Something was wrong with the gatekeeper.

Any time I had ever come face-to-face with one, they had always looked wrong. The tattered cloaks they all wore gave them a ragged appearance, and concealed most of the signs that there was a person underneath the shadowy fabric. The sound of the chained restraints echoed out of the cloaks whenever they moved in their strange, crawling, way was always unsettling, and I was never happy to hear it.

By the time that Precept Seram and I made it to where the black gate stood atop the shorter of Silkcradle's two mountains, the sun had begun to set and my exhausted legs could carry me no more.

The other new moons were gone. Alexei had either left after he had stormed out of the cabin or he was lurking unseen somewhere around me.

Precept Seram had finally fit everything into my too small bag except for the black laced boots of my uniform that I had been forced to wear on our climb. My teacher did not collapse to the ground and gasp for air when we stopped like I did. She seemed unbothered by the climb, but she had not been through anything like what I had been through that day, so I did not hold it against myself.

"Tired of waiting, witch." The gatekeeper hissed at my pink hair precept. It was not crouched or crawling like they usually were. It was standing straight up, its cloak covered head staring straight at Seram, and both of its arms crossed over the front of its chest.

The sight of it brought memories back to my mind. I remembered following Mother Nami and Precept Cherith down a long hallway. I remembered seeing the tongueless gatekeeper laying within a circle of sorceresses without its cloak. I remembered the blackened flesh that the metal restraint on its arm had seemed to be restricting.

It had been the day that Alexei had lied to me about Azeralphane. It had been the day that I had overheard Ms. Lao telling Anna that she cared about me too much. It had been the day that I had first seen what lay beneath a gatekeeper's cloak.

"I will remind you, gatekeeper, that sorceresses are known to take great offense to being called such a name. Especially in front of one of her students. I will not tolerate it." Precept Seram said back in her perfectly polite voice, but there was no weakness within it. She meant what she said, even if it did sound soft and kind.

The gatekeeper shook its concealed head and its crossed arms drooped. Like the tongueless man from the medery, he wore one of the chained restraints, but there was a second locked around his other arm as well.

From the tip of each of their long fingernails, all the way to the bend of both of their arms, there was nothing but black. It was the same ruined dark as I had seen on the other, but it ran far past the end of the restraints before fading into pale white skin.

"Forgive me, sorceresses. With your Mother gone, it-" The gatekeeper began in its whispery voice.

Precept Seram held up her hand and silenced it. "We will speak privately in a moment."

She turned back to me. "Underwitch, Ire, I am going to step through. Follow after once you finish speaking with him. I will be waiting."

"Him? The gatekeeper?" I asked aloud, still laying on the ground with my bag next to me.

"No, the warden. He has come to tell you goodbye." Precept Seram corrected me as she passed through the black gate.

The gatekeeper followed her, and as I sat up, I realized that it was the only one left on the peak.

The warden waved from where he was climbing the path to come up and meet me.

I rolled onto my hands and knees with a groan, trying to reach the gate before I would have to face the bearded man.

I had just calmed down enough to be able to walk. I just talked myself into swallowing my sorrow until I could get to the place where I could come apart again. If I had to speak to the warden, if I had to meet his eyes again, I would not be able to hide the wound that I felt inside.

That would not be fair to him. How cruel the way things had gone felt to me was not his fault. She was his daughter. My mother would do nearly anything for me. My dislike of Tana did not matter. He did not need to know how or why I was hurting.

Just before I crossed the threshold of strange swirling energy, he called out my false name and I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Trying to slip away before we shake hands, huh? I thought you liked me more than that." The warden chuckled when he reached me.

I kept my house focused on the tips of my black laced boots and tried to forget the fact that the thin green dress I wore was Tana's. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I was already on the edge of crying again.

In my narrow sight, I saw the warden extend his hand out towards me.

"I just wanted to say that it has been a pleasure working with you today. I look forward to the day that you can come back with your Samsara." He said as I stared at his scared hand.

He still wants me to come back?

The warden continued. "When Tana and Auden come back to Lun, I need you to keep an eye on them for me. A little junior warden duty, if you don't mind."

Junior warden. I repeated in my mind.

"And about what I said before," His voice grew quiet, like he was trying not to wake a baby or scare off a bird. "If you ever need someone to talk to, just tell little Seram. She will get in touch with me and I'll be there for you."

I'll be there for you. His words rang out in my mind.

I did not take his hand or look up at him. One thing felt like too little for how I felt and the other felt like too much for me to stand. I took a step forward and threw my arms around his middle, squeezing him much harder than I had meant to.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Alright, alright, alright," He groaned as he patted my back gently. "I'm old, remember, brittle bones and all that. Bruce might beat me in our bout tomorrow if my ribs are broken."

I stepped back from him and wiped my face on the back of my arm. "Sorry."

"Here, before you go. You dropped this earlier and I almost forgot that I've been carrying it around." He said as he handed me the thin white robe that I had been given for the hot springs the day before.

I couldn't hold myself together any longer. I took the robe from his hands and turned back to the gate. "Goodbye, warden."

I stepped forward towards Lun, with its grey scale walls and paneled windows, and away from Silkcradle, with its mashed together look and all the memories I had made there, the warden replied.

"See you soon, Ire."

And then I was gone.

The heavy glow of the setting sun, the ocean that surrounded the island, and all the green jungle vanished from my sight. In an instant, it was replaced with the familiar surroundings of Lun.

Precept Seram and the gatekeeper were talking quietly by the open door. Without my uniform on and coming from the easy warmth of the island, I felt like I had fallen into The River Eae I was so cold.

A shiver shook me from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head and sent all the sore places on my body into new pain.

"Underwitch Ire, would you like me to take you to Precept Jasna as we have discussed?" My pink haired precept asked me as she placed a hand on my shoulder.

"No, not right now." I answered a little too quickly. Without another word, I walked away from her and left the room with the black gate because I had seen something through the open door.

"I will see you in the morning for class. It is our last week together in this phase, so let us make the most of it." Precept Seram called after me.

Her voice normally would have brought a smile to my face, but I was too focused on what I had seen to truly hear her.

Standing at the end of the hall like a sphinx guarding the entrance to a cave, was a big blue cat that looked more like a demon than a kitty.

It was my big blue demon.

It was Sam.

Without thinking about what I was doing, I strode towards him, scooped him up from the floor, and held him in my arms.

"Unhand me, child." My contemptuous familiar commanded in his deep rumbling voice.

I shook my head as I walked in the direction I hoped my quarters were in. "No."

As much as he disliked me, as many times as we had fought and found ourselves at odds, it felt so relieving to hold him in my arms despite how heavy he had grown.

Faster than I could see, he reached up and smacked his bowl sized paw against my cheek. "You will pay for this indignity."

"No I won't. You didn't use your claws. You don't actually hate this.," I sighed and looked down at him. Terrifying as he was, he was still a cat, and a cute one at that. "I don't want you to die."

Sam hit me again. It didn't really hurt, but there had been more force than the first.

"Then it is fortunate that I have no plans to do so. Release me." He growled.

I shook my head again. "No. We are young in our bond. I mean to fix that."

Sam did not hit me a third time.

"What have you learned, My Lady?" He asked, his entire demeanor changing as quickly as Durath's faces did.

"More than I can think about right now, but things are going to be different between us." I answered him as the ghostly light of the singing stairs came into my sight.

I knew I should tell him about Hexis. He should know about everything I had learned on Silkcradle. A big part of me knew that I should go and find Mother Nami and tell her everything about Auden, but I didn't.

It could wait.

An even bigger part of me cared about only one thing, and that was the part that I listened to.

Sam twisted and kicked off my chest in a sudden escape, let me know he could have done it anytime he wished. He landed on the stone floor with a surprisingly quiet thump.

"Unlikely." He growled as he took up by my side, and we continued on our way together.

I took the singing stairs slowly because I had to, and Sam was patient enough to wait for me despite how long it was taking. Caerulus's lullaby sounded sleepily in my mind. It was a welcome sound. I thought that I had even missed it a little because every crystalline note that played at my feet meant that I was one step closer to what I longed for.

Halfway down, as I passed one of the uncountable landings that lined the ghostly staircase, a group of blue cloaked underwitches took to the stairs behind me and started climbing up the way I had just come.

One, with hair that was nearly white and a full moon hanging heavy on the back of her cloak, turned around and shouted at me. "Hey, you, Nami's pet. Why are you not in uniform?"

Underwitch Maletta.

I did not answer her. I did not turn around. I did not so much as blink at her words.

"Hey! I'm talking to you." She shouted after me again.

"Leave her alone, Maletta. We're gonna be late." I heard one of the others say.

A quick glance out of a distant window told me two things. There had been even more snow since I had left the day before, and it was full dark outside.

It was much too late for anyone to have anything they could be late towards, but I did not think about it for long. I was just grateful that Maletta had not started following me.

I continued down the stairs to the sound of the lullaby, unwilling to do anything that would slow my progress.

"Your indifference is admirable, My Lady." Sam growled as we reached the entrance floor of Lun.

"Thank you, my familiar." I said with a halfhearted smile. I did not have the strength to tell him that if I had acknowledged her, I would have come apart at my seams.

Below the front doors and their iron patterns, beneath the hall of conquest and its serpent skeleton, far from the echoing chatter of the dining hall, I reached the bottom of the crystalline staircase and set off on the final stretch of my long walk home.

I found my white haired guard, leaned back against the door of his quarters as soon as I turned onto our hall. There had been no sign of him before, but he did not scare me that time, I had been expecting him to appear unexpectedly.

"Will you be remaining in your quarters for the rest of the evening?" Alexei asked as I passed him.

"Yes," I agreed, too tired to care about what happened between us in the cabin earlier. "You're going to teach me how you just disappear one day, mark my words."

"Unlikely." He said simply as he closed his door behind him.

I stopped in front of my own and took a breath. One day, I would stop coming back to my beloved beaten up and sobbing, but that had yet to come.

With her bag of gifts held tightly against my side, I opened the door and walked inside.

Anna met me before I could take another step, and to my surprise, I did not fall to pieces.

I fell into her and she held me together.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.