Not long after Reese and I wormed our way back through the pale blue confines of Radomir's pass, we ran straight into the backs of the maidens in front of us.

  Unlike my first time in the narrow cave, I had let her go first.

  So taken by the icy light of the crystals and her endless questions about Sam, neither of us noticed the procession of precepts and maidens come to a halt.

  I apologized for both of us, but none of them seemed to notice that we had collided with them.

  There focus was entirely held by what surrounded us.

  Small mountains of upturned snow rose high up the trunks of the evergreens on either side of us. Broken ends of downed limbs jutted out of the mess of shattered wood and scattered green needles. Great gashes tore through the limbless trunks and their torn loose tops hung down toward the valley floor we stood in.

  All three precepts stepped up the snowy inclines and turned back to us. Bellum held a finger against her lips, a quiet gesture to command each of us to fall silent. Shanti pushed back her too long sleeves and held her palms out to tell us to stop walking. Jasna peered down at us and her sky blue eyes made us obey the others.

  There was visible tension in their postures and that unsettling sight sent a worried murmur through the maidens.

  "Why did we stop?" Reese called out, evidently not sharing in everyone else's concern.

  Precept Bellum brought her hand up and snapped her steely eyes towards us. "There is a phantom bear ahead."

  "Unless any of you wish to be eaten alive by something you cannot see, be quiet." Precept Jasna whispered harshly.

  Precept Shanti finished rubbing her eyes and gave a mildly disapproving glance at Jasna. "Be quiet, please. Master Alexei will lead it away from us as we carry on."

  I had seen no trace of my one eyed guard since he had seemingly vanished into thin air at the final resting place of the arrogant tree. Not so much as a single white hair or a glimpse of his ever present swords.

  "I thought they were making up the bear things to scare us." Reese whispered to me.

  I thought they had lied about the existence of whatever a phantom bear actually was to have an excuse for Alexei to accompany me.

  Ruiner. The word appeared in my mind at the sight of the damage. Whatever had torn through the forest was much more destructive than I had been when my new power had intoxicated me.

  "Most of you should have learned how to dampen your footsteps at your primaries. If you cannot, walk softly until we reach the next rise." Precept Bellum instructed with her hands clasped behind her back.

  "Have you been taught how to do that?" Reese whispered again.

  I shook my head in denial. "I've never been to school before."

  "Shit, we can't both be dumb." She said aloud.

  The maidens ahead of us looked back before parting to let someone through. By their expressions, the sheepishness in their eyes, I couldn't help but fear that a precept was coming to punish her boisterousness.

  It was not Shanti, Jasna, or Bellum that appeared from the crowd.

  It was Maiden Tana.

  She wore nothing but the tiny white dress and woolen coats that we all did except for her necklace. Its blue stone swung against her chest from its silver thin silver chain and the light of her aura pooled blue underneath her bare feet. There was no sound from the snow as she walked over it, her movement was perfectly quiet.

  If I had known we would be allowed to break the rules and suffer no repercussions like she had, I would have worn my necklace to the trial.

  The all too pretty maiden stepped to Reese. With her voice so quiet that it could barely be called a whisper and so full of anger it could have burned me if she was any closer, she spoke. "Some of us have reasons to live. I will not allow you to put us all in danger by being too thick to know when to shut your mouth."

  Reese made no attempt at whispering. "You put yourself in danger by coming back here."

  "Are you threatening me?" Maiden Tana seethed as she brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen down onto her face.

  "Maiden Tana?" Precept Bellum whispered from where she had suddenly appeared behind the honey haired maiden. The old sorceress's voice alone was enough to quickly snap Tana's expression from anger to fear.

  All of the color drained from Tana's face as she turned around silently and the aura that pooled at her feet dimmed. "Yes, Precept Bellum?"

  "I would expect that the gifted daughter of Pure Tana would wish to be at the front of this callithump instead of hiding at the back of it." Precept Bellum whispered, her grey eyebrows knit together in a tight knot.

  "They-" Tana started, gesturing back to Reese and I with her hand.

  "Shhh," Precept Bellum hushed her. "Go join Precept Jasna at the point. You will do yourself a service if she becomes familiar with you."

  Tana hung her head and muttered a quiet agreement as she walked back through the parted maidens without making a sound.

  "If I had any money, I would pay you to do that to her once an hour." Reese laughed, her face alight with joy.

  "Shhh," Precept Bellum turned and hushed her. "She forgets it sometimes, but Spring is a good girl. If you had kept your voice down like we asked you to, she would not have come storming back here."

  "You're right." Reese whispered and put her hands on her hips. She unfocused her eyes like some great realization had struck her, but she gave me a glance out of the corner of her eye that told me it was not genuine.

  "Phantom bears are no laughing matter. If the two of you cannot keep your voices down, I will separate you, understood? Precept Bellum asked us quietly, the steel in her eyes telling me that she meant what she said.

  "Yes, Precept Bellum." We said in unison.

  "Good girls. Maiden Reese, when we return to Lun, collect your things at meet me at the stairs. Precept Cherith will escort you back to Hymneth." The old sorceress said as she left us where we stood amongst the watching maidens.

  It was not long after that we left the valley of bear born destruction behind us. Most of the maidens that had not passed the trial walked with iridescent power dampening the sound of their footsteps in the once again deep snow. The woolen coats that the precepts had given us fought off some of the cold that had cut into me on the way too The River Eae. The sky was still grey, the wind still whipped my long hair around, and my little white dress was still much too thin, but the way back felt altogether different than the journey to the trial had.

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  Without the impossibility of splitting my mind and the absolute necessity to do so weighing on my shoulders, lightness had returned to me. In the place of all the fear and frustration, my excitement for being a student at The Mother in Blue's school had returned.

  Like the way that Arthur played points, I had carefully kept any thoughts that would ruin my excitement at arms length.

  There were many times that I could not understand why Anna loved me the way she did, but that did not change the fact that she did. The Mother in Red's own self professed love did not make sense, but the way she had treated me had driven off my doubts. I had opened the channel in my right palm without any knowledge as to how I had done it, but The Mothers had still needed to seal it closed like they had my navel.

  I did not know how I had turned my soul blue and manifested it. To begin to think about it was enough to make my head hurt. Regardless, I had taken the silver charms that I still held in my hand by way of my bright blue cord and my lack of understanding did not change that.

  I had done all I could do. Considering that what I had done should have been impossible, I would leave the why and how for later.

  The maidens in front of us parted as they passed something of interest in the snow. Reese and I came to it and it took me far too long to release what I was seeing.

  Paw prints, each tipped with the shape of terribly long claws, ran across the path the precepts were leading us down. They were so wide that I could have sat down crossed legged in the center of any of them and my knees would not have crossed their edges. The broken limbs and torn trunks of the evergreens the prints led to could have only been made by the same thing that had created the small valley we had stopped in before.

  "Do you know what a phantom bear is?" I asked Reese as I made to follow the footsteps of all the other maidens and circle around the massive tracks.

  Reese did not answer. She crossed right through the middle of the tracks and disturbed their impression with her own. The chocolate eyed maiden had not spoken since Precept Bellum had told her that she would be escorted back to Hymneth.

  I pulled my coat tight around me as a gust of wind battered against me and placed my hand on her back. "Are you well?"

  "What do you mean?" She asked, shaking her head and looking over at me.

  "You aren't really good at being quiet," I said, hoping that she would not become upset with me. I swallowed and continued speaking nervously. "You didn't even notice the bear tracks."

  Reese looked at me for a long moment before she responded. "Who names somebody Ire anyways?"

  It was my turn to shake my head. "What?"

  "It's a terrible name and doesn't fit you at all. It's like if my name was Loud. Who would name you that?" Reese demanded as we lowered ourselves to crawl under an impassible wall of fallen trees.

  "Someone who does not like me very much at all." I answered after having to think about her question for not very long at all. The cold ground forced a shudder through my body when my hands and feet met it.

  We had done the same in the opposite direction the morning before. The knowledge I had gained in regards to moving trees all but confirmed that the precepts could have cleared them from the path but chose not to.

  "Got it," Reese said from where she crawled behind me. "You've got mother problems like I do."

  The memory of Mother Gwyn hunting me in the shape of a monstrous spider came to me. I thought of when Azza had been caught in her afterglow and would have killed me if the unspidered Gwyn had not come to my defense. Each of The Nine Mothers looming around me when I had been laying flat on a stone table, that had happened more times than I could remember. Lastly, I thought of Rhiannon and how I had been convinced by my previous punishments that her kindness was deceit.

  I did not think that my new friend had the same issues I did, I sincerely hoped she did not, but I had issues nonetheless. In that, I found that I could speak to her honestly.

  "More than you will ever know," I stopped crawling and laughed. "Is that why you have fallen silent? Your mother is in Hymneth?"

  Reese rammed into the back of me and sent me sprawling out on the other side of the wall of fallen evergreens in a spray of snow.

  "What's left of her is. Sorry for pushing you, I really thought I was going to have a life here." The chocolate eyed maiden said as she appeared above me and helped me back to my feet.

  "I understand. I get violent when I am angry too." I told her as we both dusted the snow off of each other.

  "You? Not a chance. You seem more like a cry when you're angry sort." Reese disagreed.

  "I do that too," I said with a little laugh. "What are you going to do?"

  Reese fell silent for another long moment as we continued back towards the school.

  "Well, The Mother in Orange doesn't have a school for some reason. It's The Circle of The Nine Mothers, you would think if one of them has something, all of them would. But, whatever. Precept Shanti says that there are several Sorceresses that might take me as an apprentice, but she has to get in touch with them first. So, I don't know. I have to wait around in Hymneth until somebody comes calling for me." Reese said in one long breath.

  I wanted to ask about her mother again. I wanted to know how she had come to Lun Arcanicil in the first place. There were an uncountable amount of things I wanted to know, but I was so terrified that I would offend her or say something wrong that I did not speak at all.

  After what felt like a much shorter time than the way there had, the evergreens fell away from the timeless grey sky and the front gates of Lun Arcanicil came into my sight. Its opalescent moon was split and its black iron shapes hung open to reveal nothing. Behind the glamor that I knew concealed the dark shape of the school would be the courtyard and the long halls that framed it.

  Reese and I stepped through them arm in arm, finding the cold even easier to keep away if we stayed close to one another.

  “I want to step on the stairs again before I go. I’ve never seen anything like them. I've never heard anything like them." She said as the greyscale stones of Lun winked into existence in front of us.

  The tents from the priming were no longer there to obscure it, but the pattern of the square stones underneath my boots had entirely too many maidens atop it for me to make out what it was.

  “Stairs?” I asked. My eyes wandered through the glass on my left. The hall filling serpent skeleton had not slithered away in my absence and still hung clear in the arched windows.

  In mere moments, I would step through the doors of Lun for the first time.

  If Reese had not been holding me against her, I would have been powerless to stop myself from breaking into a full on sprint.

  “The ones right through the front doors? The ones you couldn’t miss if you were blind?” Reese responded.

  “I’ve never seen them.” I answered honestly, too caught in my own thoughts to realize what I had just said.

  She stopped in her tracks and pulled her arm from mine. “I knew it! You've never seen them because you didn't come inside after the priming. I looked all over for you, I would know!"

  I froze and tried desperately to come up with some lie that would explain away my absence and ignorance.

  "If you could see your face right now," She pushed me and laughed. "I don't care. Keep your secrets, I don't need them to like you."

  The sound of footsteps crunching fast over the snow approached where we had stopped and drew Reese's eyes away from me.

  Alexei, his hands held behind his back and walking much faster than his usual pace, reached us. "Maiden Ire, come with me."

  My heart sped to a nervous pace at my guards words and my breaths began to come thin. I had known the whole way back from The River Eae that I would have to say goodbye to my new friend soon, but that time had come much too quickly.

  She was leaving.

  I was being called away.

  There would be no other time.

  "I-" I started to say to Reese.

  "Stop," The chocolate eyed maiden interrupted me and held her hand to my face. "You only ever tell someone goodbye if you are never going to see them again."

  In that moment, with Alexei standing right there, I found so many things I wanted to say to her. She had checked on me the first time she had seen me. When Tana had been being pointlessly mean to me, she had come to my defense. If it had not been for her, I would have never left the safety of my blanket in the tent. I would have never willed my soul to turn blue and passed the trial. The sheer weight of it all brought tears to my eyes and I had to swallow before I could try and speak again.

  Reese didn't let me. "I'll be in Hymneth for a few days at least and you are going to come see me. Whatever you're about to say now, you can say then. Okay?"

  "Okay." I croaked, unable to keep my cheeks dry.

  Without another word, she left and joined with the other maidens.

  Alexei gave me the time I needed to collect myself.

  "Are we going home now?" I sniffled, accepting that my first steps through the front doors of Lun would have to wait.

  "No," The white haired man said simply. "The Mothers have gathered. I am to take you to them."