Alexei, in all his white eyed wisdom, had once told me that the other new moons were not like me.

He had said that they had not seen battle like I had.

The combat I had seen was mostly me learning all the different ways that I could get beaten down, but I had understood his point. He had said that most of Lun's moons, especially the new ones, didn't even know what it was like to be pinched. He had said that he could not allow me to harm them.

Unfortunately for Tana, my normally expressionless guard was not in the room we had been given to sleep in while we were at Silkcradle.

What was even more unfortunate for her, was that he had been right.

Just as she took the plate with the final sweet from Precept Seram's bubble into her hands atop the glowing columns of her aura, my bright blue chord whipped around her ankle and her eyes went wide. With as little thought as it took for me to sneeze or blink, I snapped my wrist and snatched her perch like Sam would a startled bird.

Tana fell.

That was exactly what I had wanted, but I was surprised at how easily it happened.

The rest of the new moons sound asleep despite everything that was happening at their feet, Tana smacked against the raised wooden floor and let out a horrible gasp.

I had made that sound before.

I knew the stunned pain and panic that came with the air being driven from my lungs suddenly.

As I watched Tana's columns collapse in on themselves and settle onto the wooden floor next to where she lay gasping like spilled sugar, I felt a pang of regret that almost turned my own working to dust.

Before I could crawl over to her, she turned her eyes to me and scowled. Still breathless, she reached over to where the plate, and much more importantly, the last sweet, lay undisturbed atop one of the piles of her power.

The fact that I had almost let myself feel bad for her put such a bitter taste in my mouth that I nearly gagged.

As involuntary as wrenching would have been, snatching my cord towards me was even more so. It tightened around Tana's ankle and slid her towards me at the same time that it shortened and brought me towards her.

We collided somewhere in the middle, but my experience in less than peaceful moments gave me an advantage.

I looped my cord around my wrist as I climbed on top of her and pinned her arms to the floor with my knees.

"Get off me." She gasped as she bridged her hips and failed at throwing me off.

"You tried to trick me." I whispered down to her harshly.

"And? You attacked me over a piece of cake," She said through a cough as her gasping came to an end. "That's way worse!"

Her efforts brought the tips of her fingers against the edge of the wooden plate.

I shifted my weight and snatched it off the floor before she could take hold of it.

On my right, I saw Plia sit up from her bed roll and rub her eyes with her hands. Her voice still heavy with sleep, she yawned a terrible yawn and let out a said sigh. "Why is the room blue?"

I hoped that she was sleepy enough to not notice that I was pinning Tana to the ground.

"What's even worse is that I'm going to eat it in front of you." I ignored Plia and said with the same tone I would have used if I was threatening someone's life.

"You wouldn't!" Tana spat, bridging her hips again and trying desperately to free her arms.

Plia pushed herself up into her knees and scratched her head through her thin hair. "Turn your aura out, Ire. I'm trying to sleep."

"Really? I wouldn't? Hmm, you don't know how crazy I actually am, do you?" I asked.

Taking my time to make a show of it, I brought the buttery cake to my nose and took its sweet scent in with a long inhale.

There was a part of me that knew I was enjoying myself just a little too much, but I was only doing what I had been told to do.

Tana would keep being mean to me until I shut her up. Reese had told me that on the morning of the trial, before so had ever known how cold water could be or what it felt like to be lifted into the sky by a magical raccoon.

Suddenly, I had a much better idea of what to do with the cake.

Tana couldn't talk if her mouth was full, and there was a certain wicked pleasure in the thought of silencing her with the very thing she had tried to take from me.

Plia cleared her throat. "If the two of you are done wrestling or whatever it is you're doing, can I have the cake? I get so hungry at night."

I couldn't make her eat it. As much as I disliked her, I could not bring myself to do it.

"No, I'm going to eat it and she is going to watch." I said to Plia as I took the sweet from the plate and raised it to my open mouth, the azure light of my cord shining bright in Tana's eyes.

Tana laughed.

Considering that she was pinned underneath me, caught around her ankle by my working, and actively being threatened by me, I found that very concerning.

"Precept Seram made me swear not to call you motherless any more, but if you keep being so stupid, I don't know if I can keep that promise." Tana said with absolutely no fear in her eyes.

A different face, a painting, a description from one of my mother's stories, Tana wore a smile that would have been pretty if I had encountered it any other way. Instead, it brought that same bitter taste to my mouth and I had to swallow to keep from gagging.

"She's not stupid, Tana." Underwitch Mallory said as she kicked the blanket off of herself with quick violence.

Had everyone woken up just so they could see me holding Tana down? None of them could have rolled over to see her stealing the cake because that would have been far too fair for it to happen to me.

Plia cleared her throat. "Seriously, is anyone going to eat that?"

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"You've gotten detention four times now because of your midnight snacks, couldn't you just eat more before bed?" Underwitch Vanda sighed. She sat up and pulled her blanket over her shoulders, leaving no new moons left to wake.

"It doesn't work like that. I've explained it to you before." Plia snapped as she rubbed her eyes again.

"All of you see how she has attacked me? I told you she was crazy." Tana called out from her place underneath me, a wicked glint in her eyes.

And there it was, her words were all I had needed to find the strength to shove the cake into her mouth.

Before I could press every last crumb through her lips, Underwitch Mallory said something that made all the anger leave my body.

"She wouldn't be on top of you if you hadn't done something to make her mad. We all know that. Now can we all go back to sleep, please?" Mallory groaned from where she had rolled onto her stomach.

Tana shook her head. "No, but we can all watch her get off me and willingly give me this piece of cake."

"What?" I asked, more confused at her confidence than anything else.

"That's right," Tana smiled and nodded. She slipped her right hand out from under my knee and pressed her finger into my stomach as she whispered. "I don't know what that is, but I know that you don't want anyone to know. Get off me, or I'll tell everyone."

With everything that had happened, Taloo, the warden, the temple, Hexis, and everything else, I had forgotten that Tana had seen The Mother's seal on my stomach. My robe had come undone just enough that her finger slipped through it and her perfectly shaped nail pressed into my skin between Rhiannon's ring and Glim's.

For a brief moment, I thought about eating the cake anyway.

She would tell the others and I would have to come up with some ridiculous lie to cover myself. That lie would lead to an uncountable amount of others that would continue to become more complicated and harder to keep track of until I was eventually caught.

No more Lun, no more classes, no more freedom, I would be whisked away on currents of sand and locked in a glass prison of Mother Azza's design.

Tana had beaten me.

I was letting her because I truly did not wish to lie anymore, but she had won nonetheless.

My cord fell away into azure dust and touched against the remnants of Tana's lighter blue as the room went dark. At first, it had been her light that had painted the room. Then, it had been mine. The moment I had let my defeat bring about the darkness once again, Plia's pallid blue light drove it away in my place.

So slight that I was sure it was the shifting light, I thought I saw Tana's wicked smile shrink when our eyes met once again.

Was it that easy to see how much I was hurting on the inside?

The only thing that kept me from crying was the knowledge that despite everything that had happened and all the times the honey haired underwitch had been sour to me, I was stronger than her. I was farther along with Precept Seram's assignments, and I had just proved that I would be the victor if we ever came to blows.

It was a small comfort, but without being able to go to Anna or my mother, it was all that I had.

I climbed off of Tana, wooden plate in hand and waited for her to take it from me.

She sat up, made no effort to pull her robe back over her shoulders, and held her hand out towards me. "Give it."

"Take it." I said, holding it out to her.

"No. You are going to give it to me." Tana insisted.

It took all of me to not immediately lash out and hit her. Not with my power, not with my cord, but with my fist. It took every part of me, mind, body, and soul, to not drive my knuckles into her perfectly shaped jaw and stain her white teeth with blood.

If Underwitch Vanda had not crawled over to us when she did, it would not have been enough.

"Listen, this is my third time being a new moon and probably my last. Neither of you are going to make it past the second phase if you carry on like this. Shut up, split the cake, and go to bed, okay?" Her expression was not angry, but her eyes were deadly serious.

I knew her and Mallory had not been at the trial, but so had not thought about what that meant.

"That's a terrible plan, Vanda. I think that I should have it. That will really teach them a lesson." Plia disagreed, her thin fingers already reaching for the sweet.

Mallory rolled over and locked her arms around Plia's little waste. "No. No midnight snack. You're gonna learn that you won't die if you go a night without eating, you little gremlin."

There was so much happening around me. Vanda's hard eyed gaze, Plia's laughing, Mallory's struggling, and Tana's infuriating smile, all spun together into an overwhelming current that I was powerless to resist.

Then, like fireworks in a ball room, Plia screamed and all went quiet as she became the center of attention.

"Something touched me." She whispered, her eyes darting all around the room.

"I'm touching you, Plia." Mallory said flatly.

The pallid blue werelight that hung above Plia's head grew brighter and brighter as she continued to search the room. She gasped and pointed her finger at the far wall, her voice shaking as she shouted. "There!"

All of us turned to see what she had pointed at and saw nothing because there was nothing but the shadows on the wall.

Then, the shadow moved.

All of us screamed with Plia as the formless darkness crept along the wall. The other new moons crawled away from the shadow and huddled together against the opposite wall.

Evidently, they were not as experienced with facing unimaginable horrors as I was.

My cord reformed in my hand and I sent its tip whipping towards the wall before I knew what I was doing.

The shadow bent around it the moment before it struck the wood.

All the new moons screamed again at the sound of the impact.

"The cake!" Plia cried out in the aftermath.

It was almost impressive how focused on the sweet she was despite the animate darkness, but when I saw the buttery cake float up off the plate that I still held in my hand, I understood why she had called out.

It was just like what had happened with her back bag after we had first arrived to Silkcradle.

Whatever was in our room was the thing that our guide had warned us of.

We were being robbed.

For all her fear and frightfulness, Plia took exception to that.

As the shadow moved along the wall, the bedrolls on my side of the room were disturbed by its unseen maker. Just as the paper paneled door slid open and the shadow jumped from wall to wall as it began to creep out of the room, Plia rushed past me.

Her werelight circled down from where it hung above her. With a single bite, she swallowed the little ball of her aura and the bright blue light of my cord was all that was left to light the room. Then, the short Underwitch who had once been terrified of my presence drew her arm back and thrust it forward towards what had found its way into our room.

Her pallid aura came flowing out of her palm in streams as she swung. It formed together over her arm and took the shape of her hand except it was much, much, larger.

With her superimposed hand of aura, she struck the invisible robber and closed her pale blue fingers around the stolen cake in one movement.

The paneled paper door slid all the way open and rattled in its frame as whatever Plia had hit ran through it. The short underwitch's working joined the sea of dust that was already on the floor and silence filled the once again dark room.

A half a breath later, Precept Seram appeared in the doorway, a werelight of her own lighting her way. "All of you are supposed to be sleeping. What is the meaning of this?"

My stomach dropped. I didn't know how, but I was certain that I would be the one to get in trouble. I had broken the rule about using my aura outside of class, and though it had not been a duel exactly, I had attacked Tana. She would call out and tell our teacher how everything was my fault.

"Something tried to steal the cake." Plia sobbed, her little body curled around where the sweet lay on the floor.

"Ire and Plia protected us." Underwitch Vanda called out. Her, Mallory, and Tana were still clutching to one another with their backs against the wall.

"I know, Underwitch Plia," Precept Seram sighed as she knelt down and tried to comfort the little underwitch through her afterglow. "I saw everything through my bubble. If I would have known that this piece of cake would create this much drama, I would have eaten it myself."

Sure enough, I looked up to see her pastel blue bubble still hanging above all of our heads.

Of course she had seen everything, she was Precept Seram.

"No," Plia said through another sob, her voice muffled from the cake she had filled her mouth with. "Because then I wouldn't have gotten to eat it."

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