I had become so good at comforting Anna after one of her nightmares that I didn't even need to open my eyes to do it anymore.

How I woke up at all was a mystery that made me think the two of us were supposed to be together.

The differences in our lives, the unimaginable distance that had been between us, the luck that had led me to her mother's boarding house, all of it led me to the knowledge that our meeting had been a rarity that defied all likelihood.

Even more unlikely than meeting was what had happened after.

The first time she had brushed against the truth of my life, when she had come rushing into the bathroom and looked up to see the lich reaching down to her, should have been the end of us instead of the beginning.

I understood that the notion of two girls being together was not as common on the mortal plane as it was amongst sorceresses. It was almost too fortunate that Anna had the kind of feelings for me that I did for her.

She had said it many times herself. We were meant to be together, and I believed that more than almost anything.

I did not know what force made that true, but it did.

The who or what did not really matter. There had been more reasons and things that should have split us up than I imagined most couples experienced in a lifetime. Who I was, what I had done, and what I still had to do was no small issue to overcome. Anna knew that, but she still gave all of herself to me without question.

Almost everything that I knew I wanted came from her and the dreams we had for our future.

That dream of freedom was a long way off and I still had a near infinite amount of memories to view, but if there was any dream worth believing in, it was ours.

Whenever I needed her, whenever she thought that I needed her, she was there.

It was what she did.

When Anna woke up from one of her nightmares and needed me, I was there, despite possessing the ability to sleep for days on end no matter what was happening around me.

It was what I did.

Sometime in the early morning of what would be my first free day since I had begun my Implementation class, my mind returned from the nothingness of sleep just as Anna sat up on the edge of the bed.

Still as I could be, I waited to see if she was just getting up to go to the bathroom.

The low moan and sudden shiver that came from her sat me up and slide over to her as I always did.

"It was just a dream. You are safe. I am here. Let's lay back down." I said softly as I placed my hand on her back and rubbed it gently.

Anna gagged. Her whole body wretched forward as the horrid sound came from her and my eyes snapped open.

"Nuh uh," She said weakly and shook her head. "Drank too much. Didn't eat enough. Gonna throw up."

She was shaking like she had spent the night in the frigid cold outside of the school. Another heaving gag wracked her body and she covered her mouth with her hands.

"Oh, uhm, okay, let's. . ." I babbled as I slid down off the bottom of the bed and sprang to my feet. Two quick steps brought me around to her and my words came out all at once. "I don't know what to do but I know that I need to do something but I don't know what that something is."

"Bathroom." She whispered through her hands.

Even in the pitch black of the room, I could see the sweat that slicked her dark hair to her forehead. Her eyes were closed tight in an expression of pain. The shallow breaths she took were ragged and rhythmless. My heart pounded in my chest as I helped her to her feet. She tripped over one of the empty bottles of wine that lined her side of the bed, but I caught her weak weight and held her up as we walked.

She shuddered violently against me as we stepped into the bathroom. "Floor is too cold."

I snapped the lights on just as she tore away from me and threw herself down in front of the toilet.

"Go away!" She shouted.

A big of me wished I had obeyed her command.

I had thrown up before.

Those times had not been some of the more enjoyable moments of my life.

Standing in the doorway with my eyes clinched shut and listening to Anna get sick was almost as bad as doing it myself. My own stomach turned at the sound and for a moment, I thought I would join her, but I swallowed my nausea because I knew she needed me.

If we swapped places, she wouldn't run away like I wanted to, even if it made her sick to her stomach.

When wretched sounds coming from her settled into a lull of desperate breaths and groans, I forced myself to look at her.

She clutched the porcelain rim of the toilet like it was all that held her to the ground and her raven hair hung down over her face like a curtain.

"Hey." I said in little more than a whisper, hoping that her sickness had left her.

"Go away." She said weakly as she tried to brush her hair back. Before she could finish speaking, her body curled up and she was sick again.

I waited until it was done and I went to her. With my face twisted into a grimace, I took her hair into my hands and tried to pretend that the damp feeling in my fingers was only water.

"Go away, Autumn. I don't want you to see me like this." She rasped.

If she had been anywhere near strong enough to hit me, I thought that she would have. Never, in all of time we had spent together, had I ever heard her sound so angry.

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I knew she wasn't truly angry with me, so I let how it had made me feel disappear without a thought.

"I can't do that, Coach." I said, trying to mimic the soothing tone she tools with me when I was upset or injured.

"Go-" She tried to shout me away again but another wave of sickness cut her off.

"You're okay. You're okay. You're okay." I repeated with my face turned up to the ceiling.

It was all that I knew how to do. If Ms. Lao or my mother could be there, they would be so much better for her than I was. They would be able to do so much more than hold her hair and try not to vomit.

Charm her. The thought came to me suddenly and I tried to push it away.

It won't work. I thought as I began to truly consider the possibility.

Instead of trying to make her happy or sad, I could focus on memories where I had not been nauseous. I could rub her back and let my power flow through my left palm with all the times I had been blissfully unaware of my stomach held in the front of my mind.

She was still for just long enough to begin to catch her breath before she was sick for the third time.

I have to do it.

With my right hand still holding her hair, I brought my left down to her back.

Almost any of my memories would have done well enough, but the sight of Anna being unwell seemed to only bring thoughts of when she had not been sick.

The way she looked in the reflection of the window in Hymneth, in the sunlit garden behind the manor, next to the guards campfire, and all the other times she had been well and at peace, I focused on them and closed my eyes.

"Water." She croaked, her voice sounding raw in her throat.

I was so desperate to do something helpful that the second she spoke, I literally jumped into movement.

I let her hair fall down her back and released the charm I had almost placed on her as I leapt towards the sink. It was only after watching the water run uselessly down the drain for a full minute that I realized I needed a way to get it to her.

"Cups in one of the chests in the closet." She muttered as she leaned back and slumped against the bath.

I had been chased by horrors beyond my imagination, snarling beasts, tree sized serpents, a house sized spider, and worst of all, the infuriated Lady in Red, but I did not run half as fast from them as I did towards what Anna needed.

Just as it had been with the water, it was only after fumbling through the chests in the near total darkness of the closet that I remembered to snap on the lights. Sure enough, when I could actually see what I was doing, I found the two cups that we had used while we were in our little wooden shack.

I ran back into the bathroom, filled Anna's cup with the still running water, and took a step back once I handed it to her.

She took several small sips and let out a deep sigh. Her eyes were bloodshot and she wiped her face with the sleeve of her night clothes.

"Don't look at me. You're already way too pretty to be with me anyways." She muttered through a weak laugh that came dangerously close to being a sob.

"I can't do that, Coach." I said in response. She was horribly wrong, but I knew there would be a better time than then to tell her that.

She laughed again and it did turn into the sob from before.

"I'm sorry," She cried. "I didn't mean to wake you up. I know how hard you've been working and I know you need your sleep."

"Hey. Shut up. I'm here. What can I do?" I said as I stepped over and knelt down in front of her.

She looked up at me with tears in her eyes and her bottom lip poked out. "Bread."

It was simultaneously the saddest and the cutest thing I had ever heard or seen.

"Right," I nodded and stood. "Don't go anywhere."

I made it through the open bathroom door before she called after me. "No. I'm fine.. You can't go out anyways. It's past your curfew."

I peeked my head back through the door. "You and I both know that I am not scared of breaking a rule. Close your eyes, I'll be back before you know it."

"Autumn, wait." She called again just before I left our quarters.

I went back and found her clutching the porcelain once again.

"You have to wear your glamor." She reminded me.

Even being as sick as I had ever seen someone be, she was still thinking of me.

If I had to stand against The Nine Mothers themselves to get Anna the bread she needed, they would all fall by my hand.

With Ire wrapped around me, I strode into the dark hallway behind the singing stairs and ran all the way to its end with no thought of being quiet.

Alexei was not waiting for me in the hall like I had expected him to be and his door remained closed as I passed it.

No time to wait. I thought to myself as I listened to the fastest rendition of Caerulus's lullaby I had ever heard. If he got mad at me because I didn't wait for him during an emergency then so be it. All that would do is make the time it would take to win him over a little longer.

There was only one place where I knew I could get bread.

On none of my walks to the dining hall had I noticed how big Lun was or imagined how dark it could become. The school was filled with other underwitches during the light of day and I could see the high ceilings above and the ends of every wing I passed. In the darkness, all the stories I had heard the new moons talking about came nipping at my heels.

I knew that there was nothing in the walls.

I was fairly certain that there was nothing beneath the library, and even if there had been once, Anna would have told me if she had heard anything like what Mallory and Vanda had described.

Alexei had told me that Azeralphane didn't exist, that he was a myth like dragons or giants. I was still certain that he had lied to me, but if the thing that was known as the blue death was skulking around the school at night, I doubted that I would be the first to know.

The reality and existence of those things did not matter in my mad dash towards the dining hall. All they were was an illogical fear that pushed me forward faster than I would have been able to move without them.

With my feet bare, I found that the singing stairs were much louder. Because of that, I did not hear the conversation happening above me until I reached the floor that the dining hall was on.

"He still won't speak with her. The second phase will be here before we know it and we will have to change everything if she can not convince him of their safety." Someone said.

A deep yawn came in response. "I don't envy her at all, being thrown into all this so young."

Precept Shanti. I thought, recognizing the constantly sleepy precept by the sound of her yawn.

I had been scared of ghost stories and other imaginary things when I should have been worried about a much more real threat.

Getting caught while I was on my quest.

I was breaking two rules. Three, if I was being specific, but I was sure that a direct order from The Mothers meant more than Lun's six rules.

My glamor of Ire was one, but didn't count. Being out past curfew was the second, and being out of uniform was the third. I had been in such a hurry to take care of Anna that I had not realized that I was wearing my night clothes.

"Jasna and Maletta aren't helping her either. They both pester her everyday about naming a new Lady." The voice I didn't recognize continued.

It was too late.

They were much too close for me to run and hide. It was a small wonder that they had not yet laid eyes on me.

In truth, I didn't care if I got in trouble. All I cared about was getting Anna her bread.

Before I could so much as take a breath, something grabbed me around my ankle and pulled my leg out from under me.

I had been wrong, so very wrong.

There was something skulking around the dark halls of the school, and it had taken me in its hand instead of nipping at my heels.

The scream that I tried to scream fell silent against what covered my mouth and a violent struggle began.

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