Precept Mon Zetta led me down the decorated hall nearly a full hour after I should have been in the ballroom.

  “Hustle, Maiden Ire, or you will always be one.” She rasped back at me, her rough voice echoing down the hall and back again.

  I did as I was told, quickening my steps and cringing with every new wave of agonizing discomfort that brushed against my skin.

  “Do not submit to her so easily. She is a teacher, not your master.” Sam growled from where he padded beside me.

  I did not respond. My familiar had been in a terrible mood since our move and all of me was too consumed by the slow torture that had been brought on by my uniform.

  It had taken me all day, but I had finally fought Anna to a standstill with my refusal to put on the fabric harnessed horror of my uniform. That wonderfully comfortable time had ended with Precept Mon-Zetta’s sharp knocks on our door.

  It was not the long wool stockings that ended just above the scars on the top of my thighs that tortured me. Nor was it the grey leather gloves that covered my hands. I had not been able to wear either pair of the laced black boots, they had been much too large for my feet. I would have liked the coat, if it had not been pressing the silken fabric of the dress closer to my skin.

  Knee length, with a high collar and long sleeves, it was made of deep blue silk and made me want to rip out of my uniform every time it slipped against my skin.

  If it meant I would never have to wear the dress again, I would willingly return to Azza’s glass pyramid and thank her for the opportunity as she buried me alive once again.

  That could not happen, no matter how bad I wished for it.

  There were five more identical uniforms in Anna and I’s quarters. The moment I saw them hanging in the closet, I had known that coming to Lun Arcanicil had been a mistake of the gravest nature.

  Six silken dresses were far too many for them to only be used on formal occasions. I suspected that I would have to wear them anytime I did anything in Lun and I had never heard of a more terrible fate.

  The ascending song of the singing stairs had not brought me joy the way its descending opposite had the day before. All of the iridescent fabric that shimmered down the length of the hall in great arcs could not be enjoyed. Even the muffled sound of conversation that leaked through the wide wooden doors did not stir my heart.

  “Those aren’t the right shoes.” Precept Mon-Zetta said, looking down at my cuffed brown boots disapprovingly as we stopped before the doors.

  “They were too small.” I muttered, unable to meet her eyes.

  Everything about the severe looking Precept intimidated me.

  Her blue black hair had been brushed back behind her ears and revealed her sharp features. She wore the icy blue Precept’s cloak that hung down just past her shoulders. The same sapphire color as her eyes and trimmed in silver, she wore a courtly dress that honed her shape into a jagged edge.

  Starting at the wrist of her left arm, variegated bands of twisted fabric were tied and stacked into a sleeve of every color I knew existed. The arm she was missing was covered with a sleeve that fit what remained like it had been tailored for it.

  I wanted to tell her of my discomfort, to tell her that I would die a slow death if I had to take another step, but the words that came from my mouth were not the ones I meant to say.

  “Why do you wear that on your arm?” I asked her, and tried to suck what I had said back in my mouth with a sudden inhale.

  “It's supposed to be so maidens like you don’t stare at and ask stupid questions, but that’s about all you maidens can do isn’t it.” Precept Mon-Zetta said, her hand going to the shoulder of her missing arm.

  “No, no, no,” I said quickly, shaking my head as heat came to my cheeks and I pointed at the colorful ties. “I meant the bands on your arm.”

  “Be on time when you come to my class and I will tell you." She said as she opened a normal sized door on my left and swept Sam and I into it.

  Precept Seram met us as soon as the door clicked shut.

  "There you are! Oh! And you look so nice in your uniform, Maiden Ire. It makes me reminisce about my own new moon ball. Join with the others, we have kept them all waiting long enough," The pale pink haired precept bubbled as she led me to to the other end of the small room. "Your familiar's name is Sam, correct?"

  "Samsara." Sam growled his low pitched correction.

  "Spotless," Precept Seram agreed with a clap of her white gloved hands. Like Mon-Zetta, the perfectly proper precept still wore her icy blue cloak. It was all that remained the same from how she had been the morning I had first met her. Her dress was the same blue silk as the one that tortured me, but it fit her modestly. Bringing out her clean lined beauty without clinging to her slight shape, it looked perfect on her. "Underwitch Maletta will help you time your entrance when your name is called."

  "What is all this for?" I asked, a grimace on my face and the sound of the waiting school filling my ears.

  “To make your introduction of course! Everyone waiting beyond this room has been named an Underwitch to Lun in this way. It is also for you to make an impression on the second crescents, one of them will take you as an apprentice as a part of their cycle. That was the original meaning of underwitch, did you know that? If you apprenticed under a sorceress you were under a witch. Of course, now it’s used for any sorceress that has her color, but is that not interesting?” Precept Seram answered.

  Did Rhiannon's roses have to be marched out in front of each other for an introduction? Had Pyreme been forced to wear something that she truly hated while she was named in front of souls she had never met before?

  "Precept Seram? I am not very comfortable in this uniform." I said, unable to take the silken torture any longer.

  She looked at me from the top of my clamored hair down to the bottom of my cuffed boots. "Well, I can see why, those are not the right boots at all! Were they the wrong size? I did not get the chance to fit you in the dorm considering the arrangements that were made because of Master Samsara."

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  "It's the dress." I said, pulling at the hem around my knees to try and find some small relief.

  She reached over and straightened my jacket until its big buttons were straight down my middle. "We will find you one that fits properly tomorrow after class. Now, we really must begin. They will tear all of us apart if we make them wait any longer."

  She led me to two familiar faces at the other end of the room.

  Underwitch Maletta stood with their backs to me in quiet conversation with Maiden Tana. Both of them wore the exact same uniform as I was, and neither of them looked anything other than pretty.

  Maletta, the girl who had called me underdeveloped in the big blue tent on the morning of the priming, looked more like a Precept than a student. She wore her nearly white hair straight down her back and it covered the shape of the full yellow moon on the back of her cloak.

  Nami had said she was the strongest of all the Underwitches in Lun, and that had been after she had been rude to her. I hoped that she had no memory of me at all, things were bad enough with my dress.

  Tana turned around and had eyes only for Sam. "Precept Seram, it is not fair that she has a familiar."

  "I believe that what you mean to say is that you want one for yourself," Seram laughed as she went to leave the room. "You have said the same thing every night since the trial. They are not like a dress or a pair of shoes, you cannot have one just because you wish it to be so."

  "Correct." Sam growled from where he stood by my feet.

  Tana frowned. "My mother says there is somewhere I could get one."

  "I am well aware of what Sorceress Tana's opinion on the matter is, but it is not for discussion tonight. I will see all of you out there." Seram said with a pleasant smile and entered the chatter of the ballroom.

  Tana held her frown and Underwitch Maletta had turned her attention to someone I had never met before.

  She was the second, she passed while I was in the tents. I thought, knowing by her uniform that she could only be a maiden like me.

  The three of them and the warmth of the little room brought a new edge to my discomfort. I had begun to sweat in my clothes and I could not help but compare how I felt to how they looked. They weren't writhing in the horrid silk like I was. None of them were wearing a glamor like I had to or needed to wipe their brow on the back of their sleeve like I did.

  If there had been just a little less nervousness mixed into my anguish, I would have stripped the uniform away and lay on the floor until I cooled back down. My clothes stayed on mostly because I found fear in entering a room of people I had never met. Even if they weren't really getting me, there were too many chances for all of them to not like me or for me to make them not like me.

  Heart pounding panic aside, if it had not been for Underwitch Maletta waving me over to the door, I still might have done it.

  “So this is the Maiden you were telling me about, the one with the blue rope right?" She asked Tana, the crook in her nose drawing my eyes to it instead of the rest of her pretty face.

  "The familiar is hers too." Tana said, her immeasurable disappointment at my possession of Sam evident on her face.

  Underwitch Maletta nodded as a round of applause sounded from the ballroom and she pulled me to the door.

  "Your stockings, they are a bit twisted, let me help you," She smiled at me as she lowered herself into a squat that left her face all too close to my waist. I felt her pinch the woolen material between her fingers at the top of my boots and shift them around where they had become crooked around my thighs. "There, you look much better now. Go on out, it's time."

  "Thank you." I said. She must not remember me from the priming, because she had been much more pleasant than I thought her capable after how she had been at the priming.

  Maybe it was because I was set to be an Underwitch and not just some maiden that would probably fail the trial.

  My stockings untwisted, I stepped into the new moon ball as the door clicked shut loudly behind me and I tried to not let my discomfort show on Ire's face.

  Every single soul in the ball room turned to look at me at the sound of the door closing.

  All the underwitches in their perfect blue cloaks, a dizzying mass of eyes and smiles. The precepts looked down at me from where they stood on the balcony that wrapped around most of the room, each striking enough to be the heroine of their own story. Mother Nami stood on a raised platform at the bottom of the back wall of framed glass, her mouth open from what I understood to be my interruption.

  All at once I felt like I had stripped naked and walked out to face the crowd. Embarrassed heat washed over me except for my legs. They felt cold, like winter wind had chosen them and only them to blow against.

  Nami smiled in her white dress and spread her arms out with a little laugh. "Everyone welcome, Underwitch Ire and her familiar Samsara!"

  All of those who watched me broke into applause at Nami's words and I tried to move towards the platform, but Sam halted my steps. The big blue cat circled my legs three times before he pressed himself against my side and pushed me forward with his weight.

  I kept my eyes on Nami and most of the Underwitchs kept their eyes on Sam, but by the time I reached The Mother in Blue, any trace of cold had left me. Sweat slicked my brow and I felt like I was burning alive in my silken prison.

  I was a fool. I should have never asked The Mothers to go to school. I should have stayed in the little room with my mother and been thankful that almost no one knew who I was.

  "The sorceress with the once broken nose is not to be trusted," Sam growled from where he stood at my side. In a voice that I was certain could only be heard by me, he continued. "She meant to embarrass you. She left a trace of her aura circling your legs. I disposed of it."

  Nami draped a perfect blue cloak over my shoulders and fastened it around my throat above where my little glass vial hung beneath my clothes.

  Sam would not have spoken if he was not absolutely sure. The cold on my legs had not been from my embarrassment or part of feeling exposed the way I did.

  "You saw her do it? Why didn't you stop her?" I whispered down to him when Nami withdrew, keeping my eyes up at the crowd as they applauded the entrance of the maiden I did not know.

  "Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake." Sam answered in his quiet rumbling.

  Tana followed the unknown maiden, and the applause for her was much louder than it had been for me. She smiled, waved, and touched hands with the underwitches as she passed, but when she met me, there was something ugly in her eyes.

  Nami raised her hands after cloaking Tana and the room fell silent. "We have had the rare treat of having a maiden pass the trial, but she is no blue, she is orange. As our guest for the evening, welcome Underwitch Reese!”

  Reese came through the door, her sandy skin aglow from the brilliant orange fabric of her dress.

  The joy and relief that filled me when I met her chocolate eyes died when I saw the pale blue trail of aura circling around her ankles.

  Tana saw it as well, but through my peripherals I could see the wicked smirk on her face.

  Reese did not have a Sam like I did.

  Maletta was trying to embarrass my friend in the same way she had tried with me.

  Without thought, I bent the branch and brought my left hand straight up above my head, gritting my teeth against the sliding of the silk against my skin.

  No one but me saw the sudden gust of air that blew Reese's dress up her body and exposed everything she had to show. All of them had turned their eyes up to the flurry of thin blue fireworks I had sent crashing against the high ceilings.

  I saw Maletta appear through the door we had all come through as the loss took my and I sagged back from the weakness.

  "I would ask you what was the matter," Nami whispered as she caught my weight and helped me regain my balance. Her ocean eyes looked past the recovered Reese and found the scowling Maletta at the back of the room. "but I believe it is my fault."