Ash (The Underground Series Book 2)

by Melody Robinette

  When the bells rang again, Autumn opened the door hesitantly.

  “We would like to see you and—” Sheldon looked at his notes.

  “Kyndel Butler?” Autumn offered.

  “Yes,” Sheldon confirmed.

  Autumn sighed, though she had expected this. “Kyndel! We’re up!” she called over her shoulder, not even bothering to go back to the lake to get her. Kyndel approached the doors with a look of foreboding, her eyes still slightly swollen from the day before.

  Sheldon led them into a small cavern and closed the door, leaving them alone without any further explanations.

  “Wait!” Kyndel called at the stone door and then turned to Autumn. “Aren’t they going to ask us questions?”

  “I think this is more of an observation type of situation,” Autumn stated, sitting on a nearby rock.

  “What are they observing? Who dies of oxygen deficiency first?”

  “It’s no secret that you and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. They probably want to see how we’ll behave if we’re forced to be alone together in a room.”

  “Oh,” Kyndel said, frowning and sitting on a rock across the room from Autumn.

  They sat in silence for what felt like hours before Autumn finally spoke. “So, what did they question you about yesterday?”

  Kyndel’s eyes widened and then narrowed just as quickly. “None of your business, Princess.”

  Autumn shrugged indifferently. “Fine.”

  “Why do you care anyway?” Kyndel said after a while.

  “I don’t really,” Autumn admitted. “It’s just that some of the things Charlotte has said makes me think that maybe you’re hiding something from everyone.”

  Kyndel blushed a deep red. “What has she said?”

  “Well, when I first came to Arbor Falls, I asked why she would be friends with you because you two are so different. Like, nice-wise. Meaning, you’re not.” Kyndel glared at Autumn, which she ignored. “And she said that there was a lot about you that only she knows. Then yesterday Eden was saying something about you, and Charlotte said that Eden didn’t know what she was talking about.”

  Kyndel actually smiled a little at this. “Charlotte’s a good friend.”

  “Yeah… So, I guess you won’t be telling me what they questioned you about yesterday then?”

  Kyndel stopped smiling immediately and looked at the ground, shaking her head slowly back and forth. Autumn watched her for another minute and then gave up, looking around the room. She still didn’t understand how the vampires were watching them. There were no holes in the walls, no glass or windows or anything. Maybe they could see through walls or something. Maybe that was the real reason they wore those huge glasses. She wondered if they would tell her if she asked. Probably not.

  The sound of sniffling coming from across the room interrupted her musings. Looking up, Autumn saw Kyndel sobbing into her hands. Damn, Autumn thought. She probably shouldn’t have asked her about yesterday. She really hated seeing people cry, and even if it was someone she really disliked, she had trouble not comforting them. So, of course, Autumn moved across the room to sit beside her and awkwardly patted her on the back. Kyndel tried to say something, but all Autumn could make out was, “my fault.”

  “What’s your fault?”

  “Cera.”

  Autumn stopped patting her on the back. She should’ve known this was what Kyndel would be upset about. The truth was, Autumn felt like Cera’s death was her own fault as well. She and Kyndel had been bickering about Victor while Cera was being silently killed by the Shadows on Alder Island. It was hard not to think that if they hadn’t been so involved in fighting, they would’ve been able to stop the Shadows from killing Cera.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Kyndel. It was no one’s fault, except for maybe Vyra and Victor. They’re the ones responsible for all of this.”

  “If I would have just shut up and—” Kyndel took a shaky breath.

  “No,” Autumn said firmly, kneeling down in front of her so that they were face to face. She grabbed a hold of Kyndel’s shoulders and her red-rimmed tawny eyes met Autumn’s hazel ones. “You can’t do this to yourself, Kyndel. It’s no one’s fault, okay? Not yours. Not mine. We’re Warriors. Death is something that happens to us. It’s something that we just have to deal with.”

  “But—”

  “Stop,” Autumn said sternly. “Listen to me. You have to let this go, or it will eat at you for the rest of your life. Okay?”

  Wide-eyed, Kyndel nodded slowly. Autumn felt a sense of satisfaction at the fact that she had been able to break through to her.

  And that’s about the time Kyndel kissed her.

  More Secrets

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It took a full three seconds for Autumn’s brain to comprehend what was happening. One minute she was telling Kyndel to let go of her guilt and the next Kyndel was pressing her lips against hers. Pulling back, Autumn stared at her in shock. Kyndel slapped a hand over her mouth and looked at her with wide, watery eyes.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no,” she said, standing up so suddenly that Autumn fell backward onto the hard, stone floor. Her mouth was still hanging wide open as she watched Kyndel pace back and forth around the room.

  “Can we pretend that didn’t happen?” Kyndel said with desperation in her voice.

  “Uh…”

  “I mean, we can just go back to how we usually are, right? You know, like we did after that thing happened on Halloween with that Outsider guy? We can just act like this didn’t happen.”

  “I, uh, I just don’t—”

  “Please, Autumn, please,” Kyndel begged, her usual drawl saturated with desperation.

  Kyndel calling her by her actual name sort of brought Autumn back to reality. “I don’t understand,” she managed to say finally. Kyndel stopped pacing and groaned, sinking to the floor. Autumn watched her with a bemused expression. “Do you…like me or something?”

  Kyndel looked up at her suddenly. “I—I don’t know.”

  Autumn swallowed and looked at her blankly. She felt like her brain was about to explode. Had the vampires put them into a separate universe somehow, where everything was backward?

  “So, you like girls then?” Autumn asked, not knowing how to phrase it any other way.

  Kyndel blushed again and paused before nodding slowly. Autumn looked at her, thunderstruck. She knew she should probably make an effort to rearrange her features, but was unable to do so. It wasn’t that a girl liking another girl was particularly outrageous. Autumn had always been extremely open minded when it came to that subject in the Outside. But this was Kyndel Butler, a girl who always tried to be the picture of perfection and normalcy while making others feel bad about their idiosyncrasies.

  “Have you ever had a—I mean, have you ever been with a girl before?” Autumn asked.

  Kyndel’s eyes glistened with tears as she nodded again. “One.”

  “Who?” Autumn knew this was none of her business, but given her curious nature, couldn’t help herself. Kyndel looked at the ground, the tears spilling down her flushed cheeks and Autumn was suddenly stuck with what was now an obvious realization. “Cera?”

  Kyndel began sobbing again at this. Holy petalsies, Autumn thought. This was a lot of new information. She moved to sit beside Kyndel again, putting her arm around the sobbing blonde who leaned into her, still sobbing.

  Thinking back to when Cera was still alive, Autumn had always thought that she had hated Kyndel, and vice versa. They were always fighting and gave each other such a hard time around everyone else. Now it seemed so obvious that they were simply putting on a show. Neither of them had boyfriends, neither of them seemed to even have an interest in any of the guys. A wave of memories washed over Autumn that she hadn’t realized she had. Looks that Cera and Kyndel had shared, supposedly innocent brushes of their skin, Kyndel’s horrified expression, full of pain, as she’d laid eyes on Cera’s lifeless body.

  “I’m so sorry,” Autumn w
hispered, not sure if she was saying this because of what happened to Cera or because she wasn’t what Kyndel wanted her to be.

  “It wasn’t really all that serious with Cera,” Kyndel said, wiping her eyes. “She was just the only other girl that I knew of who was like me. We didn’t even really get along most of the time.”

  “I had no idea. I didn’t even know Cera was a—well, I didn’t know she liked girls.” Autumn wasn’t sure what sort of sexuality terms they used in the Underground.

  “I didn’t know either at first. But, after we made the Warriors, I kept putting things together. She didn’t ever have a boyfriend, she didn’t even seem interested in boys, and I would catch her looking at other girls sometimes. So I confronted her about it one day, and then I told her that I didn’t like boys either. And it sort of unraveled from there. We only saw each other at night, sneaking around, hiding our relationship.”

  Seemed like Kyndel and Autumn had more in common than she’d originally realized.

  “Who else knows?” Autumn asked.

  “Just Charlotte.”

  “You haven’t told your parents?”

  Kyndel snorted at this. “Yeah right. I don’t know what Outsiders think about this, but elves see it as completely against nature. They don’t understand it. My parents would probably disown me if they knew,” she said in a hollow voice.

  Autumn shook her head in disgust. “Unfortunately, some Outsiders are still like that too.”

  The two of them sat in silence for a long time before Kyndel stood and moved back to the rock on which she was sitting before. Autumn moved to the one across the room.

  “How come you kissed Luke if you don’t like guys?” Autumn asked after awhile.

  “I don’t know. He’s your twin, so—”

  Autumn felt her cheeks burn. “Oh.”

  “Guys are so rough. Trust me, I know. I’ve tried to force myself to be attracted to them,” Kyndel said, a hint of repugnance in her voice. “But being with Cera sort of solidified the fact that I’ll just never change. I had to just accept the fact that I would always like girls. Girls aren’t rough at all. They’re soft. Gentle.”

  Then there was silence. Autumn didn’t know how long they sat like this, side by side, both absorbed in their own thoughts, until finally Sheldon came to retrieve them. If he knew what had transpired between the two girls, he didn’t let on.

  Whoever was watching them sure got more than they had bargained for.

  Autumn and Kyndel entered the tree room with the unspoken agreement that they would continue on as they had before, though there was no going back in the confines of their minds. Kyndel had told Autumn her biggest secret and she fully intended on keeping it.

  “Did you claw each other’s eyes out?” Forrest called when they returned.

  “Nah,” Autumn said. “Just bickered about stupid things, as usual. Super fun.”

  Kyndel pretended to shoot her a look of extreme dislike. “Worst torture so far.”

  Autumn made a show of rolling her eyes at Kyndel. When she glanced at Charlotte, though, she saw that she had a strange look on her face, her eyes darted from Kyndel then to Autumn and back to Kyndel. Somehow she seemed to know something was awry because her eyes slowly widened. Autumn caught Kyndel shooting Charlotte a warning look.

  Forrest returned to lying on his back with his eyes closed. Charlotte moved away from everyone and nodded for Autumn to follow until they were out of earshot.

  “She told you didn’t she?” Charlotte whispered. Autumn nodded. “I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “How did you get that out of her?”

  Autumn decided not to tell her about the kissing part. She would leave that to Kyndel’s discretion. “She just…told me. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe the talk with the vampires yesterday made her feel like confessing to someone else. I’m not going to tell anyone, though.”

  “I know,” Charlotte said, as if this were obvious. “I’m just glad someone else knows now. I hate keeping secrets.”

  Tell me about it, Autumn thought. Kyndel’s secret was just one more on her long list of things she was keeping to herself.

  Kyndel watched Charlotte and Autumn move back towards the rest of the group with a suspicious expression, as did Avery, who had now joined Forrest and Kyndel near the edge of the shimmering lake.

  He flashed Autumn a questioning look as she sat beside him, but she pretended not to notice. “Are we the first ones back?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Forrest said. “Your session must really have been particularly boring. The others must actually be clawing each other’s eyes out.”

  Or Crystal and Ember, and Luke and Edric’s little observation sessions were proving to be a lot less productive than Kyndel and Autumn’s had been.

  Luke and Edric returned not long after, though, both looking slightly red-faced. They didn’t seem to like each other any more now than when they’d left. If anything, they had moved from extreme dislike to complete loathing.

  Luke stormed up to the group and sat beside Autumn in a huff.

  “Have fun?” she said.

  “If that little fairy boy comes within three feet of me I’m gonna yank that stupid blond hair right off his head.”

  Autumn stifled a laugh and said, “Why? What happened?”

  “He just kept making stupid remarks and said that I was jealous because of—” He stopped abruptly, realizing that he had been about to say Crystal. “Uh, anyway, he just kept mouthing off until I finally pushed him across the room. Then we sort of fought for a while. I kept trying to shoot lightning at him, but the bastard kept blocking it.”

  “Luke!” Autumn said in disbelief.

  “What? Don’t tell me you didn’t do the same thing with blondie over there,” he said, nodding towards Kyndel who turned beat red. She really needed to learn how to control that.

  “We didn’t fight physically,” Autumn said. “We just insulted each other back and forth for a while.”

  “Do you actually think I would waste my energy fighting someone like Little Miss Perfect over here?” Kyndel said, having now returned to her normal skin tone. Autumn shot her a not so forced glare.

  Crystal and Ember were the last to return from their observation session. They didn’t seem quite as angry, but they still looked like they hated each other. Autumn was surprised when Crystal came to sit with their group instead of with Edric. Luke looked beyond pleased with this and turned to flash Edric a smug look, which Edric fought off with a well-practiced glare, giving new meaning to the phrase “if looks could kill.”

  That night, as Autumn was turning back her bed, Crystal entered wearing a torn expression.

  “Listen,” she began. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you for trying to get Ember to open up. I know you were just trying to help her. Just because she and I don’t get along doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do what you feel is right.”

  Autumn gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Crys,” she said. “But I think you were right. I don’t have to try to help everyone. Some people don’t want help. Besides, I’ve got enough problems to deal with at the moment, I don’t need to keep adding to them.” After talking to Kyndel, Autumn had decided to put Ember on the backburner. She could only take one moody girl at a time.

  The bell at the entrance to the tree room rang early the next morning. Autumn and Luke ambled nervously to the door.

  “We need to see Eden and Lucian, please,” Sheldon said.

  “Couples,” Luke muttered to Autumn as they went to retrieve the two Tetras.

  “No kidding.”

  Not long after Eden and Lucian left, Jastin and Charlotte were called out, confirming their suspicions.

  When Sheldon arrived to take Crystal and Edric, Luke pretended not to pay any attention, but Autumn could tell by the way he was ripping handfuls of grass out of the ground that he wasn’t all that oblivious.

  At the next bell Autumn and Avery left the others to meet Sheldon at the door, seeing as
how they were the only remaining couple.

  “We need to see—” he glanced down at his board, “you two, actually. All right, follow me.”

  They made their way down the dark, narrow passageway in silence. Avery reached over and clasped Autumn’s hand tightly. Sheldon led them into a room similar to the one in which she was questioned the first time only now there was a pair of empty stone chairs rather than one. Two vampire researchers, one dark-headed and one fair, were waiting for them sporting the same thick glasses and pasty, white skin as the others.

  Autumn and Avery took a seat in the cold stone chairs facing the researchers.

  “I am Dexter and this is Simon,” the dark-headed vampire said.

  Autumn forced a smile. “Nice to meet you, I’m—”

  “We know who you are,” Simon said dismissively.

  “All right then.”

  For the first hour Autumn and Avery were asked to recount the beginning of their relationship. They told the vampires about their peculiar, magnetic connection and how they snuck around behind everyone backs. Autumn told them about her relationship with Victor and then about Olympus’s rules forbidding her and Luke to date castle workers.

  “And your relationship is still a secret?” Dexter asked as he marked something on his board.

  “In a sense,” Avery said. “All of the Warriors know about us, though.”

  “And the elf king?” Simon asked.

  Autumn shook her head. “He doesn’t know.”

  “When will you be telling him?” Dexter asked.

  “Once we graduate and I no longer work at Arbor Castle,” Avery stated. Autumn’s breath caught in her chest and she had to look at the ground. She still hadn’t figured out what she was going to do about Christopher Wellington.

  Dexter quirked an eyebrow. “Autumn?”

  She glanced up at him through her lashes, trying not to look too guilty. “Yes?”

  “Is something wrong?” he asked. It took everything she had not to glance over at Avery as she shook her head slowly.