Mother Ali did not kill Anna.

Which, all things considered, I took as a great act of mercy.

She did reach her arm out from within her overcoat and place her hand on Anna's shoulder.

Which, all things considered, was one of the scariest things I had ever watched happen to the one I loved.

"You've got guts, kid." Mother Ali said through an exhale of thick smoke.

Anna tightened her hold on The Mother in Purple's leg and made no effort to move.

Ali smirked. "You'd really die to try and keep me away from her?"

"Yes." Anna cried out, her eyes clamped shut and her cheek pressed against Ali's thigh.

Ali nodded once and thumped the end of her burner into a mound of upturned snow beside her. "Let's make a deal."

Which, all things considered, was the thing I expected her to say the least.

Please be like Rhiannon. Please be like Rhiannon. Please be like Rhiannon. I repeated in my mind, not yet willing to let myself believe that Ali would not be like Azza.

With no more effort than it would have taken for me to pull off my uniform jacket and hang it on a hook, The Mother in Purple pulled Anna off of her leg and set the raven haired girl gently on her feet.

She only needed one arm to do it.

"I don't want to make a deal, I want to-" Anna started, apparently unbothered by the ridiculous display of strength that she had just been subjected to.

Mother Ali brought her finger up to her lips. "Shhh."

Anna listened.

I went to them then, unwilling to watch Anna suffer any longer in my defense.

"I am sorry, Mother. She means no offense. She only wishes for-"

Ali shushed me as well. "Shhh. I know who she is. We all do."

I listened.

The set of her jaw, how relaxed she seemed despite Anna's attack, the half lidded stare of her lavender eyes, there was nothing about her that felt like she saw me the way Azza did.

"I was supposed to come here for this weeks ago. I didn't. Why?" Mother Ali asked.

We both kept listening to her and stayed silent.

"Because I don't want to do this," She sighed and sagged her shoulders after a long moment spent waiting for us to answer. "And neither do you."

Anna shook her head in disbelief "What?"

She is like Rhiannon. I thought to myself. She is one of the new Mothers.

Anna had long thought The Mothers were split in half. Azza being with the old Mothers, and Rhiannon being with the new.

True. The Autumn I liked, the strong Autumn, agreed.

Ali stepped back and pulled an unlit burner out from where it had been tucked beneath the loose curls above her ear. She wore the same overcoat over her shoulders that she had been wearing the night I had seen her in the drawing room. It parted as she lowered herself to the balls of her bandage wrapped feet and drug across the cold snow beneath her.

"Look at you two, heading to town for a romantic night together or something, right?" She asked as she hit her burner.

I did not see how she lit it.

"Yes?" Anna answered, looking just as confused as I felt.

"Right," Ali agreed as she ran her free hand back through her hair and closed her eyes. "You two are in love and I have to go to the subseas alone as soon as we are done here. So, let's make this quick, huh?"

Anna looked at me through the corner of her eyes and I looked back at her.

Something wasn't right.

"As soon as you finish my punishment, you're free to go. If you hurry, you can still make your date. We will do it right here," Ali stopped and held her fist to her mouth in a failed attempt to stop the thunderous belch that burst through her lips. "Sorry. What do you say? We have a deal?

"Mother Ali? Have you-" I started.

Anna cut me off and asked the question I was trying to find a polite way to say. "Are you drunk?"

"Shhh, Autumn Aubrey. Shhh, mortal girl. So what if I am? It will make this easier for both of us." Ali rolled her and nearly fell back into the snow.

Alexei placed his hand on her back and kept her upright. "Mother. I would ask you to choose your words better. We are not alone."

She looked up at him with a wicked grin on her face. "Do you remember when we were alone in that inn on the edge of Goloh-Shun?"

For a brief moment, the stony expression that my white haired guard had worn almost constantly for the entire time I had known him fell away.

It did not slip

He did not let a smile peek through it.

It shattered completely, and revealed the same little boy that I had seen in the memories of his mother.

Alexei pulled Ali up by the shoulder of her oversized coat and covered her mouth with one of his hands. "Don't, please."

"He used to be called Flashdancer. It wasn't for nothing." The Mother in Purple laughed into his hand as she tried to tear it away.

Alexei turned his eye to me, and I saw genuine panic within his gaze. "We will go to the groundskeeper's quarters, where you stayed when you first arrived. Let the others pass and then we will depart."

Ali once again freed her mouth momentarily. "His hips-"

"What is happening?" Anna asked aloud, looking to the sky for an explanation that I hoped she could find.

One of The Mother's had shown up drunk to deliver my punishment, seemed completely uninterested in doing it, and was apparently spilling secrets that Alexei did not want to be known.

I'm all the confusion, my panic and worry turned to laughter. "I think."

"But, he calls her Mother." Anna added without the need to hear the rest of what I was going to say.

My white eyed guard gave us both a glare that could have cut through stone as the others he had spoken of reached where we were standing.

All of the new moons except for Underwitch Ire came walking by. Atop her newfound familiar, Tana led the moons across the snowy courtyard and in a winter dress that looked fit for a ball. Vanda and Mallory, each in warm, looking clothes instead of their uniforms, walked on either side of Auden, so lost in conversation that they hardly noticed us.

Plia dragged behind them, her eyes turned down at the steaming bowl of soup she had likely stolen from the dining hall. She wore so many layers, and her wool hat was pulled so far down on her head, that all I could truly see was the pallid blue of her eyes as she glanced up from her bowl.

There was recognition on her face when she saw Alexei and Anna, but it ended when she looked at me. "Ire? What did you do to your hair?"

Mother Ali snatched Alexei's hand from her mouth long enough to call out. "That's not Ire, thats-"

"Be on your way, Underwitch Plia. This does not concern you." Alexei said simply to my classmate, his mask only partially returned.

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The little Underwitch took a long sip from her bowl before nodding and hurrying off after the others. They had waited for her, and Tana did not seem anywhere near as willing to oh or what was happening in the courtyard as Plia had.

"What is this? Who is that? What are you doing?" She called out to our strange gathering.

"Be on your way, Underwitch Tana. This does not concern you." Alexei repeated, more of his expressionless mask beginning to seal his little embarrassed little boy face away.

Tana crossed her arms. "You aren't our teacher. We don't have to listen to you. Answer my questions."

Anna and I both tried our best to avoid Auden's silver eyed stare even though the wolf showed no signs of recognizing us.

"Ah," Alexei said, everything but his eye placid and calm. If I had not been around him so often, I may not have been able to tell, but my guard looked as angry as I had ever seen him.

His head snapped down as Ali sunk her teeth into his hand, but he did not so much as grimace.

"Right." He nodded to himself before reaching down and placing his hand flat against the snow.

"You see, Auden? I told you that this place is filled with people that do not give me-" Tana started to speak.

Alexei stood up as lines of blue light shone up through the snow as they streaked across the courtyard towards the gathering of new moons. Still silencing Mother Ali, he walked to us and nodded towards the open gates of Lun. "Go."

My guard's aura reached where Tana and the others stood.

A storm of disturbed white powder blew up in a towering wave, and obscured them from my sight before crashing back down to the patterned stones beneath it.

All of the new moons, Auden too, turned on their heels and ran from Alexei's working in a terrified sprint towards the gates.

They slowed halfway there, and another burst of snow exploded at their feet.

All of them passed through the gates before any of them risked so much as a glance backwards.

"You can't do that! It's against the rules!" Tana shouted over her shoulder as Auden carried her away.

Alexei did not answer. He lead us away from the school, through the gates, and into the evergreens that our destination lay within.

"It is though, right? Using aura on school grounds?" Anna asked.

"If I were a student, yes." Alexei answered as he struggled to keep the still silenced Mother walking in the right direction.

Not long after the moons had disappeared down the road to Hymneth, and we had left the wood line far behind us, Mother Ali fell.

She stumbled into a mound of snow that was piled high up the trunk of a tree, and fell flat on her face.

Alexei sighed in obvious frustration as he looked up at the sky before picking The Mother in Purple up by the back of her coat and threw her over his shoulder.

"Did that dog have four eyes or am I just drunk?" Ali hiccuped as we started walking again.

Anna shook her head. "Again, what is happening?"

"Not a word of this, to anyone." Alexei growled, the tone of his voice sounding rough enough to make Anna and I both nod in agreement.

The rest of the way to the clearing was just as hard of a walk as it had always been, but it was far less quiet than it had ever been before.

"Look, If you spent as much time as I did hugging a crystal, you'd want to let loose a little bit too." Ali said.

She hiccuped and continued before anyone could respond. "And if I hadn't had to wait for little Autumn to finish her last week of school, I wouldn't have had so much time on my hands."

It was strange hearing her talk about me like we knew each other. It was even stranger hearing her have a conversation all by herself.

"But who cares. You can fight right, Autumn? I'll be out of here and you'll be on your date before the sun goes down," She said through a sigh and struck the back of Alexei's leg with her fist. "The last real date I went on was with this walking slab of marble."

Anna had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing.

I had to wrap my arms around myself to keep from shivering.

For as much as I hated my uniform before Anna had given me my new dresses, they had been warm.

"Hey, come here. You have to say something if you're cold. I'm no good to you if you don't tel me things." Anna said quietly as she pulled me close to her.

I let her press me against her without complaint. "How are you not freezing?"

She gave me a little laugh. "My jaw has been too busy dropping for me to realize I'm cold."

"This has been," I tried to think of the right word to describe how my fourth punishment had begun, but had to settle on something that didn't feel right. "Different."

"Different is good, I think. Ten minutes ago I was on the ground and getting ready to die. You haven't been dragged away from breakfast, kidnapped, or chased through a city. This one may not be as bad." She kissed me on the top of my head and squeezed my arm as the clearing came into my sight a short distance away.

"I think she's like Rhiannon. One of the new Mothers." I whispered to her.

She whispered back underneath a sigh. "I hope so. I hate how pretty they all are, it makes it harder to want to hit them."

"It is really not fair." I agreed.

Cold, scared, and confused, we both laughed anyway.

"Look at them, Alexei. Would it really have been so bad if we wound up like that instead of alone?" Mother Ali asked from where she was hanging upside down. She had turned her upper body towards us and was resting her head in her hand.

Her elbow was dug into the small of Alexei's back.

"But that's right, you haven't been alone," She said after yet another hiccup. "If only I was as tall and elegant as that sorcerer's daughter you love so much."

Anna's eyes went wide and the sight of it nearly broke me into a fit of giggles.

The Mothers were supposed to be all secretive and mysterious.

Ali was leaving nothing to the imagination.

"Shhh." Alexei said as he snapped still and pointed into the clearing.

Anna and I's little wooden shack was still there, the clearing was just as white and serene as it had always been, but there was already something in it.

Standing in the center of the snowy clearing was some manner of deer.

It was big, bigger than Sam and bigger than Auden. Its horns spread up from its head like tree branches, and its steamy breath spewed from its white nose like Amabura's had at the hot springs on Silkcradle.

"Don't shush me when I'm talking about my feelings. Your mother raised you better than that." Ali snapped as she pushed her elbow further into Alexei's back and slid free from his grasp.

Alexei's jaw clinched, but he did not move.

"Shhh. It's been separated from its herd. We may be in grave danger." Alexei whispered with his hand held out for me and Anna to stop.

"What is it?" I asked, seeing his hand a moment too late to stop my foot from falling.

"A spring deer." Alexei whispered back.

My black laced boot broke through the snow and met the thin limb that had been hidden beneath it with a sharp crack.

The spring deer snapped its head towards us.

Mother Ali hit the ground, tangled within her too big coat.

Alexei closed his eyes and ground his teeth.

The spring deer jumped into the air.

It did not fall.

Sheets of icy blue power formed under its hooves before it could descend. The sound of shattering glass filling the clearing, it jumped again and carried itself up over the tops of the trees.

Before my mind could understand what it was seeing, the creature had used its power to flee far from the clearing and even farther out of my sight.

"For the last time," Anna said, throwing her arms up at her side. "What is happening?"

Alexei shook his head, his eyes still closed. "If there is a phantom bear near, it knows exactly where we are now."

"Wait, excuse me, a what?" Anna demanded.

"I thought those were made up so you would have a reason to go to the trial." I admitted, feeling fear creeping up my spine like there was a beast breathing down my neck.

Mother Ali spun herself free of her coat and sprung to her feet in a wash of snow. She wore tight fighting garments like Mother Gwyn had been during her punishment, but they did not meet over The Mother in Purple's middle. Every inch of her skin was covered in hard cut muscle and scars that made my skin crawl in jealousy and discomfort.

"Now that you've ruined my good mood," She growled as she shoved past my guard and walked straight towards me. "I don't think I want to be around you anymore."

She took me by my wrist and pulled me out from under the trees.

I was powerless to stop her.

A pained scowl twisting her pretty face into something ugly, she shoved me into the place the spring deer had been only moments before.

Her eyes shone with her lavender light and a blade of her power began to cut a circle around us as she spoke. "Doomlacer."

If my small understanding of what names like that meant was true, things had just gotten much worse.

"Ali! No! You can't!" Alexei shouted as he sprinted towards us, his mask having fallen once again.

"Be on your way, Alexei. This does not concern you." Mother Ali said with a smirk.

The circle closed, and she lowered herself into a powerful looking stance. "Autumn Aubrey. When you are able to strike me once, head, face, chest, anywhere, your punishment will end."

"I-" I started.

She beckoned me towards her with the fingers of her outstretched hand. "Come on. I'll give you your first shot for free. I won't try and avoid it."

"Go now, Lady Anna. We do not have time to waste." Alexei shouted from somewhere outside the circle and I looked over just in time to see Anna's hair bouncing behind her as she ran back the way we had come.

Ali moved through a series of deep stretches before she crossed the small space of the circle and raised my arm for me. "Give it to me, kid. I know you have it in you. Come on."

"Are you sure?" I asked, the sudden change in her demeanor making it difficult for me to find my footing.

She hiccuped and tapped her jaw with her pointer finger. "I've never been more sure of anything. Right here, really step into. Hit me like you mean it."

"Yes, Mother." I said weakly and gave a half hearted attempt at a punch.

She side stepped it and drove her fist into my guts so hard that it lifted me off the ground.

I had been wrong.

I had been very wrong.

Mother Ali was not like Rhiannon at all.

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