I had never died before.

  Through the memories of others, I had killed a sorcerer and felt what it was like to be killed by the lich. I knew that my death, when it came, would mean the end of many wonderful things that I would do almost anything to protect. In truth, the notion of ending, of not getting to be with Anna or anyone else I loved, was so terrifying that I could hardly think of it.

  Even so, there was a long moment after I met The Mother in Blue’s ocean eyes that I wished for my short life to end.

  Something was broken inside me. Not only had I been born with an insatiable curiosity and tendency to cause myself trouble, but I had been born without the part of someone’s mind that made them capable of not exposing themselves to every one they met.

  Anna, Arthur, two of the guards, two more of the guards, Alexei, and The Mother in Blue. All of them had been subject to my witless exposures.

  Anna did not count. She had seen me in ways that went far deeper than my skin. We spent so much time being so close to one another she could have painted what I looked like down to the scars on my thighs.

  Arthur, along with the first two guards, had only seen up my dress and all of them had been decent enough to look away immediately.

  Driskt and Daphne, the second set of guards that had seen more of me than I wished they had, were forgettable. All they had seen was a broken girl who had been unable to care that her bandages did not cover her chest.

  All Alexei had cared about when he had come up the stairs to my unnecessary defense was Sam. Anna had covered me with a blanket fast enough that I doubted the white haired man would have been able to see anything if he wished to, and I knew he didn't.

  Nami was The Mother in Blue.

  It had been her who had met me in the dark room of shallow water and It had been her who had ended Azza’s punishment of me early. She had threatened to duel The Mother in Brown over my admittance to Lun Arcanicil. When she thought that the only way for me to gain entrance to the school she looked over, she had told me how to cheat.

  And how had I repaid her? By showing her that I was a silly little girl who was too dumb to realize someone was in her room.

  It was not just the debts that I owed her that embarrassed me. It was the undeniable truth that I could not compare with her.

  I was thin and reedy, she was well proportioned and muscular. My skin was pale and scarred, hers was rich and flawless. The way her dress split at her hip, I could never wear something like that without feeling like I was playing dress up.

  When I had been in the memories of one of The Ladies, she had seen me naked then, only it hadn’t really been me.

  Still, that should bring me some small amount of comfort, shouldn’t it? Nami had seen other girls before, it wasn’t that great of a shame, was it?

  It didn’t and it was.

  Dying would not be so bad if it meant I could stop feeling the way I did.

  After what felt like days but was more than likely less than an hour, Anna managed to convince me to come back out of the bathroom. I kept my eyes on the floor, hoping that Nami had decided to leave quietly after I had locked myself away.

  “When I first came to Lun,” She began from her place atop the mostly empty chest. “I got caught sleeping with my dress as a pillow by Precept Bellum and all the underwitches in my coven.”

  The sight of her being in our little wooden shack was unsettling in the same way the corner keeper tree had looked in Hymneth the day before. Watching take one of the pancakes that Anna had made for breakfast was even stranger. Hearing what she said and understanding what she meant was just enough to throw me into bewildered laughter.

  “What?” I asked, forgetting just who it was that I was laughing at.

  Nami chuckled and nodded as she chewed. “I don’t remember if it was my first or second cycle, I think it was the first, but anyway. We were in some forest, studying this purple fog a sorceress had left there that made people drunk if they breathed it in.”

  I sat down near the stove and took the stack of pancakes that Anna offered me.

  “It was summer and hot, but I had never been anywhere that humid. Everyone else had gone to sleep, but I couldn’t keep my eyes closed because my uniform was sweaty and sticking to my skin.” She continued, pulling her dress away from her body and fanning it as if she was in the conditions she was describing.

  I knew what she was doing. Not that it had been hard to see, but she seemed to have understood my embarrassment and was telling a story from her own life to make me feel better.

  I liked Nami, more than I should have considering who she was and what I owed her, but I did and I hoped desperately that she liked me too.

  “I used to sleep on the beach that way back home, when I got tired I would lay down wherever I was and ball up my dress like a pillow. It was nice, the sea breeze kept me cool, the sand was soft and warm, I can’t remember the last time I slept that good.”

  She crossed her legs as she ate another pancake.

  Maybe all of The Mothers weren’t unchanging statues. Listening to her story felt like all the times I had sat at my mother’s feet and done much the same thing.

  “I went to sleep easy and woke up with all of my sisters standing around me in a circle. Precept Bellum thought I had been attacked. The next night, I was so embarrassed that I ran away. It took them three weeks to find me and bring me back to Lun.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “So you just slept naked on a beach? Is that normal where you are from?” Anna asked as she gave me the last pancake she had cooked.

  “No, but considering I was the only soul on the island most of the time, I did not have to worry much about being seen,” Nami shrugged and stood. “Now, pack your things. I’ll have Alexei bring your chests later today.”

  “You ran away?” I asked her, only vaguely aware she had said we were moving.

  “Several times. Sometimes I think about doing it now. But, now we all know something embarrassing about each other, so I will keep quiet if the two of you do.” She answered, offering me a hand up.

  I took it. “Yes, Mother.”

  “So, why are we being moved,” Anna asked as she came to my side. “Mother.”

  Nami narrowed her ocean eyes and reached her hands towards me. “Is that? May I?”

  I did not know what she was asking but I agreed regardless.

  She took my vial into her fingers gently and nodded to herself. “Cherith is right, Mother matters aren’t worth the trouble. You are being moved because the two of you were never meant to stay in the groundskeeper’s quarters for this long. It has been abandoned for years, I am surprised that you did not demand better accommodations after the first night.”

  We had not been there for very long, but sadness hung over my shoulders as we left the little wooden shack behind.

  Packing our things was a simple task beside the tense moments that Anna had shoved her pile of notes into her coat. Everything we had fit easily into the two chests and not long after Nami had told her story, we closed the door behind us and set off for Lun.

  I would never sit in front of the black iron stove again or sit inside the giant wash bucket of a bath. We had never even hung the lock we had purchased the day before.

  By the time we reached the front gates of the school, I had become well and truly sad.

  Then, I remembered the glamor and made a show of walking Anna across the threshold for the first time. Just like I had, she danced back and forth through the gates in disbelief at what she was seeing.

  Watching her take in the courtyard and skeleton of the great serpent hanging in the arched windows on our left brought a smile to my face.

  We came to the front doors, the massive iron and wood entrance that I had waited so long to step through, and we did, hand in hand.

  Both of us were awestruck as soon as we stepped inside.

  The dreary light that had somehow escaped through the clouds above snuck into the center of Lun. Once it was inside, it met the wide spiral of a crystalline stairwell and was transformed.

  Swells of pure sky blue, green river teal, deep ocean blue, and every other shade I knew to name shone from the steps and painted the walls with their colors. As far up as I could see and down below the stone floor, the ghostly column ran straight through the middle of Lun and looked too beautiful to be stepped on.

  It was a treasure, a wonder, something that was more than what it appeared to be.

  “I felt the same way that you two look my first time seeing it. Most do. These are the singing stairs.” Nami said as she took the first step down.

  “I don’t hear anything.” I looked down at her from where I had stopped.

  “You don’t hear stairs.” Anna said, her head turned up and her skin lustrous in the ethereal light.

  “That’s what I said. Reese said you could hear them.” I answered.

  Nami smiled as she reached back and pulled both of us onto the step she stood atop.

  Like there was a little musician in my mind that had struck a note for me and me alone, sound reverberated through me. The moment my boot touched the smooth crystal of the step, a clear bell tone rang in my ears. I covered them with my hands to try and keep the sound inside, but it faded away and left me empty.

  I stamped my foot against the light blue crystal. All that came to me was the dull click of my heel.

  Anna pulled me down to the next step and a new note came with my footfalls.

  Nami looked around and over both of her shoulders before speaking to us in a whisper. "Run down to the bottom, the notes make a song."

  We did not need any further encouragement. In a mad dash, we ran past Nami and took the singing stairs as quickly as we could.

  Midnight, slate, cobalt, sapphire, spruce, cerulean, every glowing color came with another clear note. They rang together into a serene sounding song that ended much too quickly. We came to the end of the stairs and stopped in perfect time to let the last note ring out to its natural end.

  Nami caught up with us while we were still laughing and trying to catch our breath.

  "You will find many such wonders within these walls, but the stairs are my favorite. Follow me," She said as she led us through a door that lay partially hidden behind the spiral and closed it behind us. "Your quarters are on the left, Alexei will be on the right. If anyone asks why you are not staying in the dormitory with the rest of the new moons, Maiden Ire, you will tell them that special arrangements were needed for your familiar."

  She produced two silver keys from somewhere within her thin dress and unlocked a wooden door near the end of the narrow hall we had entered. She snapped her fingers as she stepped into what was meant to be Anna and I's room.

  There was no stove, the floors were not wooden, and the only light within the space came from the lanterns that Nami had snapped to light. A fireplace stood empty on the wall opposite us with a neat stack of split logs sitting beside it. The bed, much closer to the size of the one that had been mine at the manor, lay on the right wall and what must be the bathroom was on the left.

  "The library is on this floor, I believe that you will find that very useful, Anna. Your uniforms are in the closet there, Maiden Ire, you will need to wear it for the ball tomorrow. Alexei will arrive shortly with your things and I will return around diner time to give you your schedule and show you where the dining hall is. Is there anything the two of you need?" Nami asked aloud.

  The room had no windows, it did have a door that could lock, but most importantly, it had Anna. I already missed the shack, but I had lived in worse places.

  "Does it have warm water?" I asked as I moved towards the closet. Considering I no longer knew if I could make my fireworks properly, that would be a necessity without a stove.

  Nami gave me the answer I hoped for and closed the door behind herself as she left.

  Anna went into the bathroom and I opened the door to the closet and snapped on its lights.

  Inexplicable horrors hung within it.

  “No,” I cried, backing away until I ran into the bed and then crawling up onto it. Erosette would not be far enough away from what I had seen. “It can’t be.”

  Anna came back out of the bathroom and gave me a confused look as she went to see what had horrified me.

  “Oh no,” She sighed and let her head hang down. “This is awful.”

  “We have to leave. I can’t do it. This is beyond me.” I whispered, squirming my way under the blanket of the bed and pulling it over my head.

  “Autumn, you have to be brave.” I heard her say as she shut the closet door and came to me.

  "Unfortunately for you, you have fallen in love with a coward." I cried from the safe place I had found in the woolen material.

  If bravery was what was needed from me, then I would be able to do nothing but let her down.

  Not a half hour after walking through the front doors of Lun, I would have done anything to leave it.