Arthur was not the only one who could not sleep that night.

All of us joined the tall man in what he had called an over, but in truth, none of us tried very hard to sleep.

Not long after Mother Nami had taken her wave into the evergreens, Precept Jasna stopped acting like a Precept at all.

If I had closed my eyes and only listened to her move around the room and do things to try and make us comfortable, I would have thought that my mother had come back to Lun.

She offered us food, tea, coffee, wine, and everything else she had in her cabinets. Anna accepted the wine, but Arthur agreed to it all.

I had gotten warm enough to take off my uniform jacket, and the sight of it was enough for Jasna to come flitting over to where Anna and I had sat around her short table and demand we take our shoes off. She apologized for not being able to let us get a change of clothes, but insisted that we use her bathroom to bathe and take anything from her closet we wished.

Arthur declined the clothes and the shower. It would have done much for me to see the tall man in one of Jasna's dresses, but I knew he was right when he said that he could not fit in any of them.

Anna refused the offer of a bath because she said she did not trust Arthur enough to leave him alone with the beautiful precept. She did accept a deep blue robe to change into. It looked silky enough when she took it into her hands that I knew my skin would crawl if I so much as touched it.

That made me even sadder than I already was.

Being close to her was one of the few things that might have made me feel better and I would have to suffer the torturous fabric if I wanted to do it.

I agreed to both things.

"I gave her blue because she seems to be very strong willed, what color should I give you?" Precept Jasna asked herself as she riffled through her closet.

Though he was hidden behind the door and dead, It still felt like Blutmalir was staring at me through the thin wood that concealed his alcove.

"Red. It's a good color on her." Arthur said through mouthfuls of buttered bread.

Precept Jasna pulled out a red robe that was the same cut and hem as the one she had given Anna and held it up to me. "No, her skin is so pale, it would just wash her out."

I had flinched away when the silky fabric had almost touched me and Jasna noticed. "Why does it matter? We are just going to be in here, right?

"Not silk then either." She had said as she turned back around.

Anna's voice echoed out from the other room she had gone into to change. "She hates it. Anything that feels slick she won't wear."

Arthur rolled his eyes and shook his head at the sound of his sister's voice.

"How about a dark green with your black hair? It's just a shirt but it's big enough to fit you like a dress." Jasna tried for the second time.

I reached past her and took what I wanted to wear from its hanger.

It was not a maiden's dress like I used to run around the manor in, but it was close enough. The sleeves were long, it did not open in the front, and it was white.

When I pulled it free, something else fell to the ground at our feet and Jasna picked it up before I could think to move.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" I started to give her a weak apology.

She waved me off. "Stop, I should thank you really. I have been meaning to throw this out but I keep forgetting."

I had seen the fallen dress before.

All of the rips and gashes in it were from when my familiar had given me a chance to escape from a much less friendly Jasna. Come to think of it, when I had been drowning in The River Eae, she had been nothing like she had been since Alexei had sent for her.

"Why are you different?"I asked, still too cold inside to care about seeming rude. I pulled the white dress I had taken to my chest and held it like it was the only thing keeping me from falling down.

"I blame it on my parents, but something tells me that you mean something more specific." Jasna said as she put the ruined dress back in the closet.

"When I have been around you before, you weren't this-" I started.

"Nice?" She cut me off with a smile.

I spoke before I could think of a reason not to. "Motherly."

"Ah, well." She said through a sigh.

The corners of her mouth turned down and her shoulders slumped just enough for me to notice it.

I had said something upsetting.

Just as quick as I had seen it, her smile returned. "This is the best day I've had in quite awhile. I'm sorry if I have ever been cold to you."

Anna came back from the second room wearing her blue robe. "You still haven't bathed? We're gonna be up all night if you keep standing around."

"Do you ever leave her alone?" Arthur yelled through yet another mouth full of food.

Jasna moved her eyes between the siblings several times, laughing all the while. "The two of you should come around more often. You remind me of two brothers I used to babysit."

I knew that I knew she had been a babysitter, but I did know how. That meant it was from a memory. Somewhere in the countless hours I had spent in my own mind, I had learned that one of Lun's precepts had once watched someone's children.

"I'm not sure if you just called me a boy, a child, or both." Anna said as I walked to the bathroom and shut the door behind myself.

The shower worked just like one in Anna and I's quarters, but the stone it was made of was far rougher than I was used to. I undressed and made the water as hot as I could before getting in. The steam made my breath thick in my chest and my toes stung from the sudden warmth, but none of it felt like I thought it would.

In all honesty, I thought I would fall apart and begin to cry again, but my tears did not join the warm water washing down my face.

They never came at all.

In my first moment alone since I had been abandoned, it was not sorrow that took me, it was anger.

I could take Alexei's silence. All the leaning against walls and expressionless staring did not bother me all that much. Even the fact that he could hear every breath I took through however many walls separated us did not make me resent him.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

But, he had left me.

Anna and I could not take a walk without him stalking through the shadows behind us, but the first time something dangerous actually happened, I was no longer important.

What was worse than that, what truly made me wish to bring my bright blue cord to bear against my guard was that I was nearly certain he had lied to me.

If Azeralphane wasn't real, if The Blue Death was truly a myth, then who was attacking the gatekeepers? What had brought the rain down during the new moon ball? Who had destroyed the theater in Hymneth and disappeared Sorceress Gell?

There were far more reasons for me to believe that The Walking Storm was real and haunting the mountains around Lun Arcancil than there were reasons not to.

That could only mean that Alexei had looked me square in my eyes and lied.

All of those things brought tension and rage into my body, but what finally forced me to strike out blindly and crack my knuckles against the rough stone of the shower was that everything was my fault.

If I had just stayed in Erosette, I would have never known any of the things that were making me grind my teeth in anger. If I had been happy with what I had in the manor, I would have never met Tana or known what it was like to have to be Ire. If I had just stayed silent when The Mothers asked me what I wanted, Jasna would not have reminded me of my mother and I would not have been in so much pain from missing her.

If I had stayed with my mother, I could have been myself all of the time, and that felt worth more than anything I had learned at Lun.

There was all manner of soaps and scented oils in the precept's shower, but I was so mad that I could not bring myself to bathe. I stood under the water and fumed until my skin became splotchy red from the heat. I dried off with a towel that hung on the wall because I couldn't be bothered to find a clean one. If I had looked in the mirror and seen Ire staring back at me, I likely would have shattered it, so I kept my eyes away from myself.

When I left the bathroom in the white dress I had taken from Jasna's closet, I walked into what looked like a group of old friends.

Jasna and Anna were laughing so hard that their faces were as red as my water warmed skin.

"You just walked in naked?" Anna wheezed as she wrapped her arms around her stomach.

Arthur's arms were crossed over his chest and he wore a furious scowl, but the light in his eyes was enough for me to see that he was not actually mad. "How was I supposed to know that stripping to the waist meant taking your shirt off? My waist is in the middle."

That sent Jasna and Anna into another fit of laughter that sent both of them to their backs. Where there had been only one bottle of wine when I had left, there were three then, and I knew that had something to do with how hard they were laughing.

Arthur glanced over to where I stood next to Blutmalir's covered corpse and his eyes went wide.

"Oh, uhm, Ire," He stammered with both his hands smacking against the top of his head. "Something happened to your hair!"

Anna's eyes snapped open. She rolled her head back and looked at me upside down before the same shocked look that her brother wore spread across her face.

Jasna was the last to look at me, but it was not until I peeked back into the bathroom and saw myself that I realized the grave mistake I had just made.

Autumn was in the mirror.

Ire had been washed down the drain.

I had shown my true self to Jasna and not even realized what I had done.

The downy haired precept waved me over with a strange look in her eyes. "Come sit, it must be awfully draining for you to wear a glamor for so long."

"A glamor? What? No. Something is wrong with your water. The grandmaster says that there are metals that can turn your skin green. Something like that must have happened." Arthur declared and pounded his fist on the table.

One of the bottles of wine tipped over, but before it could spill, a waft of sky blue power pushed it back up and balanced it once again.

"Stop, Arthur. She knows," Anna sighed as she rolled onto her hands and knees. It was a shaky effort, but she eventually managed to stand up and place herself between Jasna and I. "And if that is a problem, she should say something now and save us all some time."

I did not know what Anna meant by that, but I believed her.

It said much about her that she felt no fear at the thought of staring down one of the stronger sorceresses she had ever met and telling her what to do.

"I have seen her like this before, and nothing has come of it. Is that not proof enough?" Jasna asked, seemingly taking no offense to Anna's defense of me.

They all looked at me, and it took a long moment for me to realize it was my turn to speak.

"She has. During the trial, after I found my blue. My glamor faded and she was the first to find me." I sighed, still remembering how Alexei had silenced her and she had listened to him without question.

"And you aren't curious about why she is wearing one?" Anna demanded.

"I have told you, you all are safe here. Alexei has given me his word that it is better if I do not know, and there is very little that I trust more than that. So, I do not need to know." Jasna said as simply as if she was talking about the weather.

Anna stared back at me and shrugged her shoulders before taking me by the hand. "What I need to know is what happened between you and Rhiannon."

"Hey." I said as I squeezed her hand. I had made a promise that we would not use her name unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Sorry. The Mother in Red." Anna corrected herself.

Arthur did not answer his sister as we sat down around the table. All the tall man did was stare at me and grin.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked.

"Sorry. I'm just happy to see you. It's been too long." Arthur said as he made a show of covering his eyes with his hand.

Anna reached over and pushed her brother. "Answer my question or I am going to tell Ma that you flashed two women."

"They were healers," Arthur groaned. "I already told you everything. I was there for like a month. I trained, sparred, read, and ate. When it was time for me to go to the enclave, I left."

"What happened before you left? You know you can't lie to me." Anna said with her finger jabbed into Arthur's chest.

Arthur swatted it away with one massive hand. "Fine, but it's not a big deal, alright? The Mother in Red asked me if I would join her house. She wanted me to be one of her knights."

"And you said no? I've seen her," Anna turned to me and planted a kiss on my cheek before she continued. "I love you, but I don't even think I could turn her down if she asked me."

Arthur's cheeks blushed bright red. "I didn't tell her no. I told her I couldn't."

"Why?" Anna demanded as the two of them broke into a full on hand fight.

Arthur won, and there was frustration in his voice when he spoke again. "You know why. If I am going to be her knight. I can't be anyone else's."

"Ahh, I see." Precept Jasna sighed and clapped her hands.

"See what?" I asked.

"The two of you are together," She said as she raised one of the bottles of wine to her lips and pointed at Anna and I. "But you seem close to both of them in very different ways."

She brought her finger to the still blushing Arthur and drank.

"The two of you are siblings, but I could not understand the relationship between you and Ire." She continued.

She drank again.

"But I see now that you wish to be her knight." She said as she wiped her mouth on her long sleeve.

There was something in her eyes that reminded me of when I had upset her by the closet.

The Jasna I had met before returned and suddenly Blutmalir was no longer the scariest thing in the room. "Do you understand what that means? Do you truly know what being someone's knight entails?"

"He doesn't. None of us do." Anna answered for her brother.

"You will no longer be yourself. Once you take the oath, her will becomes yours. You will not be able to so much as sit down if she does not wish you to. It is not a matter of obeying her. You will be unable to disobey her. If she dies or no longer wishes for your accompaniment, you will live every day of your life feeling like part of you has been taken. Becoming a knight is no small commitment, squire, it is a working that rivals the greatest that have ever been performed. You must know this if you are set on pursuing it." Jasna explained with none of the good humor that had graced her only moments before.

No one spoke.

I knew none of that.

When Arthur said he would be my knight, I imagined us traveling around chaos and playing points, not taking a part of him or making him obey me.

"Did you know that?" Anna asked in barely more than a whisper.

Arthur's smile had faded and died.

Our eyes met as he gave his sister the answer he had asked for. "Yes. It was the first thing I asked about when I arrived at the enclave."

Jasna furrowed her eyebrows. "And you are still willing to bind yourself to her?"

The tall man's smile came back to life. "I would do it right now if she asked me to."

Tears fell from Anna's eyes and I really didn't understand why.

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