Anna threw me down onto the bed and I took in a desperate gasp of air.

Every part of me was shaking and slick with sweat.

Never.

Never in my life had I felt like I did then.

I meant that about all of my life, even the part I couldn't remember. Whatever The Well had done to my mind, it would not have been strong enough to make me forget that feeling.

"I think you've had enough, the last thing I need is you passing out on me." Anna laughed as she laid down beside me and brushed off the hair that clung to my brow.

I tried to shake my head and tell her no, passing out would be worth it if I could keep feeling the way I did, but all I could do was let out a low laugh.

"We've been at it for hours, you're shaking like a leaf. Catch your breath. You've never done this before." She said softly.

I laughed again and had to try very hard to keep my eyes open.

"I don't care what you say, you like it. I have never seen you blush so much." I said through a happy sigh and tried to roll myself over in her arms.

Her nose scrunched as she slid closer to save me from my failure. "Of course I do. I love seeing you like this. Something would be really wrong with me if I didn't."

I settled into her embrace and knew just how quickly I could fall asleep. If she had not been cold the way she always seemed to be, I likely would have, but getting up and crawling under the blankets sounded hard enough that I could not make myself do it.

"I almost had it." I whispered, my mind filled with flashes of perfect red and blue inside an empty white nothingness.

We had been at it for a long time.

For hours and hours I had sent myself inward and tried to grasp the red of my soul. It had always felt good when I had done it before, but doing it so many times that I had lost count it had left me in the state that I was in.

A good night's sleep, drinking, being full, nothing I had ever experienced could compare.

"I wish I could see it again," Anna said as she straightened one of my twisted up sleeves. "But I know you will get it soon. Then you'll have to make me something else to wear."

I tapped my freshly painted nail against the bird skull that hung around her neck. Hers had chipped and faded down to a single black place on her thumb, and mine had been far less warm than Rhiannon's rose red before we repainted them. "You don't get tired of it?"

"I'm so used to wearing it now that I forget most of the time, but no. Figure out how to make more of them and that's all I'll wear." She laughed as she pressed her cold fingers against my neck.

I flinched back from the chilly shock and nearly rolled off the end of the bed.

"Why did you have to say that? Now I'm not going to be able to think of anything else." I whined as I let my feet drop to the floor and tried to stand.

The too good feeling had started to fade, but I had still been pushing myself far too long to recover that quickly. Trying to not let Anna see just how weak I still was, I propped my head up on my hands and pretended that was what I had meant to do.

"Sure you will," She said as she crawled off the bed. She somehow found footing amongst the storm of papers and books that had flooded our floor before pulling a single folded note out from within my uniform jacket. "Let me help. What was the other name that Azza said when you were hiding in the wall?"

I let my head drop back down to the bed like I had actually lost consciousness.

"I told you I don't remember." I groaned into the blanket beneath me, feeling like going over everything again would literally bore me to death.

"Alright, well," Anna said slowly, drawing out the words as I heard her shuffling even more papers around. "Can you remember anything else about the gray sorceress that Ferrin said something about?"

I probably could have if I sat down and tried, but I didn't want to.

"She killed a sorcerer, married a giant, and had a baby." I muttered, repeating a much shorter version of the same thing we had gone over several times already.

Anna grew closer to me as she tried one last thing. "Your memory of when Katarina danced with the man with the clawed hands. You are sure that they were arguing about waste?"

"Yes." I grunted as I straightened my legs out beneath me on the tips of my toes.

"And Nami can't figure out how to stop whatever corruption that Katarina could?" She asked further.

I let out an intentionally loud sigh. "Yes."

The sound of her footsteps coming closer stopped suddenly.

"Maybe I should just go ask her myself. She seemed to like me alright." Anna said after a sharp exhale.

I grew quiet and still all at once.

"Maybe we should." I said as I pushed myself up and stood. It took a moment for me to be certain that I wouldn't fall back down, but when I was, I used Katarina's first step to spin myself around and look at my beloved.

She pointed at me and started shaking her head from side to side before I could get a word out. "Autumn, no. I know that look, whatever you are thinking, no. It's a bad idea."

My body spun into Katarina's second step before I knew what I was doing. Books and papers sliding wildly across the floor, I leapt forward and landed right in front of her.

"Hey! Don't-will you just-do you have any idea how long it's gonna take me to sort that all back out?"

I pressed my finger against her lips. "Shhh. Listen. You're right, we should just go ask Nami about all this. She likes both of us, what's the worst that could happen?"

Anna laughed but she did not pull away from me. "That's an even worse idea than I thought. There are so many bad things that could come from that I don't even know where to start."

"Mmm, maybe, but none of them will happen." I said putting my free hand on my hip and batting my eyes at her.

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Why not?"

"Because I know where Katarina is, so even if Nami gets mad at us, I'll use that to get out of trouble." I shrugged.

Before she could answer, I pulled my finger from her lip and kissed her on the cheek on my way to the door.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"But what about all this? It's not like we have it all figured out." She asked as she chased after me, reaching desperately to get me by my wrist before I could leave the room.

I was too fast.

"Sure we do," I laughed as the bottom of my bare feet touched the freezing floor outside of our quarters. "Jaka liked to write letters and not send them. The Mother in Blue used to keep the gatekeepers from getting sick and now Nami can't. Alexei's dad was smart enough that he had to be frozen alive. And, The Mother's send sorceresses to have babies with people so we can all be friends. There, I solved it all, let's go."

I really didn't care at all if we went and saw Nami, but I had spent far too much time near my soul to waste how good it had made me feel.

"But, you're barely wearing anything. You'll freeze, and you don't even have your glamour on." Anna argued back, standing on the room side of the doorway with her arms crossed.

I mirrored her closed off posture and shrugged. "So? I've been colder before and I don't want to be anyone else right now."

Both things were true, but that did not stop the cold from creeping in through the robe I had tied around me. Still, I could not risk going back into the room. I needed every advantage I could cling to if I wanted to beat Anna.

"And what if Alexei comes out and stops you? How do you know he's not waiting behind his door to catch you doing something that you shouldn't?" She asked with far too much confidence in her eyes.

"I guess there is really only one way to know." I said as I skipped away and left her standing in the doorway.

The excitement of running away from her carried me all the way to my absent guard's door and made me give it three sharp knocks before I ever considered that I might be making a mistake.

It had been days since what had happened in the library. I spent most of them looking over my shoulder and around every corner for a single white hair or emotionless stare.

There had been nothing.

If the thing in the black box upstairs knew that my guard was the reason I had almost forgotten to give it part of myself several times, it likely would have hated him.

"Come here, dummy. What has gotten into you?" Anna whispered harshly as she shut our door and ran over to where I stood.

I did not run from her again. "Do you think he's okay?"

Thoughts of him did not make me feel the way they did when he had abandoned me in Hymneth. Standing in front of his door, I found that I missed him.

It was not quite as strong as what I felt for Arthur, but the tall man had a special place in my heart that was only made for him.

"I don't know, but we won't be if we are caught out here like this. Let's go back, we don't have to-" Anna started and stopped as the door creaked open.

No light leaked out from Alexei's room.

After a long moment of being so scared that I could not breathe, I whispered through the crack. "Alexei?"

Nothing.

"Alexei, I'll tell you how I escaped if you say something right now." I tried.

Anna went to my right side and tried to push me back towards our quarters. "Let's go."

"He's not here." I said, as I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Anna followed me unwillingly, trying to pull me back by my robe with every step I took forward. "We shouldn't be in here, dummy. What if he comes back?"

"Then he can explain where he's been." I said, as I brought my aura to my palm and sent an azure werelight glowing up from it.

We both fell silent as we took in where Alexei lived.

There was not much.

A bedroll with a single pillow, a fireplace that was so clean it seemed like it had never seen flames, a small table in the center of the room with a long white feather atop it, and a wide chest next to the open closet that looked big enough for me to lay down inside was all there was.

Still whispering, Anna relaxed her grip. "This is going to make it harder for me to not call him a creep, who lives like this?"

"Someone sad." I sighed as I went to the chest and opened it.

Alexei did not live in the nearly empty room. The quarters we had entered belonged to whatever name he had for his mask of stone.

Bright blue light washed together with my own as I looked down at a perfect pane of my guard's aura.

"At least we know he is alive." I said as I looked past the working and saw two swords laying at the bottom of the chest.

One white as snow and the other as black as night, they were like the ones he wore on his hip, but there was far more to them. Their sheaths were brighter and darker respectively.

Every piece of metal on the white one shone like they were filled with collected light.

Every piece on the black one looked deep enough for me to sink a finger into.

I didn't like looking at them.

I didn't like being in his room.

It wasn't any colder than the hall outside, but a chill ran over me as I let the top of the chest fall back down.

"Can we go back now or do you really want to go sneaking through the school to find Nami?" Anna asked once she closed the door behind us gently.

I shook off the last of the shiver that had taken me and started towards the singing stairs. "No, but I want to see the library."

Anna caught up to me quickly. "Why? I already told you how much of a mess it is in there."

"I want to see it with my own eyes, please?" I said, stopping dead in my tracks and poking my lip out at her.

She frowned. "That's not fair. You know I can't tell you no when you do that. What about the city guards? I had to give each of them a bottle of wine just to let me peek through the door."

Without thinking, I did three things as fast as I could.

I pulled her against the wall, kissed her, and sent a little firework streaking towards the singing stairs.

My working burst in a flash of azure light somewhere near the first floor landing, but I kept kissing Anna until I heard the guard she had been so worried about go running up the stairs.

"What guards?" I asked with a wicked grin as I took her by the hand and went running towards the then unguarded library.

A hushed laughter spilled out of her as we ran and I knew that I had won fully.

"You were scary before," She whispered as we crept through the library doors. "Now that you know how to do things, you're terrifying."

That made me smile a bit wider than it probably should have.

"You weren't lying." I said as the second werelight I had made that night went sinking into the hollow middle of the ruined library.

Where there had been neat shelves filled with organized books, small tables, chairs, and all manner of other things that libraries were supposed to have, the fight between two of Katarina's children had left nothing but destruction.

The inner railing of several floors had been bent and broken. Mounds of split wood and piled books filled the floors beneath us like rolling hills. So far down that I was not willing to count how far down it was, an entire section of the floor had collapsed onto the one beneath it. Laying over it all like scattered snow was the contrasting shades of the brother's different blues.

Everything that Anna had told me was true, but I had wanted to see it and I was glad that I did.

Looking over the destruction with hand intertwined with Anna's I can only think of two things.

"I'm glad you and Arthur aren't sorceresses," I said with a little laugh before letting my mind wander back to the way out that Sam had shown me. "If you could go anywhere, see anything, where would it be?"

"Wherever you are," Anna sighed and leaned closer to me. "Maybe somewhere with a beach or a library that doesn't feel like a graveyard."

"That would be nice." I agreed.

"But I don't think we should leave, not yet at least." She added as she wrapped her arm around me.

I looked over at her. "Why?"

She shrugged against me. "I wish I knew. There's probably a dozen reasons we should and a dozen more for why we shouldn't, but it's really not the reasons. There's just, there's something in my gut that tells me we need to stay here like you promised Nami you would. I guess its-"

I bent down and pressed my ear against her middle. "I don't hear anything. You said it's in your gut, right?"

"Listen, dummy. I'm serious." She half yelled and half laughed.

I stood back up and threw my arms over her shoulders. "I know, I'm just in a good mood. We will listen to the thing that lives inside your stomach."

She rolled her eyes and I kissed her again as the werelight I had sent down the hallow faded in the darkness.

"Now," She said as we separated. "You go back to our quarters, and I'll go get us dinner before the guards come back. I doubt your little trick will work a second time."

"Me too," I said as I peeked back through the doors. "But I kind of want to find out if it will."

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