Ash (The Underground Series Book 2)

by Melody Robinette

  When Autumn and Luke had climbed off their pegasi, Olympus moved forward and wrapped the two of them into a tight hug.

  “You’ve done beautifully, children,” he said.

  “No, we haven’t,” Luke muttered. “We ruined everything.”

  “It may seem like that now, but this may very well be just what the Underground needs.”

  Autumn’s eyebrows met. “A war?”

  “A reason to come together,” Olympus said with a wink.

  “Uh, I don’t think—” Luke began.

  “All right,” Olympus boomed, causing quite a few warlocks to jump. “Welcome, Samuel and warlock friends, to Arbor Falls. I have made arrangements with many of the elf families for you to stay in their homes.”

  “Wonder what he had to bribe them with to get them to agree with that,” Luke said to Autumn under his breath.

  “Samuel, old friend,” Olympus continued, shaking the chief warlock’s hand. “You, your family, and your workers will stay in Arbor Castle.”

  “Thank you, Olympus,” Sam said, sounding genuinely grateful. “We cannot tell you how much your hospitality means to all of us.”

  “The elves and warlocks are in this together,” Olympus stated. “We will do what it takes to protect us all. Our races should not have to pay for the actions of one elf and one warlock.”

  Autumn glanced at Rion, who was scowling at the ground with a clenched jaw.

  “Warriors,” Olympus said. “I cannot thank you enough for your efforts in the war against Victor and Vyra Vaun. I suspect you will soon see that they were not futile.”

  A couple of Warriors exchanged doubtful glances at this.

  “Lucian, a word,” Gregorius Dodge said, waving their self-appointed leader over.

  Autumn scanned the packed training field. Warlocks were huddled together in groups, families—Autumn guessed—looking wary and worried. She felt a twinge of sympathy for them. Until the Warriors showed up, many of them had never even seen an elf before. Now they were being forced to relocate to elf territory, live with elf families, and fight with elf Warriors. Maybe Olympus was right, though.

  Maybe what the Underground needed to finally come together…was a war.

  Butterfly Away

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The rest of the day was spent in organized chaos. The warlocks aided the elves with various types of Shielding Powers setting up wards around Arbor Falls, which had to be temporarily lifted as more and more elves and warlocks from around the Underground streamed into the elf town. To Luke and Autumn’s horror—and also Avery and Crystal’s—this included Christopher and Christine Wellington. And, of course, they would both be staying in Arbor Castle with the rest of the elf and warlock leaders. That was just…awesome.

  To the joy of the naïve young elves of Arbor Falls, school had been postponed indefinitely. Autumn was beginning to wonder if the fourth quarter elves would ever go back, which didn’t really bother her all that much. She was already doing the job that she would hopefully be doing for the next several years, not to mention becoming Queen, which wasn’t a subject offered at their school.

  Once everyone had arrived, the warlocks and visiting elves were shown to the homes in which they would be staying. The Warriors were dismissed for the afternoon to eat, rest, and clean up—something they were all in dire need of at the moment.

  Autumn didn’t know about any of the others, but a shower was her first priority. As the water cascaded down her body in rivulets she let out a sigh of relief. A girl was not meant to go this long without being completely clean. She spent a good thirty minutes washing all of the grime out of her hair and scrubbing down every last inch of her body.

  As she toweled herself down, she glanced in the floor length mirror and noticed that she had lost weight. Her hipbones were more prominent and she could almost see the outline of her ribs. She stifled a groan when she had to put a clean set of Warrior clothes back on. She was getting a little sick of wearing the same thing every day. She wondered if she could talk Crystal into making a couple of different styles for the Warriors to wear, though she doubted Gregorius Dodge would go for that.

  The Warriors had been asked to meet back on the training grounds after dinner to help train any warlock or elf over the age of fifteen that wanted to help fight. Autumn personally thought fifteen was too young to be fighting, but she didn’t exactly have a say in the matter.

  It took her another ten minutes to brush out her tangled auburn curls. She was surprised she had any hair left afterward. As she brushed out the last knot she heard a thump resonate from her balcony and turned to see Avery leaning back against the railing watching her through the open doors with those stormy gray eyes. They seemed darker somehow.

  Autumn tossed her brush aside and moved out into the bright spring sunlight, Avery never moving his eyes off of her.

  “How’s your mom?” she asked tentatively, not really sure why she was suddenly feeling shy around him.

  If it was possible, his eyes darkened even more. “She’s…” It looked like he was searching for something to say, a way to make his words sound better, but then sighed and shook his head morosely. “She’s worse.”

  “Worse?”

  He nodded. “She’s thinner than ever, and right when I came in she started up her screaming for my sister and my dad.”

  He ran his hands through his golden hair, a habit that Autumn normally found cute under other circumstances. It was longer than she’d ever seen it, falling into his eyes.

  She took his hand in hers and brushed her fingers across his palm, it was rough and warm. Avery watched her with the same heartbreaking expression.

  “I wish I could do something to make your world okay, to make it perfect like you deserve it to be.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “You are my world, Autumn. And you are perfect.”

  “I’m far from perfect, Avery.” She’d made so many mistakes, kept so many secrets from him. She was still keeping the biggest one—that Victor killed his sister. How could she tell him that now, though? But she might not get another chance for a while. “Avery, I have to—”

  “I know, I know. We’re back to pretending we aren’t together, sneaking around, all that. I’ll leave before Mr. Wellington sees me up here.”

  Autumn opened her mouth to protest and then sighed, deciding she should just wait until some other time. “All right.”

  Avery stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “See you at dinner.”

  AVERY jumped easily up to his branch with cat-like agility, leaving Autumn behind to stare after him. The smile he had forced upon his face on her balcony immediately fell away. The idea of having to go back to pretending with her, pretending they were just friends—just Warrior partners—pretending he didn’t feel like a piece of him was being torn away every time he had to leave her side, it killed him.

  Add all that to having to watch yet another man try to win Autumn’s heart. If it was possible, Christopher Wellington was even worse than Victor Vaun. At least Victor knew he wasn’t good enough for her. This Wellington guy thought she should consider herself lucky to be with someone like him. It was enough to make Avery shake with rage.

  He turned to peer over the balcony down at her. She was still there, leaning forward against the railing looking out at the forest beyond. Her silky auburn curls, only half dry, were blown behind her by a small gust of wind and she closed her eyes. He wished he knew what she was thinking at times like this. Sometimes she got this faraway look in her eyes like she was seeing something that wasn’t right in front of her. Like she was looking into the past or the future or somewhere far from where she actually was. He just waited for her to come back to him at times like that as he counted the colors in her hazel eyes, streaks of green, specks of gold, rings of brown. He wondered if she knew just how beautiful she really was, inside and out. Would she be with him if she did?

  He’d never really bothered with dating before she’d come
around. He’d thought it was a waste of time when he could be training to become a Warrior or working at the castle to support his mother. Besides, most of the girls his age annoyed the hell out of him with their constant squealing and whispering and carrying on. When Autumn arrived at the castle all those months ago he figured she would be the same—worse even—because she was half human and royalty, but she had immediately surprised him, and she’d been surprising him ever since. Just when he thought he knew what she would say or do, she threw him for a loop and did the opposite.

  What had he done to deserve her?

  He watched as a multicolored butterfly fluttered around her head like a living halo. She didn’t notice because her eyes were still closed. The butterfly landed on the back of her hand, resting on the balcony railing. Her eyes opened, looking down at the delicate insect, and her face broke out into a smile.

  “Hello there,” she murmured. “Better fly away from here. It’s not safe right now.”

  As if the butterfly understood her, it immediately fluttered away. Autumn watched it go with a look of wonder and Avery felt his heart clench. He wished he could tell her to fly away too, until the danger passed, but she was a Warrior, and Warriors always walked deliberately into the heart of danger.

  Revelation

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Okay, everyone,” Atticus called into the sea of warlocks, elves, and Warriors filling the training field. “We’ve received word that the other Underground creatures have learned of our current location and are already on the move. We are being slowly surrounded. Now, thanks to the warlocks, the wards will keep them at bay for a while, but they will eventually find a way to break through. When this happens we will have to be ready.”

  There was a murmur of assent from everyone and Atticus jumped into action, splitting everybody up into groups led by pairs of Warriors. The Quinns were assigned to the youngest of the fighters. Autumn and Avery led a group of fifteen young warlocks and elves, all around the age of fifteen or sixteen. Some of them looked so small to Autumn, though she was barely three years older than them.

  The warlocks and elves seemed extremely wary of each other. They stood at least three feet apart in two segregated groups.

  “Okay, guys,” Autumn said. “You’re going to have to learn to accept one another because you’re going to be fighting this war together. I know this is all very new to you, but this is just the start of a lot of new changes in the Underground.”

  The elves and warlocks exchanged a distrustful glance, but sidled closer together.

  “All right, so here are some useful fighting techniques,” Avery began. He showed the young warlocks and elves a number of different ways to bring an opponent down. Autumn noticed that his eyes seemed to be slightly unfocused as if his thoughts were elsewhere. They kept darting across the field and narrowing into slits. Autumn followed their path and her gaze landed on Christopher Wellington, who was in Lucian and Willow’s group across the field. The two Tetras were demonstrating holds and how to get out of them. Christopher and his sister, Christine, looked on with bored expressions painted on their faces.

  Suddenly Christopher’s eyes flashed to Autumn’s and she turned quickly away, feeling embarrassed that he caught her looking at him. What if he thought that she was watching him because she liked him? She didn’t care what Olympus’s rules were. She was not going to pretend to care about that bigheaded rich boy. Maybe if she was rude enough, he would tell Olympus that the deal was off.

  Avery raised an eyebrow at Autumn, probably noticing her flushed cheeks and downcast expression. She simply flashed him a small smile and turned to show a group of warlock girls how to get out of a difficult hold, which was ironic because right now Autumn felt like she was already being held down by secrets, lies, and guilt—and she didn’t know how to get out of them.

  LUKE felt a small sense of pride as the young warlocks and elves watched him and Crystal demonstrate fighting techniques with big eyes and open mouths, like they’d never seen anything so awesome in their whole entire life. He noticed that a couple of the older warlock girls were pretty cute, but when he tried to picture himself making out with them he frowned, feeling slightly perturbed. The problem was, he couldn’t picture it.

  He glanced absentmindedly over at Crystal, who was showing a couple of warlock girls how to dodge an attack by rolling on the ground. The girls weren’t taking it seriously at all, laughing and giggling as they rolled around like idiots.

  “That’s not quite what I did,” Crystal said as she climbed to her feet, brushing dirt and grass off of her clothes and shooting Luke an exasperated look.

  He smiled in spite of himself as she looked away, brushing her blonde hair, the color of corn silk, out of her ice-blue eyes with a delicate hand that was strong enough to kill a Shadow. She glanced back at him and gave him a tight-lipped smile, causing one of her cheeks to dimple.

  He realized that he was staring and immediately cleared his throat and turned to face the rest of the group. They went over the different weapons and how to use them properly until the sky had darkened considerably and Atticus had told everyone to get as much rest as they could. He didn’t say that the war would begin tomorrow. He didn’t have to. Everyone already knew.

  AUTUMN stood in the middle of the training field with the rest of the Quinns. Everyone seemed uncharacteristically quiet and wrapped up in their own thoughts. Charlotte stood in front of Jastin, leaning against him, his arms encircling her from behind. Kyndel and Ember were linked together by their pinky fingers, as if any more than this might get them into trouble by the elf elders. Crystal and Luke stood closely together, their shoulders brushing up against each other every once in awhile. Each time this happened, Luke’s jaw would clench. Edric seemed to notice this and glared at the two of them. Forrest craned his neck, looking towards the group of Tetras where Willow was standing, glancing over her shoulder at him. And Autumn and Avery stood as close together as two people could without actually touching, which was about to drive her insane.

  “So, uh, do y’all wanna go to the coffee house like old times or is everyone too tired?” Luke said.

  Charlotte said, “I could go for some coffee.” Jastin nodded in agreement.

  “I’ll go,” Kyndel said. Ember glanced sideways at her, but didn’t protest.

  Autumn smiled. “Me too.”

  “Should we invite the Tetras?” Forrest asked uncertainly, shooting another look over at Willow.

  Luke shrugged. “Why not.”

  Forrest’s face brightened and he jogged over to their group. Lucian, Willow, Eden and Jack had reunited with the rest of the Tetras who had arrived back in Arbor Falls a week before after successfully winning the help of the giants, trolls, and leprechauns—all of whom had now joined the rest of the Underground army in their war against the warlocks and elves.

  “Hello, Miss Oaken,” a deep voice said. Autumn turned to see Christopher and Christine Wellington approaching them.

  Her stomach dropped and she had to keep herself from saying “what do you want?” Instead she said, “Hello.”

  “My sister and I were wondering if you and your brother would like to join us for tea,” he said with a toothy grin.

  Tea? Really? Autumn glanced from Christopher with his dimpled chin to Christine and her pug nose, turned up in an act of disdain, and suddenly felt the urge to punch one of them.

  “Actually, we’ll be joining our friends for some coffee tonight,” Autumn said curtly. “Maybe some other time,”

  “With these commoners?” Christine said, a smirk forming on her lips.

  “Commoners?” Ember said with a glare. “We’re Warriors, and far more valuable to elf society than the two of you.”

  “Ember—” Kyndel said through gritted teeth.

  “No,” Autumn said with a glare at Christine. “She’s right.” Kyndel and Ember looked over at Autumn in surprise. “People like you are what is wrong with the Underground.” Christopher and Christine both rais
ed their eyebrows at her, along with the rest of the Warriors. Autumn noticed Avery trying and failing to repress a grin. “And if you think that my brother and I will be bound to either one of you, you’re both sadly mistaken.”

  “Unfortunately, it isn’t your decision to make, Princess Oaken,” Christine growled, looking more like a pug dog than ever.

  “We’ll see about that,” Autumn snapped back.

  At that moment Forrest jogged up to them. “They said they’ll come,” he called brightly, and then frowned as he took in Christopher and Christine’s furious expressions. “Er, bad timing?”

  “Perfect timing, actually,” Autumn said, turning on her heel and stalking towards the path that led into town. She didn’t glance back at Christopher and Christine, but she guessed they either looked stunned, or livid, or a combination of the two.

  She heard the sound of several feet jogging up behind her.

  Crystal appeared wearing an amused smile. “I can’t believe you just talked to them like that.”

  “Olympus is going to be so pissed,” Luke said, coming up beside Crystal while Avery appeared to Autumn’s left. He didn’t say anything, but the satisfied smile dancing on his lips communicated exactly how he felt about what Autumn had said to the Wellingtons.

  Autumn heard voices behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see the rest of the Quinns following them, laughing about what had just happened, followed by the Tetras.

  “I don’t care,” Autumn said to Luke. “It’s about time things changed in the Underground. Olympus said so himself. Royal elves being able to choose who they want to be bound to is just one more change that needs to be made around here.”