Never in my life had I needed to try so hard to hold my tongue.

"And once he knit together all the different pieces of the island with his white silk, the prince, the son of The Silken Queen vanished and left this place for all of her lost creations to call home," Precept Seram spread her arms out wide as she finished her story. "Or so they say."

It was all I could do not scream.

Schwarz silk had not been white, it had been as black as night. And, he had not been a prince, he had been a titan.

Within the circle of half asleep new moons, all the scraped clean wooden bowls that were the only remains of the dinner we had all devoured scattered around us, none of them knew the anguish that I was in.

It was just like it had been with the warden.

Autumn had been in The Mother in Green's deepwoods. Autumn had seen the sky crack and fall away while she had been being carried by a monstrous arm made out of aura. Autumn had been brought to the nest of the titan Schwarz. Autumn had been the one to appear in the sky above a lake of clear fire because of a shift. Autumn had been the one to watch all eight legs of Schwarz's massive body appear from a portal. Autumn had been the one to watch him give his life to save Mother Gwyn's.

No matter how much I wished I could be in that moment, I could not be her.

I had to be someone who did not exist.

I had to be Underwitch Ire.

There was nothing Tana could say to the other new moons that would make them not like me if they knew all the things that I had seen. Mallory, Vanda, and Plia would want to talk to me so much that I would have to sneak away from class if I ever wanted a moment alone again. If I could have been myself, all of the wariness and suspicion that they had for me would wash away with the revelations that Nami had been caught sleeping naked by Precept Bellum or that one of The Mother in Red's lovers was a vampire.

It hurt to admit it to myself, but I did want them to like me. I did want to be friends with them. We were all new moons, but I was in name alone. There was the four of them, and then there was me on the outside of their circle.

Except even in that exclusion, it was Ire that got to wallow in self pity.

There was literally nothing that Autumn Aubrey could do.

It hurt worse to have met the thing that Precept Seram had told an inaccurate story about and being unable to say anything, but as tired as they seemed, the others might not have cared if I had told.

"Either all of you are much more tired than I realized or none of you were interested in my story." Precept Seram sighed, disappointment obvious in her voice.

Disregarding my frustration with having to stay silent, neither of her reasons were true for me. In truth, she had not told it very well. I did not blame her for how boring it had been. I had spent most of my short life being told stories by my mother. Precept Seram was very good at many things, but she could not hope to compete with Idensyn Aubrey when it came to storytelling.

"I will remember that all it takes to defeat Lun's new moons is travel, a hot bath, grilled fish, and a story," Precept Seram smiled as she sent bubbles of her pastel blue aura floating through the circle of new moons.

They pushed up against all the remnants of dinner before snapping over them without popping.

The wooden plates, the picked clean piles of fish bones that lay on the floor, the empty glasses that were still stained red from the wine that had filled them not long before, all of them were lifted off the ground and spun inside a wash of light clean blue. From the bubbles to the square basket that Precept Seram had brought them out of not long before, in the short time it took them to settle into neat stacks and the straps at the bottom of the basket to buckle around them, they had become perfectly clean.

All that remained was a single piece of what Precept Seram had brought us for dessert. It was soft cake, buttery and sweet, and that left a pleasant burn on the side of my tongue like the wine had.

I would have enjoyed what I had already had far more if I had not been eating it while frustration at my unfortunate life had been building inside me.

"Let us hope that none of our enemies discover how easy it is to lay you all so low. Would any of you like to finish this last piece? It would be a shame to let it go to waste." Precept Seram said, bringing the cake plate up in the air atop one of her bubbles.

Though I knew I wanted it as soon as it had been offered, I said nothing and waited for the others to respond.

They already thought I was crazy, I did not want to give them a reason to think I was greedy.

Plia was asleep, not dozing off or resting her eyes, but full on asleep. Her head had fallen back against the wooden wall of the room and the rhythm of her breaths was deep and slow.

One down, three to go.

Mallory patted her hands on her middle and refused. "If I eat anything else, Precept Seram, I am going to pop like one of your bubbles."

"That would mean that you are nearly impenetrable, Underwitch Mallory, and I hope that you are." Precept Seram said with a sweet smile.

Two down, two to go.

"No thank you, Precept Seram. It was much too sweet for my taste." Underwitch Vanda answered as she began to crawl towards her bed roll.

They all continued to be far more comfortable than I was with how little the robes we had been given covered, but the too much of her I saw did not send me into a panic the way it had earlier that night.

My mind was focused on the cake, and there was only one thing left in my way.

Tana.

The honey haired underwitch had already pulled her blanket over herself and was laying with her back facing away from me. I could not tell if she had fallen asleep like Plia, but when she did not call out or lay claim to the sweet, I knew that my time had come.

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"If no one else wants it, I will take it, Precept Seram." I said, my mouth already beginning to water as my teacher's bubble brought me what I desired most in that moment.

It was not actually my greatest want. To shed my glamor, to declare my true identity, and to be free from The Mother's punishments all outweighed the buttery cake, but none of them were so easily done.

"No, I want it." Tana announced, sitting up at the sound of my voice and holding her hand out to the floating plate.

The plate stopped.

"Hmmm," Precept Seram hummer, her sweet smile giving way to a tired. "I feel that I will be wasting my breath when I say this, but perhaps the two of you could share it?"

It was still strange seeing her gloveless, with her hair down, and in a robe, but I could not help wishing that I looked a little more like her.

I knew I was no longer a child, but I felt so young in comparison to her and the other new moons. Even Plia, as scrawny and thin as she was, and she was much weedier than I had ever been, seemed to be more comfortable in her body than I was.

That self conscious feeling and all the other negative things I had been forced to endure did not put me in a very generous mood.

"Why do I have to share it? You asked if any of us wanted it and I waited a long time to say that I did. She only wants it because I want it." I said, my words coming out quicker than I had meant them to.

"Why should I have to share? She said that she would take it if no one else wanted it. Well, I want it."Tana said as she pointed at me.

I had said those exact words, but I doubted she would still want the sweet if I snapped her pointed finger like a dry twig.

Precept Seram sighed a long sigh that turned into a little laugh at its end. "It is so easy to forget how personal everything feels when you are young. We shall do it this way."

The bright blue bubble carried the piece of cake up to the ceiling and held it there. Much too high for anyone shorter than Arthur to reach, I had lost my sweet just by having to listen to Tana speak.

"When the two of you reach an agreement about who can have it or that you will share it, it will come back down," Precept Seram continued as she stepped to where Plia was asleep and gentle encouraged her into her bedroll. "But it is late. Tomorrow will be long before we return to Lun. I believe it is time for all of us to go to bed."

I looked at the plate that hung above my head and then looked at Tana just as she did the same.

Our eyes met and something completely inexplicable happened.

For as much as I disliked her, and as much as she hated me, we understood each other in that moment.

"There is no way we are going to come to an agreement on this." She said, it being the first time we had ever spoken that she had not insulted me in some way.

"Agreed." I nodded.

With that, she laid back down and rolled away from me once again as Precept Seram made her way to the paper paneled door.

"Remember what our guide has asked of us. If you notice that you are missing something, report it to me. Once this door is closed, I intend to seal it until I return in the morning so all of you can sleep soundly. Understood?" Precept Seram asked as she stepped backwards through the doorway.

Every one of us except Plia answered in unison. "Yes, Precept Seram."

"Spotless," She said as she snapped the lights out. "Goodnight, all. May you sleep well."

With that, she pulled the door shut and the faint blue glow that leaked through the paper was all there was to show that she had ever been there at all.

I had never been alone with the other new moons. In truth, there had been very few times since I had returned from the mortal plane that I had been alone, but I would have preferred that than to try and sleep in the same room as any of them.

The sound of it all was wrong. The quiet sound of their breathing was different enough that it kept my eyes open and my mind awake.

I missed Anna.

I missed her snoring and our bed.

I missed her so much that the aching in my chest nearly brought me to tears. Pulling the thin blanket over my head and curling up beneath it, I confronted the fact that no matter how bad I wanted to go to her, that there was no possible way for me to do that.

Having to be Ire was not that bad when I got to end my day with the one person that made me feel the most like Autumn.

Autumn and Ire both still wanted the cake, and both were furious with Tana for keeping the last sweet from them.

I knew it in my heart, no, I knew it all the way down in my knotted soul, that she had only said she wanted it because I had asked for it. Even if it had not been the last piece and there would have been enough for both of us, she would have wanted what I had. The buttery cake was not the only last thing of mine that she wanted. Plia had told me that the honey haired underwitch didn't like me because she wanted Sam, and the warden had told me that Sam was the last familiar.

Did the big blue cat know? When he had sent away the four eyed familiar on the back steps of the boarding house, had he known that he was the last of their kind? Did my contemptuous familiar know that Hexis had chosen me to receive her final creation before she had left?

Where did something like her go? She was beyond anything I had ever experienced. She was beyond The Mothers, beyond the titan Schwarz, beyond the cloud of pink gas that had referred to itself as a god.

And, why had she chosen me?

She had given Rhiannon and familiar by the name of Bayle. Sorceress Ulet had Av. Sorcerer Eames had Auden until both of them had passed. Of the countless sorceresses whose memories I had lived

through, many of them had been given familiars.

From the ghost of a high spirited man, to a sentient ball of light, Hexis's creations came in every shape and size.

The question I had was why?

The real question I had was why me?

If I had the fortune to spend more time with the warden the following day, he would be doomed with the misfortune of answering the uncountable amount of questions that I had for him.

The thought of the long bearded man who had saved my life not once, but twice, gave way to a fantasy of replacing my guard. Alexei could use some sun, and the warden's time would be spent much better with me than with Taloo and the other familiars.

The warden was like having Arthur, the manor guards from Erosette, and Rhiannon's lovers around all at the same time. I had felt like there was no one else he would have rather been around when I was with him, and I had felt comfortably safe without feeling like I was on a leash.

Most of all, the thing that I had appreciated the most, was that he had answered all of my questions.

Anything I had wanted to know, he had told me with enough enthusiasm that it felt like he actually wanted me to know.

I don't know how long I laid under the blanket and dreamed about having the warden there to greet me after class instead of my white haired guard. It was long enough that when light began to leak through the thin fabric, I thought it might be dawn for a little longer than I should have.

When I noticed that the light was a deep blue and coming from beside me instead of above me, I knew I was wrong.

I peeked my head out of the blanket as slowly as I could and saw that I had been betrayed.

Tana and I had not had the first moment of understanding that had ever existed between us.

She had been lying.

The light was not from the rising sun, it was from the honey haired underwitch's power.

She stood atop two columns of her aura that were like bursting springs of too blue water. The dark room was drowning in her light, but I was the only moon awake to see her wickedness.

It was too much.

I could not stop myself.

The sight of her reaching up to take the last sweet was enough to bring my power to my left palm. It was enough to send my bright blue chord whipping through the air towards her with an angry shout and no thought.

"Stop! That's mine!"

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