Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel Read Free

sheet again, feeling my lips flatten. Drivel. It was drivel— albeit truthful drivel, but such a rant would earn me a detention, or at the very least a caution. Yet the lure of causing a stir remained, forcing me to slide it into a plastic envelope and place it into my schoolbag, ready for the first day of the new academic year.
    Returning to my mirror, I grabbed a brush and roughly pulled it through my thick hair, wincing as it tugged on the blond tangles. Deciding I could not be bothered with straightening it, I mumbled a few words and watched as it smoothed out. After running an eye pencil around my eyes, I grabbed my satchel and jumped the stairs in one, knowing I was verging on being late.
    “Mother! I’m flying to school, so you don’t need to drop me off at the ferry.”
    Hearing no answer, I rounded the corner into the kitchen, which turned out to be empty. I grabbed a freshly made piece of toast and stuffed it into my mouth.
    “Mother!” I attempted to yell, the sound muffled by my stolen breakfast.
    The call of “Living room!” came back and, hurrying into the hall, I pushed the door open to see her curled up on the divan with her laptop, busy typing away. I frowned at the figures and symbols spread across the screen.
    “I’m flying to school.”
    She sighed, placing her laptop aside and standing up to peck me on the cheek. Noticing my expression, she shut the lid on the laptop. “It’s a work assignment. Speaking of my job, you know you’ll be home alone for most of the week while your father and I are working in London, don’t you? So no wild parties. Understood?”
    I sighed in exasperation, a habit I had around my mother. “It would be fruitless to plan a party. Nobody would come.”
    “Hmm,” she hummed, casting a cynical eye over me. “Be good, either way. I’ll probably be gone before you get back, but there is plenty of food in the freezer and I’ve left some pizzas and some meat stuff in case you want any of the girls around, okay? You shouldn’t need to go shopping; we’ll be home on Thursday. Autumn, are you even listening?”
    Busy creating a spell to transport my satchel to school, I clearly wasn’t. “I’m positive I can survive for four days. It’s not as though you haven’t been away before.”
    My satchel disappeared into thin air and I retreated into the hallway, grabbing my scabbard off the rack, feeling the familiar weight of my sword balanced on my left hip as I fastened it on. I wouldn’t normally take it, or the knife that joined it, but this was the first day of the term: I might as well keep up appearances and make an impression on the new students. Tugging on my blouse and rolling my skirt up a couple of inches, I slipped my flimsy little dolly shoes on, teasing a strand of hair back into place.
    “Oh, Autumn, I don’t know why you do all of that,” my mother said, peering into the hallway after me. “You’re beautiful without all that makeup and when you let your hair curl you look just like your grandmother.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and rubbed them in circles. I shrugged them off.
    I’m a match in the darkness compared to her beacon of elegance and decorum. Strike me and I’d struggle to even fizzle; she would burn for hours.
    “It’s what all the other girls do, so don’t fuss.”
    She backed off. “You know you don’t have to wear makeup and short skirts to fit in, Autumn. Just be yourself and they’ll accept you.”
    I scoffed then, ignoring the mirror because I knew it would reflect the scars that encased the entire right side of my body. Twisting and turning beneath my tights, they were a bright red, tapering to burgundy along the tips. Like the blood grass in the garden, my grandmother always said. Imperata cylindrica. Learn your Latin. They faded to ochre and yellow on my arms, before lapsing into pale gold across my face.
    “Except being myself is being a Sage, and no one around here likes a Sage.”
    Rolling my skirt up even