I had awoken in the middle of the night. Soohyun’s kiss weighed heavily on my mind. Not only the fact that it happened, but what he said, “The emotional wavelength got mixed up”. I don’t necessarily believe that load of crap so if Soohyun was lying, that means he wanted to kiss me?! But why?

I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep so I crept quietly to Kevin’s bedroom. I didn’t want to talk to Hoon about this because he might go off on Soohyun and I didn’t want that to happen. Kevin seemed like the only person I could talk to in this situation.

I carefully crawled in bed next to him. “Kevin, are you awake?” “Hmm----hmmm”, he mumbled and his side to face me. His eyes opened. “Autumn you seem upset, what’s wrong?” I sighed. “You know me so well.”

I told him about the kiss. “He said that the “emotional wavelengths” got mixed up. Can something like that happen?” “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening before, but I suppose it’s possible.” “Mhm, thanks for talking to me oppa. By the way, how are you feeling?” “Better thanks for asking. I should be fully healed in a few days.” “I’m sorry I caused your injuries”, I said hugging him as gently as I could. He was surprised, but hugged me back.

When we broke apart, Kevin said, “You should be getting back to sleep. You have another trial in the morning. I think it’s with Eli so you’ll have to be careful.” “But, I can’t fall back to sleep. Kevin, can you sing me to sleep?”  He chuckled and then started singing a sweet lullaby. Immediately my eyes drooped and I fell back into a deep sleep.

I woke up to bright daylight. I was still in Kevin’s bed, with him quietly snoring beside me. I crept quietly around the castle. I checked the kitchen, but no one was in there. “Hmm, that’s odd. I wonder where everyone is.”

“GOOD MORNING AUTUMN”, Kiseop yelled behind me, scaring me so much I must have jumped five feet in the air. “Yah, Kiseop you scared me”, I complained, trying to calm down my racing heart. “Sorry”, he replied heading to the fridge to grab something to eat. “Where is everyone?” “I think everyone is still sleeping”, he answered in between bites of a granola bar.

“Have you talked to Soohyun since dinner last night”, I questioned. Kiseop shook his head. “Why?” “Oh, no reason, just curious. Well, I’m going to go get ready for my trial. See you later oppa.” He just looked at me curiously and turned his attention back to his food.

I walked back to my room and opened my armoire filled with clothes the angels had gotten for me. I picked a three quarter length navy blue shirt, brown shorts with a white belt, and a pair of blue wedges to match. I must admit, the angels had exquisite taste in women’s clothes, which kind of worried me a bit haha. I entered the adjoining bathroom and got in the shower.

After I had finished, I got dressed and went to see if the other three angels were awake. I checked Kevin’s room first; he was still sleeping and because he needed his rest, I didn’t wake him. Next I checked Soohyun’s room; he wasn’t in his bed so I figured he was awake. Lastly I checked Hoon’s room. He was still sleeping so I decided I’d be a nice person and wake him up.

I walked up to his bed and jumped right on him. “Wake up lazy ”, I said tauntingly. He opened his eyes and smiled. “I was awake, but since I read your mind, I knew you’d come in and try to wake me. I wanted you to be the first person I saw when I woke up.” I slapped his chest. “You’re so cheesy”, I said leaning down to rest my forehead against his. He met me the rest of the way and kissed me sweetly. I immediately melted into them, but not even a minute into it, I heard Soohyun’s annoyed voice from Hoon’s doorway.

“Autumn, Eli’s waiting outside for you.” I rolled my eyes and crawled off of Hoon. I shot Soohyun an evil glare as I walked passed him. I met Eli at the entrance to the castle. He was standing there, twiddling his thumbs. He looked kind of nervous. When he heard me approach, he got a big smile on his face.

“Hello Master Eli”, I said waving to him. He laughed and picked me up. He flew away from the angels’ castle until I could see a waterfall in the distance. When we landed, I took in the beautiful scenery before me.

“Wow”, I said, breathing in deeply, taking in the smell of nature. “Beautiful isn’t it?” I nodded. “Just like you”, he added. I could feel my cheeks heat up in embarrassment. Trying to change the subject I said, “So uh, should we get started on our lesson?” “I thought maybe we could enjoy the scenery for a little bit. We do have all day and you don’t want me to ruin this beautiful view with my destructive powers, do you?” “Oh, well I guess not. I mean we could just sit here and enjoy the waterfall.”

“Great, I’ve prepared something for us”, he said walking behind a tree. He came back with a backpack. He pulled a bathing suit out of his bag and handed it to me. He then took another one out for himself.

“What do you want me to do with this”, I asked. “Put it on silly. You don’t want to go swimming in your clothes now do you?” I blushed even more. “You can change behind those trees if you want. I promise I won’t look.”

As I headed to the patch of trees where Eli said to change, my face was probably the shade of a tomato. I changed out of my clothes and put the bikini and bottoms on. I grabbed my clothes and when I came back to the clearing, I could feel lingering eyes on me. I looked up and saw Eli staring at me with hunger in his eyes.

“Close your mouth or you’ll start catching bugs”, I yelled, suddenly self-conscious. Eli broke from his trance and that’s when I noticed he was something to stare and ogle at as well. He had a nice toned body and his skin was a glorious milky color that seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. He came up to me and closed my mouth I didn’t even realized I’d opened. “So shall we”, he asked, pointing to the small pool. I nodded. “Just let me put my clothes in your backpack.” I stuffed my clothes away and he grabbed my hand and led me in carefully. The water was freezing cold and as soon as it hit my body, goose bumps arose on every inch of my skin.

“Are you cold”, Eli asked chuckling. “Hey it’s not funny. This water is really cold”, I replied, annoyed. I started shivering, that’s how cold I was. Then suddenly, I was warm again, or warmer. That’s when I realized that Eli had his arms around me and was back hugging me. Despite the cold water, he was surprisingly warm. In so many words, his skin sort of sparkles like that of the vampires from Twilight, he’s extremely warm like the werewolves, yet he’s a fallen angel; must be a mythical creature/immortal thing.

He rested his chin on my shoulder. “Are you warm enough yet”, he breathed into my ear. My own breath hitched in my throat. I suddenly became nervous about this new closeness with Eli. All the muscles in my body tensed up and he must’ve felt it because he said, “Autumn relax. I’m not going to do anything to you.”

That was less than reassuring considering the position we were in. Sensing I wasn’t relaxing, he turned me around to face him. “Relax will you. If I had wanted to try anything with you, I would’ve done it by now.” Oh great, now he tells me. Here I am, once again, in a place I have no clue about, alone with Eli. I’ve got to learn to trust him though. I still haven’t forgotten the story he told me. Every once in a while, it runs through my mind, but I have to be careful because I don’t want Hoon finding out. If only there was a way to block out my mind to him, that’d be really useful.

“I think we should be getting to our lesson now”, I said abruptly. “Ugh, alright. Fun spoiler, right after this though.” Before I could ask him what ‘this’ was, he had flown up to the cliff above the waterfalls. And before I could stop him, he went to jump, but slipped, and crashed into the water below. I swam to where he had landed. He resurfaced seconds later, groaning in pain. I dragged him to the bank to see what had happened.

When he was completely out of the water, that’s when I noticed a big gash in his leg. When he slipped, he must’ve scraped his leg against the rocky cliffs. The cut was bleeding badly. I started panicking; I had no clue what to do and he certainly couldn’t fly with that injury. I saw a nearby towel and grabbed it. Remembering what I learned from first aid training, I applied pressure to the wound. Eli winced in pain from the sudden pressure.

Because there was so much blood, I was expecting the towel to be covered in it within a few minutes, but strangely, it wasn’t. Curious I removed the towel and saw that the gash in his leg was nothing but a long, pink scar now. Eli looked down at his leg to see what was going on and saw what I was staring at.

“I don’t heal that fast. How did that happen?” “I—I have no idea”, I said, still shocked. I set the towel down on the nearby ground. “All I did was put the towel on your leg. How could-----how could your leg heal that quickly?” “Maybe you have healing powers”, Eli suddenly exclaimed. I looked at him with wide eyes. “Healing powers?” “Yeah, that would explain it. Let me try something.” “What are you----“

But he’d already cut his arm on a sharp rock lying on the ground. He walked over to me and stuck his arm in my face. “Try healing me.” Unsure, I hovered my hands over the cut, waiting for something to happen; nothing. “Maybe you have to touch it.” “Eww, I’m not touching your blood, that’s gross. Here, I’ll use the towel.” So again I grabbed the towel and placed it on Eli’s wounded arm. I applied a bit of pressure and suddenly I felt my hands tingle. I removed the towel and once again, there was a faint pink scar left behind.

“So you do have healing powers”, Eli exclaimed. I became excited. “I do. Do you know what this means?!” He shook his head. “It means I don’t have to go through those stupid trials and I can officially join the angels since healing is considered a white or pure magic. I knew I belonged with them!!”

I saw Eli’s face fall. “So you really don’t like us do you?” I quickly ended my celebration dance. “Eli it’s not that it’s just, the fallen angels cause so much destruction. When was the last time one of you has done something that actually helped someone? All you guys ever do is make more trouble for the angels, not to mention Alexander.”

I could see Eli’s jaws tighten. “It’s not like I chose this Autumn. I didn’t even want to be a part of the fallen angels, but I made a mistake and now I have to live with it. We all make mistakes, but we just get back up, brush ourselves off, and go on with our lives.” I didn’t want to make his anger even worse so I tried to level with him. “I know you didn’t choose this life, but sometimes you can’t choose life, it chooses you and you just have to accept it.”

His face softened as he looked at his now scarred leg and arm. “I’d better take you back. It’s getting late.” Without another word to me, he grabbed me and his backpack and flew up into the skies.