When I woke the following morning, sore from all that had happened, all of me was one cold ache.

  Blind, I reached my right arm out for Anna to pull her close, but all my hand found was an empty bed. If we had still been in Erosette, I would not have thought it strange. My bed in the manor had been much larger than what we slept on in our little wooden shack.

  I rolled onto my back with an involuntary groan. Whichever part of me I moved burned with river built soreness so I decided that my only option was to never move again.

  The snow that drifted down and melted against my cheeks did not agree with my choices.

  How is it snowing inside? I asked myself, my mind still partially fogged by the shroud of sleep. I was well aware of how little I knew about weather, but I did know that the point of sleeping inside was to keep whatever weather there was outside.

  I rubbed my eyes until the sleep released them and looked up to see a flurry of snow swirling down from the wooden boards of the ceiling. Over to the black stove, the small light of embers was all there was to be seen through the slits in its iron face.

  Anna was not beside me, her place in the sheets and blankets was just as cold as I felt. I thought that she may be in the bathroom, but still found it strange that I had not woken when she had gotten up. After so many nights comforting her after a nightmare, I had developed a certain sensitivity to her weight in the smaller bed.

  A sudden gust of wind rattled the window by the door and even more snow floated into the grey light of our quarters.

  I pushed myself up and the soreness drove a jagged shudder of breaths from my lungs.

  Anna was not in the bathroom.

  The door of the shack stood open and flat against the inside wall beside it, a gaping hole that did nothing to stop the bitter winter outside from coming in.

  Anna stood in the doorway, her bare feet only barely keeping her inside the threshold. The wind whipped her long raven hair into a black mess and pressed her bed clothes flat against her front. Violent shivers shook her body, but her arms remained flat by her sides.

  Just like when Azza had been curled atop the bench in the room of Mothers, her posture alone was enough to tell me that something was very wrong.

  “Anna?” I called to her as I forced myself to let my legs slide off the side of the bed. The floorboards were freezing when my feet met them and the cold shock was sharp enough to bring me groaning out of the bed.

  She did not answer or react to the sound of my voice. A quiet murmur came from her, much too quiet for her to be saying it to me. “No.”

  I took two quick steps over to her and called her name again as I reached for her hand.

  Another gust of wind blew the black hair back from her face.

  Her eyes were closed.

  She was still asleep.

  “Anna.” I said, pulling her from the door as I shut it and locked the winter back out

  All she did was stand there and sleep talk again. “No. Don’t.”

  I had never sleepwalked, but I had more than enough experience with waking up somewhere different than where I had closed my eyes. I was not very good at taking care of myself and knew even less about caring for another, but I brought her back to the bed as gently as I could.

  All that I knew to do was treat her how I would want to be treated.

  It was safe to say that I did not take her out into the woods and place her in a clearing surrounded by monstrous beasts or great serpents.

  Her eyes still closed and her body still shaking from the cold she had unknowingly let in, she did not resist me when I sat her on the edge of the bed.

  “Anna,” I said softly as I gently squeezed her hand. “It’s time to wake up.”

  Nothing.

  “Anna. Wake up.” I tried again, squeezing a little harder.

  Still, nothing.

  Rhiannon had left me sleeping on the floor of her armory for nearly a full day just so she would not scare me when I woke. I did not have the patience to find a sword that was longer than my body and balance it on the tips of my fingers.

  “Hey!” I said a little louder and tapped her on her shoulder.

  She tipped over and fell back limply to the bed beneath her.

  It was good for her and I that I had not tried to wake her by the door. If she had slumped down the hard wood of the floor and banged her head or bruised her body, I didn’t think I could live with myself.

  The same instance that her head bounced off the bed, her eyes snapped open and she threw herself back up in wide eyed panic.

  “Don’t Go!” She cried.

  Her sudden waking and the high pitch of her voice tipped me back just the way I had done her and I fell ass first onto the floor.

  Anna took a series of short and panicked breaths before she pushed her back from her face and saw me truly.

  “Autumn? What are you doing out of bed? Did you just fall? Why is it so cold in here?” An avalanche of questions crashed out of her mouth as she slid off the bed and came to me on the floor.

  Her first thought after waking was asked after my well-being. I couldn’t say I was surprised, it had been that way almost since the first time I had met her.

  “You had the door open,” I told her honestly. “I think you were sleepwalking.”

  “What?” She asked, her eyes finding all the snow that had settled onto the floor of our quarters.

  I shook my head in agreement with my own words. “I woke up and you weren’t in bed. It was snowing inside and I’m smart enough to know that snow is supposed to happen outside so I opened my eyes and you were just standing there.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A violent shiver shook her back up to her feet. She pulled the top quilt off of the bed and brought it down over my shoulders before she made for the split wood that was piled neatly in an iron frame.

  “Were you having another nightmare?” I asked as I made the slow climb back to my feet.

  “Yeah, but it’s just like the other morning. We’re in a new place, I’m just getting used to it,” She answered as she opened the face of the stove and fit several of the logs into it. “Hey, your mom was acting really weird last night, right?”

  She was trying to distract me. It almost worked, my mother had acted strange after she had walked me home.

  “You were saying things. You’ve never done that before.” I said, keeping my focus despite her attempt to waver it.

  She gave the dying coals within the stove a handful of deep breaths and the orange light of the reborn fire colored her face. “Name another time your mom didn’t jump at an opportunity to drink wine and tell stories. She’s up to something.”

  “You were saying 'No.' and 'Don’t.' You shouted 'Don’t go.' I know you have nightmares, I know what they are about most of the time, but have you ever sleepwalked before?” I continued, the small flakes of snow that littered the floor bringing momentarily cold to the bottom of my feet as I went to her.

  “No. Not that I know of, but I didn’t know I was doing it today so, whatever. What do you want for breakfast?” She sighed as she turned away from me and went to our small cabinet.

  “For you to stop trying to change the subject,” I said and threw the blanket off my shoulders and around her. I pulled her tight against me and caught the pinky of her right hand in the fingers of my own. “We made a promise that we wouldn’t keep things from each other.”

  “Hey! That hurts.” She cried.

  I did not release my hold despite the shame that filled my heart at causing her pain. “Then keep your promise and I won’t break it.”

  Anna’s dark eyes narrowed and she spoke in a low voice. “You wouldn’t.”

  “So? The fact that I would threaten you at all should make you realize how worried I am.” I admitted. She was right, there was literally no reason why I would willingly break her finger.

  “Shit, I’m sorry.” She sighed and stopped fighting her blanketed restraints.

  The split wood she had placed in the stove had caught and its heat was slowly winning the war against the cold that Anna had allowed to invade our quarters. Her lean frame still shaking, I spread the blanket up over her shoulders and wrapped my arms around her. I had learned very recently just how long it took to get warm again and I wanted to give her every bit of help I could.

  “Alright, I understand that hot chocolate is just heated chocolate, but how do I do that?” I asked as I pulled her over to where our pot lay on the small countertop of our little kitchen.

  “Let me go, I’ll do it. Go lay back down, you’re cold.” Anna said as I practically dragged her with me.

  I laughed and did my best impression of her. “I’m not the one shaking out of her clothes. Shut up and let me let you tell me how to do it.”

  Making the warm drink was a relatively simple process that I made the most complicated thing we had ever done by refusing to let Anna go while we did it. Despite my ridiculous insistence on us being bound until we spilled the hot chocolate into our two cups, it had made Anna laugh and the drink was only a little burnt.

  The stove had taken its victory from the cold and melted all of the snow that had been blown inside by the time we sat down in front of it. I waited for Anna to take a sip and pretend that she didn’t taste the bitterness that I had made a face at when I drank my own before I spoke.

  “Your nightmare.” I said, crossing my legs and placing my steaming cup on the floor.

  “We really don’t have to talk about this. You know I have them. This one was just a little worse.” She said, not meeting my eyes.

  “A little worse? If I had not woken up you would be just wandering out there right now.” I said, not angry with her but angry nonetheless.

  She forced herself to take another sip of her hot chocolate. “It’s not a big deal. They’re just dreams. I don’t have them very often anyways.”

  “I don’t want you to have them at all, you should sleep like a baby every night.” I scowled down at the floor. All I could think to do was to charm her to sleep, but that was not real help.

  The beckoning of the lich that morning in the boarding house had left a mark on her just the way Azza’s punishment had left scars on my skin.

  “You don’t need to worry about it. You do enough already when I have them,” Anna said, placing her cup on the then warm floorboards and reaching out to me. “We still have to talk about what happened. How did you figure out the glamor thing? I knew you would, but I want to know the specifics.”

  Before my mother had made her all too quick leave the night before, I had told her and Anna both of The River Eae and the bitter deeps. They learned all about Tana and Reese, but my mother had excused herself because of a previous engagement right when I reached the part where Sam had brought me Anna’s note.

  It was not the way I had imagined it, but I could still try and shock her with my reveal.

  I took her hands in mine. “I didn’t. I never got any closer to splitting my mind than I did while we were trying here.”

  Anna had threatened Azza multiple times after I had returned from my punishment. She was a mortal and had no power to speak of that could compare to The Mother in Brown’s, but I had believed her. Even when The Lady in Red had come after me at the bridge to Erosette, Anna had tried her best to come to my defense.

  I would do the same for her.

  Without thought, I brought my aura to my left palm and azure light began to shine within our held hands.

  Anna stared silently, her eyes darting from my new light to my eyes and back again.

  “I don’t know how, but you knew I wouldn’t fail,” I began, my cord coming slowly out of me and gently around her wrist. “Even when I had given up, you were out buying things because you knew we would be here.”

  The little white hairs on her arm stood on end everywhere my working touching.

  I continued, my voice ringing with confidence. "I know you cannot keep yourself from having nightmares. I know they worry you just as much as they do me, but I can put an end to them. Look at what I have learned to do, look at what your guidance and training has brought to me."

  Just like the pearl pink ribbons that held the bird skull around her neck, I coiled my bright blue aura up her arm and over her the shoulders of her new pajamas. She had bought us matching pairs of long sleeved shirts and loose pants. Hers were black as night and mine were snow white. With nothing but my will, I braided my cord over hers and took its end in my other hand, looping us together like I had with the blanket.

  "It's so cold." Anna laughed through an open mouthed smile, her voice and eyes full of wonder.

  "I am so much more than I was when we saw the lich. I am so much more than I was because of you." I said. The fingers of both my hands rolled against the light of my soul and I brought her closer to me.

  "Your eyes." She whispered.

  Where there had once been red reflecting back at me in her dark eyes, the piercing shade of my blue shone in its place.

  "We will leave. We will leave Zenithcidel and set out into chaos. I do not know how and I do not know how long it will take, but we will hunt that decrepit thing down. I will slay it in front of you and present its skull as a gift to celebrate the end of your fear." I spoke, pushing my power into every word that left my lips.

  "You would do that for me? Give up going to school and run away again?" She whispered.

  Even then, she had no doubt that I could do the things I had said I would.

  "There is nothing that could keep me from it." I said, meaning every word.

  She laughed again and ran her hand over my power. "You know, you're kind of scary sometimes."

  "Aren't monsters supposed to be scary, even if they are little?" I asked her.

  Anna shivered and brought herself to me under the light of my working. "Running away can wait for now. You've got a new toy and I want to figure out just how cool it is. That's gonna take awhile. And, I need to go to town. Plus, I'm pretty sure you are going to have a schedule full of classes and shit soon. Do sorceresses have gym?"

  A long moment of comfortable silence settled over us as I held her in the cold embrace of my cord. Later, I didn't know how long, she spoke again.

  "Thank you, knowing that you would go that far for me, I. . ." She trailed off and I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was having trouble putting her feelings into words.

  I knew what that felt like. She had helped me out of many such moments.

  "Why do we," I corrected her earlier mistake. "Need to go back to Hymneth?"

  "Its probably best if we put another lock on the door."