Lun Arcanicil was a cold and empty place under usual circumstances.

The walk back to Lun had not been kind to me, and the chill that had crept into my bones made me feel like I had never belonged anywhere more than I did inside The Mother in Blue's school.

Alexei had abandoned me.

He was my guard, and he had left.

I never thought that was something that would upset me the way it did.

For someone with a near infinite amount of memories in her mind, it was amazing how often I found myself unprepared to deal with things.

I could turn myself into whoever I wished with my glamor and make anyone feel whatever I desired with my charms. No tree, arrogant or not, could withstand the coils of my chord. I struck fear into the heart of metal shapes, both square and round. Twice I had blown myself up with my own fireworks, and I would do it again if I felt like I needed to.

I was not nearly as strong as The Mothers, The Ladies, Echowalker, or most of the sorceresses I had been in The Well, but I was stronger than I had ever been before.

Even so, all it took for me to fall apart was for me to get my feelings hurt.

Sam was right, I was just a silly little girl.

Alexei didn't even like me. He was my guard because The Mothers had ordered him to be. I knew that, but knowing something did not mean that it would not be painful.

I knew that being buried alive under a mountain of writhing sand would do great harm to me, but if Azza found a reason to punish me again, that knowledge would do nothing to save my skin.

By the time we reached Lun's front gates, Arthur had lifted me onto his back and Anna had returned my grey uniform jacket to my shoulders. I did not mind either, if the siblings thought my only problem was being cold, then I was holding myself together better than I could have hoped to.

"How much farther is it? Ire over here is gonna freeze to death if we don't get there soon." Arthur said as the gates swung open at the wave of Precept Jasna's hand.

It was almost fully dark, the little sunlight that had been left in Hymneth having faded by the time we reached the school, but not dark enough for Arthur to miss his big sister disappear the moment she crossed through the threshold of the gates.

His whole body went rigid and his arms tightened around my legs.

"Anna?" He called out, the hard tone in his voice making shallow echoes in the snowy forest that surrounded us.

Precept Jasna covered her mouth with her hand in an attempt to hide her laughing.

"Keep walking." I said into his back. If he took one more step, all his worry would wash away with the appearance of Lun.

"Whoever you are, now is not the time for hesitancy. I must see Underwitch Ire inside." Prefer Jasna insisted as she waited for Arthur to move again.

Sam stepped in front of him, crossed over, and disappeared. He left nothing but his paw prints in the snow, and one of them was different from the others. The claw that Mother Ali's barrier had burnt away looked like a little key next to the other, still whole, claws. He appeared again and spoke in his low voice. "It is one of their glamors, Arthur. Likely meant to keep such a vulnerable location hidden."

Arthur nodded at the big blue and went through the open gates. The towering stones of the school came into sight on the other end of the courtyard.

Back through the gates we went and the school disappeared again.

"Ha!" Arthur shouted as he wavered back and forth through the glamor.

It was good to hear him laugh.

It was good to be near him once again.

I just wished he had not asked me such a difficult question when we had been in the alley.

There had only been one time that I had been in the halls of Lun past nightfall. Anna had been sick and had needed bread. Plia had been in the dining hall and we both had been terrified at the sight of one another.

The school had been cold and empty then, but my desire to help Anna had mattered more than that.

Even when the singing stairs were alight with the small amount of sun that managed to sneak through the paneled glass windows, and all the halls were filled with all the moons, it still felt like the nicest cave I had ever been in.

Someone was waiting for us just inside the cave of grey stone and crystal stairs.

Precept Zetta stood within the ghostly light of the singing stairs. The sharp featured sorceress did not so much as blink until Jasna had shut the great wooden doors behind us.

"I will send word soon." Jasna said as we passed my teacher, and all she received in response was a sharp nod.

"It's kind of cold in here isn't it?" Arthur asked aloud as he shifted me higher into his back.

It was.

"Put her down, she'll warm up faster if she starts moving around." Anna said from behind me.

Arthur shook his head. "I don't mind. Besides, it's not like you can carry her around."

"Come, children." Sam growled up at us.

Precept Jasna did not take us to our quarters. She led us up the singing stairs instead. There was no light save for the ghostly glow of the crystalline steps beneath our snow dusted shoes, and Arthur burst into laughter when Caerulus's lullaby rang out in his mind for the first time. It echoed up the staircase like it was the first sound that had ever been made there, like it was breaking a silence that had not been disturbed in countless years.

There had never been that kind of silence in Erosette.

The sound of the guards playing points in front of the manor, someone's footsteps coming down the garden path, my mother's laughter echoing into the wellhouse, my heart ached from wishing to hear those things again.

Arthur stopped laughing sometime before we reached the second floor landing. Like Zetta before her, Precept Cherith stood guard and gave all of us a genuinely calming smile as we passed.

Her billowy white dress and gentle eyes could not have been more different from Zetta, but I knew she was capable of great focus. I had seen it in the basement of the medery when she had been at the head of the circle of healers that had healed a gatekeeper.

A gate keeper that Azeralphane had attacked.

Only, according to my absent guard, Azeralphane didn't exist. The Blue Death was a myth like dragons or fairies. That was what I had been told at least, but Echowalker had held a different opinion.

For someone with a near infinite amount of memories in her mind, it was amazing how often I could not tell what to believe.

Precept Seram guarded the third floor, with the sleepy eyed Precept Shanti watching over the fourth. Precept Bellum sat in a chair atop the fifth, and when we reached the sixth, I realized that we had arrived somewhere that I had never thought about being.

The singing stairs had a bottom. I had seen it countless times on the way to Anna and I's quarters. But not once had I ever considered them having a top until we reached their final step. After hearing what was either the first or last note of the lullaby for the first time, I wasn't sure which, we turned onto a hall and went all the way to its nearly lightless end.

"I would ask you to be kind in your judgment, I was not expecting guests this evening." Precept Jasna said as her sky blue aura came to light against the knob of a door and the sound of locks sliding open filled the dark hall.

Anna went in first, and Sam moved to follow her, but he stopped and looked up at Jasna before her entered the room.

"Say your piece, sorceress. Why do you wish for me to not enter." The big blue cat growled.

Precept Jasna gave me an apologetic look. "I'm not as enamored with familiars as everyone else seems to be. Something about talking animals, it just does not agree with me."

"Then we will have no issue for I am no animal, witch." Sam said simply as he entered the room without another word.

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If I was not so upset, I would have scolded him for calling her that, but I did not have the will. It was all I could do not to flood the back of Arthur's shirt with my tears, but no one around me knew how sad I was, and I meant to keep it that way.

Precept Jasna snapped the lights on as she shut the door, and the six locks that were spaced down its length slid shut as she walked to the center of the room.

She brought her hands to her downy black hair as she spoke. "One of you make a fire please, it would be best if Underwitch Ire did not freeze to death."

None of us listened to her.

All of us watched as she untied the long blue feather from her hair and threw it straight up into the air.

It did not spin or flip like a feather should. It rose towards the ceiling in a wash of blue that I had seen only three times before but I knew I could never forget.

Uncountable haymen had fallen to its cool shade. A wall of snow had been thrown up at the other new moons by it. Not an hour before, I had watched a bird made of that light fly into the grey sky above Hymneth.

It was Alexei's aura, and the moment the tip of his feather touched the hanging light above Jasna, it swept across the room in a flash of pure blue.

From the door that had just been locked to the back wall of windows, and over every other odd thing in the room, the power filled each corner and climbed up the ceiling before fading out of sight.

Just like when Anna had disappeared, Arthur tensed and turned so our backs were flat against the wall. Sam burst into a fit of sneezes that was equal parts cute as it was frightening. A shudder ran through Anna like ice had been dropped down the back of her shirt.

Precept Jasna closed her eyes and sighed through a small smile. "There. Please, be comfortable. All of you are safe now and Mother Nami will be here soon."

Anna was the first to recover.

"What was that?" She demanded as she stared up at the feather. All of its color had gone, and it had turned to a stark white that reminded me of my missing guard's single eye.

"A working. No one can enter or exit the bounds of this room without my permission." Precept Jasna answered as she kicked a pile of thrown off clothes into the small gap underneath a free standing cabinet.

"And the bird that the creep sent, it was to you?" Anna asked a second question, her dark eyes narrowed and focused on the downy haired teacher.

"If by creep you mean Alexei, then yes." Jasna said as she knelt down and collected a small pile of blue dust off the floor.

Anna put her gloved hands on her hips. "So you know about Ire?"

"I did not realize that I was to be interrogated."Jasna said with a small laugh. She went to the cabinet that she had hidden the pile of clothes under and opened it.

"She's always been that way. She can't help herself, it's a sickness." Arthur chuckled.

Anna glared at him. It was threatening enough to make the tall man tense once again.

Precept Jasna carefully poured the remnants of what must have been Alexei's bird into a small velvet pouch and pulled its drawstrings shut.

Once the cabinet was closed, she turned back to Anna and stared down at her as she spoke. "I know that Ire is like me, and I know first hand what having a sorcerer for a father is like. This is a safe place for her, on my power I swear it."

Anna relaxed with a sigh after a long moment spent staring back at the precept. I followed her eyes as she looked to the long wooden shelves that hung off every open wall. They were held up by small lengths of wire that had been staked into the grey stone, and gems, scraps of metal, coins, reflective paper, and all manner of shiny things filled them all. From them, she considered the massive pillows strewn around the floor in a loose circle. They surrounded a table that was much too short for someone to put their legs under, but was wide enough for at least a dozen people to sit around. Finally, her dark eyes went to the bed hung from the ceiling on lengths of thick rope. It was enclosed in thin wooden strips that had been woven together into what reminded me of a bird's nest.

The door to a large bathroom, an open closet, the small table that held a kettle and jars, from my place peaking over Arthur's shoulder, I thought I understood what Anna was thinking.

"Is this your room?" Anna asked aloud a breath before I could ask the question for myself.

"It is." Precept Jasna nodded.

Sam's deep voice broke the back and forth between Anna and the precept. "And this?"

"I thought I had covered that." Jasna said as she walked to where the big blue cat had sat.

The open closest door swung shut with a swipe of my familiar's big paw. An alcove had been hidden behind it, and within that withdrawn place, a monster stood.

Anna's hand went to where the skull necklace lay beneath her shirt.

As tall as Arthur, and with a hooked black beak that brought fear into my breath even though I knew it could not move, the skeleton of some terrible bird loomed.

"That was once a titan. He found himself being counted as one of my enemies, and now he is my coatrack." Jasna explained as she unclasped her split back cloak from around her throat and hung it off the tip of the dead titan's beak.

Anna walked over to it like it wasn't the most terrifying thing that had ever existed. I knew it was not alive, and I knew that Jasna would not have it inside Lun if it was truly a threat, but I had seen skeletons move before and that had apparently left more of a mark on me that it had Anna.

"What was its name? Titans have names, right?" She asked as she reached her gloved hand out towards it.

"Blutmalir, Papa, God. It depends on who you ask." Jasna answered as she pushed Anna's hand away.

"It could speak?" Sam growled out a question.

"Yes, and all of you should thank The Mothers that you have never had to hear it." Jasna said as she turned away from what remained of the titan Blutmalir.

Sam made a satisfied sound. "Your distaste for speaking creatures is rooted in fear for this so-called titan it seems."

Jasna frowned and pressed her lips into one straight line. "You are fairly rude, even by cat standards."

"And you are easily offended, even by sorceress standards." Sam said simply.

"Why was he your enemy?" Anna asked as she stepped between Jasna and my scowling familiar.

"Because he took my mother," Jasna answered as she pushed the closet door back open and covered Blutmalir once again. "But enough of this. The three of you are to be my guests this evening, let me be a proper host."

She moved through the room with such grace and speed that it could have only come with much time spent in it. In a matter of three long strides, a fire came roaring to life in the fireplace, steam began to roil out of the top of the kettle, and a basket filled with bread had been placed in the center of the wide table in the floor.

I finally let Arthur put me down, and I huddled as close to the fireplace as I could without letting it catch the hem of my uniform jacket.

Anna stood next to me with her hand on my back, watching every single move that Jasna made.

Arthur went to the table and started eating without the need for an invitation.

Sam had disappeared.

"I have to say, after dealing with the creep for so long, I'm surprised how easy it is to get you to answer questions." Anna said over the sound of her little brother's audible chewing.

Jasna's back was turned to us, and she did not turn from the kettle as she spoke. "He was not always that way, and I have nothing to hide. But I have to ask, why do you refer to him as the creep?"

Anna did not hesitate to answer. "He can hear everything. When we first got here, he broke into our room because he thought he heard something. She can't go anywhere without him pretending to be her shadow. . ."

She kept going, but I stopped listening. The fire had warmed me as much as it could, which meant that I was still cold inside but no longer shivering.

I went to the wall of windows and tried to forget Alexei had ever existed.

The glass was so clear that if it had not been for the thin wooden panels that filled it, it would have been invisible. It looked out over the evergreen mountains that surrounded Lun, and I could see a bright spot in the darkness that could only be Hymneth. We were so high up that I knew the only time I had been higher was when I had been falling from the sky above Vowkeeper's Anguish. Even from that height, I could see a place in Hymneth's light that was darker than the rest.

"Arthur?" I called back over my shoulder, and the tall man came rushing over to me with a mouth still full of bread.

"Hmmm?" He hummed as he came to a stop next to me.

"Can you see anything? Owls have good eyesight, right?" I asked him.

"No, sorry. You're worried about him aren't you?" The tall man swallowed and asked.

"No," I spat and turned my head up to him in anger. "I'm just worried about the sorceress that writes the plays. I like going to the theater."

Arthur laughed. "Sure. I wouldn't worry about it. I'll be your knight soon and I won't ever leave you like that."

His words brought a small amount of warmth into the cold place within me, but before I could respond, three sharp knocks echoed into the room from the other side of the door.

Jasna left the kettle and the drinks she was fixing where they lay and went to it immediately.

While her back was turned, Anna rushed over to the window and wrapped her arms around my waist.

"Have you figured out what I have?" She whispered into my ear.

Arthur kept his eyes focused on the window.

"No." I whispered back.

"She came when he called for her, she wears his feather in her hair, she talks about him like he is a knight in shining armor, don't you get it? It's not that hard to figure out, dummy." Anna continued.

"Everybody doesn't start snooping as soon as they walk into a place. And don't call her that, she's not dumb." Arthur tried and failed to whisper.

"I don't get it." I said as I turned around to look at Jasna.

Anna gave me a tight squeeze and let me go. "She's in love with him, Autumn. Or they are together like we are together, I'm not sure which. Anybody could see it."

Before I could make sense of what she had said, Jasna opened the door and Mother Nami stepped inside the room.

Like she was walking through a spider web, Alexei's aura came to light against her before snapping back to the doorframe and disappearing once again.

"Hello." Nami choked out a weak sounding greeting before she fell to one of the pillows around the table and began to cry.

The Mothers had been the reason for most of the worst days of my life, and I knew that I should be wary of them at least, but at the moment, all I saw was someone who was sad like me.

With everyone else standing around and watching The Mother in Blue cry, I went to her and joined her in her sorrow.

Nami wiped her eyes and wrapped her arm over my shoulders as she spoke through her tears. "I'm in my afterglow. Why are you crying?"

There were an uncountable amount of things that I could have said in answer, but the only one that would pass through my lips was the truth.

"I don't want to be here anymore."

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