn not to be. I gave my full and informed consent to turn, completely aware of the risks and the manifesto of the Extermino. So save your preaching for the corruption of your court.”
He tried to look me straight in the eye as he spoke, but I refused to meet his gaze. “The Extermino don’t have a manifesto. They just kill people. You saw that in Brixham! You saw how they killed—”
I faltered over my words as he threw his head back to laugh and opened his mouth wide so I could see the fleshy, ribbed roof and the set of teeth that had miraculously straightened. “Of course I saw it. It was for my benefit.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was a test. chri’dom wanted to see if I could handle death, and if I was loyal enough to him that I would be prepared to make you feel awful over it all.”
Tee let out a wail more animal than human, and I wrapped an arm around my back, letting her take my hand.
“You mean . . . you were allied with them that early?” I searched the ground for answers until it hit me. “Iceland?”
He nodded and clapped his hands. “Well done, it took you a while. I agreed to turn while visiting . . . and that’s why I came. To tell you why I did it.”
Impatient, I waved my other hand for him to continue. He came all the way from Iceland to tell me this? I didn’t know whether to be reassured or to resist the false security he might be luring me into. “Just say what you have to say and go, Nathan.”
“I turned because the Extermino do have a manifesto, a good one—”
I scoffed.
“A manifesto and an agenda that could help people like you, Autumn. It could help ease the relations with humans so others like you don’t have to suffer hate and discrimination at the hands of people like Valerie Danvers and her.” He pointed at Tee.
“Tee and I are friends, she has never done anything—”
“And I appreciate your precious Athenea trust in fate and prophecy to solve things, but what is going to happen is unnatural. You shouldn’t have to suffer as you’re going to. There are other ways of achieving the same goal.”
The Kater lights winked on and off as the magic in my veins surged in anger and frustration. “This is stupid! They’re using you to get to me and to the Athenea; the only person unnatural in this whole equation is chri’dom! He’s a nutcase!”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll be interested to see if you think the same after you come to us and meet him.”
“I will never join the Extermino!”
He came forward and touched the nearest Kater light with the tip of his middle finger. It went out. “And what’s more, you will come of your own free will. It’s a waiting game, Autumn. And we will wait however long it takes, which I suspect won’t be long.”
He touched another and another and I began backing away fast—how could he have the power to extinguish a Katerina circle? He’s like a newborn child! I took deep breaths, gulping down clean air and storing it for the madness I knew was coming.
“You will have the blood of the dead on your hands, Autumn Rose, and they will only become more stained. How long do you think your conscience could last? A year? Two years? Because we can make it stop.”
“You’re crazy, Nathan!”
“Tell me I’m crazy in a month.”
And he was gone, and the air exploded like fireworks into flames. Tee screamed and I spun and wrapped her up, hoping and praying the Katerina circle had left a big enough cushion of air to protect us. It was hot; really hot, and the mud on our clothes caked and fell away as earthenware shards while sweat dripped down my face and into Tee’s hair. I don’t know how long we were in that fire . . . it felt like minutes but must only have been seconds, because when the fire died we emerged unburned, gasping for air but unharmed. I had never been so glad to see the barren moor.
I heard shouts of my name and reached out with my mind until I found Edmund and Fallon, then guided them toward the ditch we were in. Fallon reached us first and went to pull me into his arms, but I pushed Tee into them; feeling how weak she was, he picked her up and carried her over the crest of the hollow. I followed.
There were Athan everywhere—maybe twenty of them—and the group was a little way up the path from the pond.
“It was Nathan,” I told Edmund as he ran up to us. “He said he was alone.”
“He’s not,” he corrected, eyeing me over for injury then turning his attention to Tee. “She’s going into shock.”
He guided us back to the group and wrapped Tee up in his jacket as Tammy rushed to sob over her cousin. “We need to get her back. Autumn and the princes, too. We’ll fly.”
“Can’t we dimension-hop?” I offered, concerned about how fast Tee was deteriorating. She was shuddering so violently she needed Tammy’s help to just stand.
“Burrator is on lockdown,” Alya said, trying to take Tee from her cousin, who held on to her like the younger girl was her last possession.
“We’re taking Lisbeth, too!” Alfie protested, getting off his horse and taking the reins of the one his girlfriend sat astride.
Edmund snapped around to confront the prince. “She’s not the one they’re after. She’s safe.”
“We don’t know what’s out there!” Alfie said, voice rising as he gestured wildly to the moor beyond the circle of Athan. “I’m staying with her.”
“Then you will jeopardize her safety and that of the humans!” Edmund snapped, grabbing Alfie’s arm and jerking him away from the horses.
Lisbeth’s horse reared a little, and Alfie hissed, but he was no match for Edmund’s strength.
“Al, he’s right. I don’t fly as fast as you; I’ll slow you down. If we stay together we put other people in danger. Go. I’ll look after the others,” Lisbeth agreed.
Five of the Athan suddenly set off at a bolt; the rest pulled their circle in, closer
to us. Richard and Alya, Tee in her arms, stood at the ready.
“Fly fast and low,” Edmund instructed, a hand still tightly fastened around Alfie’s arm as the prince put up one last fight. “Follow the contours of the land. We’re less likely to be spotted that way.”
I quickly passed Lisbeth and found Jo, hoping my eyes could convey how sorry I felt for putting her in such danger. Unknown danger. A danger we could only define as being created by madmen.
She put on a brave face and reached down for my hand. I gave it to her and she squeezed.
“Ride like a Valkyrie, rafiki,” I said, drawing a smile by using her old school nickname.
“And you fly like the wind,” she replied.
With that, I threw myself forward rather than up and flew in a close group beside Fallon, Alfie, and Alya carrying Tee, surrounded by Athan. Edmund had not been joking when he told us to fly low; we were no more than a meter off the ground, and when it rose in a mound so abruptly that I didn’t have time to adjust my course, my feet would dip into wet moss and grass. The wind rushed in at every opening in my coat, even through the buttonholes, and the sweat that had collected as a layer between skin and clothes in the fire turned icy. My magic, torn between flying faster than I ever had before and keeping me warm, was draining like I was slurping it through a straw.
And then there was the sense that, just beyond the ridges of the valleys and shallow tors we sped past, something was waiting. Though I knew a group of Athan had plowed on ahead to check our path, I still expected to collide with a waiting Nathan every time we dipped below the horizon.
But there was no Nathan, and no Extermino; they might as well have never been there, for all the life we encountered as we flew back to Burrator. Just as I began to see stars dance in my vision, we shot through the first set of double gates into the estate, and my feet were back on firm ground.
Edmund looked positively relieved at our safety, but quickly recovered. “Shut the gates!” he roared once we were back in the main estate. But the guards didn’t need telling. We were locked in.