Autumn Rose

A chill passed up my spine at the disturbed silence. I knew there were many things they didn’t know. I knew that beyond how hot the nobility was, and who was dating who, there was no interest in my people. Yet to not know what the treaties were …

Mr. Sylaiea answered his own question. ‘The Terra is the name given to a group of treaties signed universally by all dimensions and humanity in the early nineteenth century, formalising what had previously been a set of uncoordinated laws. The Terra Treaties are the reason Autumn and Fallon are sitting in this room as guardians, here to protect the school. The Terra Treaties are what binds a dark-being, under penalty of death, to never harm a human unless lives are threatened, with the exemption of the vampires – who wouldn’t be able to survive without this exception. The Terra Treaties are what essentially keep the peace that you enjoy.’

Nobody spoke. It was not a stunned silence; the quiet of a class in awe. It was bored silence. This was not achievement to them, or reassurance, it was politics: boring, mind-numbing politics that – beyond the hot prince – did not touch upon their closeted lives. I shivered at those words; I could still remember the whispered utterance that came with their mention in the classes at St. Sapphire’s, the pride that our race had negotiated stability for all dark-beings. The treaties did not bring stability now. They didn’t bring anything.

‘They won’t hold us in peace much longer, will they?’ I said before I could hold my tongue. But I decided I wanted to continue. Why lull in a false sense of safety? ‘Humans are in conflict with dark-beings everywhere. And situations like what has happened with Violet Lee only make things worse! Meanwhile, enemies of us all take advantage of the conflict to try and make the Terra fall apart, and cause war … enemies I am trying to protect you from,’ I finished quietly, eyes bowed to my book.

The class finally broke their silence and erupted into murmurs, followed by protests about how it wasn’t the humans’ fault. Mr. Sylaeia’s eyes widened and it didn’t matter how much he rapped on the board, the room wouldn’t quieten.

I buried my head in my hands and dug my nails into my scalp. Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut?! Now everybody would think I hated them, and they hated me enough already …

I didn’t even notice the prince had stood up until I heard his voice over the hushing room.

‘Autumn is right. The Terra won’t last much longer. The world has changed, and we don’t see eye-to-eye anymore. It could lead to war. But it won’t. Fate won’t let it get that far. What do you think the Prophecy of the Heroines is for?’

I pushed down so hard on the desk to stand up that the table moved with a groan and my chair nearly toppled over. I felt silly standing but it was an old ritual from my Sagean school, and sitting made me feel small compared to the prince. ‘And how can a few dark-beings rebuild the Terra and stop a war? What if they don’t appear in time? What if they fail?’

‘They won’t,’ he insisted, and for the first time I actually met his gaze. His forehead was set in a single line of frustration and I could feel my magic beginning to warm up my veins with anger.

‘No Heroines have appeared yet. If the vampires killed Violet Lee tomorrow, there would be no stopping a war. What happens there affects us all!’

I waited, holding my breath and almost hoping he would try and deny my logic. I knew I was right, I had seen the threat with my own eyes: the hate of the humans, the Extermino … and Violet Lee, the peculiar girl I couldn’t get out of my dreams.

‘You’re wrong—’

It was still early enough in the term for the coming of the bell to be something of a shock: as the shrill, uneven wail cut through the quiet, everybody jumped.

I packed up my things as quickly as I could and rounded the end of the horseshoe, wishing my feet would move a little faster so that I could get out before the prince finished what he had to say. All the courage that I had possessed when angry had fled, just like I was fleeing outside.

‘Autumn!’

Turn for Pete’s sake! I could feel him closing in on me, the rest of the class not far behind, never breaking from their packs.

‘Duchess!’

Then came the call that stopped me, that turned me on the spot. It was a call that summoned from the unnatural earth roots that held me in place, prisoner to hear what I knew was coming.

‘Why do you keep calling her duchess?’ It was an innocent question. Tee, joining her cousin in the ranks of the class, could not have known how much I had dreaded that very question and prayed in the last twenty-four hours that nobody would notice how the prince addressed me.

I pleaded with my lips, mouthing no, no, over and over, but when he turned to look at the younger girl and back at me, I could see in his bright cobalt eyes – they always said you could mark noble blood by the eyes – that he would not oblige.

‘Don’t you know? She is the duchess of England.’

I did not wait to hear the gasps, or the questions, because I could not bear to hear them. Instead, I turned and walked six measured paces, then took to the air.

Remember who you will one day be, child!

I do not want to think of that day, Grandmother. I do not want to think of it.

Why do that? Why be so wilfully cruel? Why deny me my choice like that? At least I could run. If it had not been the end of the day I wouldn’t have been able to escape his revelation like this. Escape him.

Though the sun created a patchwork of light and shadows below me on the town, the air was cold. The wind from the sea was caught in the jaws of the concave river mouth, funnelled along the increasingly narrow valley, stirring the masts of a tall ship moored on the Dartmouth embankment. The rigging made a soft chime that the wind carried with it, an underlying melody to the beating of water that the old paddle ferry produced and the shrill whistle of the steam train weaving along the embankment towards Kingswear. It was a small village, standing in proud opposition to Dartmouth on the other side of the river, its multi-coloured cottages rising in uneven terraces much like the larger houses of the larger town did. Over bridges, past creeks and below the village school, where the old-fashioned bell tolled to announce the end of the day, the train passed, eventually coming to a halt beside the smaller, lower ferry.

It was a world perfectly preserved, continuing on in its own isolated sphere, relying on its unquestionable beauty to bring in the tourists. Yet its isolation was why I suffered.

Finally, as time in my angst seemed to move much slower, I reached the other side of the river, the trees lining its bank broken and falling into the silt. It was a pity that the leaves had fallen so early – it was barely Septembe; empty bottles, sandwich papers and silk handkerchiefs testimony to the summer nights whose mark had not yet been erased. But that was what they got for perching on the riverbank. They were rotting. They were dying.

Why? Why did you have to tell them when I asked you not to? What have you achieved by doing that?

There was a brief respite in the chill as I moved away from the sea, only for the cold to be replaced with fog as the tower of the church near my house came into view and with it the harbour a little further on and the salty suspension that the sea mist carried inland.

I still couldn’t comprehend everything that had happened that day. It felt as though the events since that morning had occurred over several days, and were still no more than skin-deep. Yet my body hadn’t failed to note the pricking and inside, I felt oddly numb – my mind’s way of protecting itself, I supposed.

I glanced at the clock on the church tower, surprised at how long it had taken me to get home. Time just didn’t seem to move in a constant way anymore.

Inside, the blinking light of my laptop lured me in as I placed a cup of tea on the desk and checked my emails. Sure enough, Jo had returned a sprawling epic that required much scrolling. Despite her confused lineage – French-Canadian and German, now serving as a guardian at a boarding school in Switzerland – her English was word perfect, something eight years at St. Sapphire’s had given her.

The first three paragraphs were dedicated to gushing about how hot the prince was, and how I should feel lucky to be bestowed the chance to be so intimate with him. The rest added up to a warning: what I suspected of him and his family was not a light accusation and that I should tread carefully. She ended with her own theory as to why he was here, which I dismissed immediately, blushing.

I leant back in my chair, unsure of how to reply. I contemplated telling her about losing it that morning, but decided against it, not wanting to provide any opportunities for rumours. There was no point telling her about what the prince had revealed: she didn’t know I hid – had hidden – my title.

Pushing away from the desk I collapsed onto the cushioned window seat. Through the window, I could see the maple tree in the garden, the nearest branch just a foot or two from my window – when I was a child, reluctantly returning home from school for the weekend, I would often seek solace in the crux of its branches, where the trunk would divide into four and form a neat little seat, perfect to fold into. It was my own palace of leaves, decorated with pinned flowers, plucked from the garden, or dream-catchers, which I would make endlessly at the desk where the laptop now sat – some of the frail structures had survived, and were now dangling from the eaves of the window, minus the feathers. They had become rotten and mildewed, and my mother had removed them. When I had collected more gulls’ feathers to replace them, she had taken those too.

I knew I couldn’t face school the next day. I couldn’t face the questions on top of the already mounting dread I had at the prospect of detention on Thursday. Besides, a day would act as a sort of buffer against the shock: the buzz about my title would have died down a bit by Thursday. Let the prince deal with the questions, I thought. Let him sort out what he caused.

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_9ca8e062-eddf-5fbf-81ee-329d0c406b13)

Autumn (#ulink_9ca8e062-eddf-5fbf-81ee-329d0c406b13)

‘Autumn, why didn’t you tell us?’

‘You never asked.’

‘That’s not the point. You’re the duchess of England, and we never knew. I mean, that makes you the highest ranking nobility in the country. Right below royalty. Er, hello?’ Gwen snapped.

‘I thought that title died with that woman, a couple of years back. There was something about a state funeral on the news, remember?’

I shot Tammy a look, and comprehension slowly dawned on her face.

‘Oh my God, that was your grandmother, wasn’t it? And what, the title skipped your dad? How come?’

‘Human.’

I was wrong about the buzz dying down. If anything, my absence had escalated the hype. The questions didn’t stop all day, and when they did it was only because I made an escape to the bathroom, or the prince was around. Then, the questions would be aimed at him. They could extract more from him considering I was letting little out.

Thankfully, the day passed quickly. I even managed to avoid speaking to the prince for the entire length of our English literature lesson. He didn’t try to start anything resembling conversation.

Five o’clock had long passed before I got out of textiles and I suspected it was going to be a long evening. In contrast to the GCSE essay that had earned me the detention, the A level English work was long and laborious. It didn’t help that the prince hadn’t read the play or any of the set poems, so I had to explain everything he was copying out. From his desk, Mr. Sylaeia would occasionally look up until eventually, as the hands of the clock shot past seven and towards half past, he announced that we could leave.