I shut the door of Anna and I’s quarters behind me and immediately pressed my ear against the cold wood.

  “I’m sorry, Alexei. Her damn familiar tore my dress and when I looked up, she was gone.” Precept Jesna said, her voice already growing quiet as she moved away from my door. With my eyes closed, I could almost see the feathers in her downy black hair and the sky blue of her eyes.

  It had been Alexei who found me with Reese, not Precept Jesna. I’m my peripheral, I had seen the wolfish man the moment he had crossed back through the front doors of Lun, and he had not been happy when he reached me. His voice had been even and his face had been expressionless, but I had spent enough time around him to know that he was restraining himself.

  The moment after I had told Reese good luck instead of good bye, he had turned me back towards the singing stairs and asked me where Jesna was. Before I could respond, the precept herself appeared from the still crowded stairs, her sky blue eyes filled with what had looked to be worry.

  All the way down to the bottom floor, I had not been able to enjoy the song of the crystalline steps. My attention had been consumed by the obvious tension between Alexei and Jesna. Whenever she had thought he was not looking, she had stolen quick glances at the white haired man. He had held his single eye forward, his face absent of any feeling.

  It was terribly uncomfortable and I had gotten the impression that they were only silent because of my presence.

  “The fault is mine, I should not have. . .” Without the peaks and valleys that came with emotion, I could barely make out my guard’s response.

  “. . .Outside? It can’t be, can it?” Precept Jesna asked.

  Their voices faded beyond my hearing and I let out a disappointed sigh when I accepted that I would hear nothing else from them.

  I turned around and immediately started liberating myself from my silken torture chamber, calling out to Anna as I stepped out of my boots. “I’m going to have to try even harder to make him like me now.”

  I should have paid more attention when Nami had fastened my cloak around my neck because for the life of me, I could not unclasp it. Giving up, I tried to pull it up over my head but only managed to get it stuck under my nose. Every single movement sent the silk sliding over my skin even more and spurned me into further desperation.

  “Anna? Can you help me?” I called out in a brief moment of frustrated stillness.

  Blinded by the perfect blue fabric of my cloak, I waited in darkness for her to respond, but my patience ran out before she did.

  Must be in a bath. I thought to myself as I accepted my defeat by the all powerful collar of the cloak. I unbuttoned my grey jacket and threw it back off my arms. Bringing my right hand up the left strap of the blue silk dress, I grabbed it and gritted my teeth through the shudder that ran through me. Bending at my waist and twisting my arm into an angle that it should not have been held in, I pulled my arm through and gained partial freedom.

  Heat wafted against my skin and I stopped my struggling before I fell into the fireplace.

  The way the fabric dragged across me, the slick feeling that grated against my very soul, did not mix well with the warmth. Pain, like a nail had been driven into my temple, came to life in my head and I doubled over. My breath held against the sudden agony. My mask of Ire dust down over me as I slipped my other arm free and squirmed until the silken demon fell defeated at my feet.

  “Victory!” I screamed with my arms held high in triumph. Relief washed over me and the pain in my head vanished.

  Trying to pull the cloak back down from where it had constricted around my face, the bottom of my woolen stocking met the slick surface of the discarded dress.

  My ass hit the stone floor hard and I crumpled onto my back, the new pain leaving me in stunned silence.

  “Anna?” I cried out after a long moment.

  She didn’t answer.

  I took a deep breath and began bending branch. There was no reason for me to use my aura, and I had no intention of channeling it. What I was looking for was the calm that came from building my power within me. Struggling blindly would only lead me to more pain and frustration. I had learned enough in the short part of my life that I could remember to know that.

  The cold of my azure aura bringing confidence to my fingers, I found the metal clasp that held the cloak around my face and snapped it free.

  I threw myself onto my feet as soon as I could see and took two quick steps before throwing myself onto the made bed.

  The blue silk dress lay in a twisted heap on the floor underneath my discarded cloak.

  I knew it was just a dress, and I knew that it couldn’t, but I waited with my aura at the ready for it to move. If it coiled up like a serpent and struck at me, I would tear it to shreds. The moment it slithered across the grey stones of the floor, I would stomp it to death with my wool stockings. If it so much as settled from my escape, I would throw it into the flames of the fireplace and dance as it burned.

  None of that would happen because none of that could happen, but I would be ready regardless of the impossibility.

  The color, the way the fire light shone off of it, the things I imagined it could do, I hated it all. I hated it for the glamor I had to wear when I had it on and I hated it for how it looked on every other underwitch. For how little I knew and the punishments that were still hanging loose around my neck, I hated it. The distaste Tana had for me and the cruel trick that Maletta had tried to play on Reese and I only deepened that hatred.

  Most of all, more than any other reason, I hated the way it felt.

  Through it all, I learned a truth so undeniable that my belief in it could not be shaken.

  I hated silk.

  Truth. The Autumn I liked agreed with me in my mind.

  Resisting the urge to take it and all of its mates that hung in the closest and burning them to cinders, I turned around on the bed.

  The bathroom door was open and there were no lights on within the dark doorway. There was no sound of running water or steam wafting out of the darkness.

  “Anna?” I called out as I hopped off the bed and went to the open door. Snapping the lights on, there was not a bottle of wine, a book, or a single raven hair in sight. The bathroom was empty, and when I turned around, I found the rest of the room to be the same.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Behind the door, under the bed, in both of the chests that Alexei had brought shortly after we had arrived, nothing.

  Anna was gone.

  I was alone.

  She had not even left a note.

  Slowly, I realized there was one other place that she could be. The closet that held the five other blue silk dresses I had been given because of my status as an Underwitch remained close.

  “She can’t be in there,” I whispered to myself. “Why would Anna ever be in the closet?”

  Besides all of the times she had spent hours picking out her clothes and then spent even longer picking out mine, I could not think of one.

  What if she drank too much and fell asleep while she was unpacking her trunk? I thought as I crept towards the door with my aura still built inside me.

  The bright blue light of my eyes reflected off the wood as I wrapped my hand around the knob and slowly turned it.

  What if one of the dresses revealed itself as the manifestation of evil and has her bound in its clutches to lure you in so the others can grab you? I thought as I pulled the door open.

  A dark shape sat in the middle of the closet floor, but the darkness inside was too black for me to see what it was. I snapped my fingers three times in quick succession, holding my breath in what I knew to be unreasonable fright.

  The lights snapped on, then off, then on again, and I found the dark shape to be a pile off Anna’s unhung clothes. On the far side of it, was her stack of notebooks and papers with a pen resting atop it.

  She had been in the closet, but she wasn’t any longer.

  Another truth, just as strong as the first that had presented itself to me that night, rang out in my mind.

  I did not like being alone.

  Truth. The Autumn I liked spoke again.

  Keeping my eyes on the blue hidden horrors hanging on the right side of the closet, I brought myself down and leaned against the left wall. Atop the pile was the sleep shirt she had worn to bed the night before. I took it into my hands and buried my face into it, letting her scent fill my nose.

  We had been in her closet at the manor the morning after my birthday. The memory came rushing back with her smell and my face grew warm as her absence settled over me.

  I hadn't realized it, but the expectation that she would be in our quarters when I returned had been one of the only things that kept me together.

  There were so many things I needed to rant about, but she wasn’t there to calm me down. I needed her to offer to fight Tana and Maletta. I needed to tell her about the spinning circle and how I had actually had fun for a very brief moment. I needed to tell her about Lady Ola and Nami, and how I thought they had a lot more in common with Anna and I than we may have thought.

  I couldn’t because she was gone, and she had not left a note.

  That did not make sense.

  Anna always left a note.

  That had started all the way back at the boarding house.

  Something has happened to her. The thought appeared in my mind and pushed everything away.

  She would not have left without telling me first. The only explanation was that she had not left of her own free will.

  I threw her shirt back down on the pile and climbed to my feet. Keeping as much distance between the dresses and myself as I could, I turned to leave the closet in search of her. Realizing that running through the halls of Lun in nothing but my wool stockings would draw too much unwanted attention, I turned back for the shirt and made my leave.

  Anna met me as soon as I stepped out of the closet.

  Every part of me recoiled and a startled shout slipped from my lips. All of the aura I had built within myself shot out of my left palm in slivers of bright blue light.

  They crashed into the fireplace and split the burning logs in a swell of embers and smoke.

  “Hey, slow down. I was trying not to scare you,” Anna said softly as emptied her full hands onto the bed and came to me. “Where are you going in such a hurry? I didn’t think you would be back yet.”

  “I thought something happened to you.” I said weakly as the loss from my accidental working was taken from me.

  Anna held me up against my weariness, confusion on her face. “Why? I left you notes just in case you came back early.”

  “No you didn’t," I said, shaking my head and swallowing against the lump that had formed in my throat. "You always do, but you didn't."

  My afterglow had come for me in full. I knew that I was happy to see her, but all I could think about was how she hadn't left a note. It would pass, I had not used that much of my power, but it still took great effort for me to not cry.

  Anna pulled me along with her as she went to the bed, the fireplace, the bathroom and finally, the closet. "Okay, I made plans to leave notes, but I forgot."

  She brought my hand up and wrapped it around my vial necklace. The sorrow I felt was already passing, but there was something I wanted from her. The least embarrassing way to ask for it was to not ask for it at all.

  "It's not working. I need it." I cried, giving my best impression of being much sadder than I actually was.

  Anna crossed her arms and took a step back from me. "You're lying."

  "No I'm not." I snapped back, unable to keep my eyes on hers.

  "You just want to kiss me. Admit it." She said with a smirk. She leaned back against the bed with her hands behind her back and waited for me to respond.

  I let out a heavy sigh and stuck out my bottom lip. We were playing a game then, and I would not be defeated.

  Anna laughed as she pulled one of the three bottles of wine she had brought with her off the bed. "Its cute how hard you're trying, but I won't lose. I don't have school tomorrow, I can stay up and wait as long as I need to."

  She walked back over to me, her raven hair streaked with the orange light of the fireplace and stood just close enough for it to be too close.

  "I went to the library today, and the kitchen," She held the bottle towards me for me to uncork it with my aura. “I just walked in and said I was sent by Mother Nami. I know we aren’t supposed to say their names, but it got me what I wanted. I think I could have had them prepare a feast if I really wanted to."

  She had won. I knew that no matter what I did, she would hold firm. So, I did the only reasonable thing I could when confronted with failure.

  I changed the game.

  Pretending to take the bottle to do as she wished, the second the cork popped loose from the glass, I sprinted away from her and into the bathroom.

  "Hey!" She shouted as she ran after me.

  The bottle held precariously over the bath, I held up a hand to stop her and spilled a single drop to show her that my threat was not hollow.

  "Okay, okay, okay," She said softly as she took slow and measured steps towards me. "I believe you. Let me help."

  I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.

  I had won. Victory was mine. That happened far less than I wished it would during Anna and I's little games.

  She pressed her lips to mine and I was immediatly lost in her kiss.

  The realization that I was being played only struck me when I felt her hand brush against the fingers I had wrapped around the bottle.

  I pulled back from her and raised my arm as high as it would go, more of the sweet smelling wine splotching red on the bottom of the bath.

  "Betrayer!" I gasped with the same intensity as I would have if she had just stuck a knife in my back.

  Anna stepped closer, but she did not reach for the bottle. When she spoke, her voice was low and sounded much sweeter than the wine smelled. "You've had a big day today and an even bigger one tomorrow. Let me take the wine, I'll run a bath, and you can tell me all about it. We have to make sure you're well rested for your first day after all."

  I held strong. I knew what she was trying to do to me and no matter how bad I wanted to let her, I wanted to win more.

  "This place is so big, and I've done so much walking, I think I need a bath as well." She said in little more than a whisper. Her hands went to my waist instead of the bottle and her breath felt cool on my blushing face.

  Faster than I had ever done anything in my short life, I brought the bottle back down without spilling another drop and gave it back to her.

  She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before leaving me stunned where I stood.

  After entirely too long spent trying to remember how to speak, I called after her. "Wait! Was that part of the game?"