Anna had started taking her position as my coach much more seriously after we had learned that I would be admitted to Lun Arcancil.

  Every day since, without fail, she had pushed me to my absolute limits. Through a strict regiment that routinely and repeatedly left me sweating and shaking on the floor, she demanded more from me than I thought I was capable of giving.

  Even if I wanted to, which I didn't, I would not complain. How could I? It was not as if I knew a better way to go about things. I didn't know a way at all.

  I knew so little that when we put our minds together, it made Anna know less.

  That was half the reason I had wanted to become one of Rhiannon's roses in the first place. I wanted to know things. I wanted to understand my power and what I could do with it beyond breaking beds and destroying kitchens. There were other reasons, Pyreme, the half cloaks, and the sandals, but the desire to learn was not the smallest of them.

  Still, hard as it was and as blind as we were, our training had not been without gains.

  Anna Lao was many things. Being a brilliant coach just happened to be one of them.

  We pushed the mostly empty chests out of the middle of the floor and left them under the window on the back wall. There was too little floor space in the place to do anything with them sitting out.

  Without needing to be prompted, I practiced bending branch and brought my aura to life inside myself. The hope and excitement that had sparked within me after solving Nami's hint made it nearly effortless. I took my place in front of the bathroom door and looked to Anna for my orders. "Fireworks or the cord?"

  "Fireworks. A small one. That'll be easier because you won't have to hold it for very long, right?" Anna said as she stood opposite me in the kitchen. We had agreed to alternate who got to stand near the oven and stay warm, but it had been days since I had gotten to take my turn.

  "I have absolutely no idea." I answered her honestly.

  "It will be easier because you won't have to hold it for very long. Remember, small and blue." Anna repeated with her notebook in one hand and a pen in the other.

  I held my left hand in front of myself and turned it up to the ceiling. My aura pressed against the seals on my right palm and navel, but I left them undisturbed. The time would come again when The Mother's would summon me before them. When it would happen or what I would do to bring it about, I did not know, but it would come regardless. Anna and I had thought it best if I came to that inevitable moment with as little reason for them to be mad at me as possible.

  The reflection of my eyes beginning to glow red with my power came to light in Anna's dark eyes as it built within me.

  I brought my power to my left hand within me and let the pressure build. If I held it for more than a moment the firework shaped working that came out of me would not be small. It made little sense to me how creating larger ones was easier. The fact that I could make anything at all was still new enough to be exciting enough to not let me get caught up in the small details.

  Control was what allowed me to alter the amount of my aura that I used, when I was able to harness it at least.

  As soon as my aura met the channel in my left palm, I brought the memory of Adrian's fireworks to the front of my mind. The Red Mother's lover had made all manner of explosives in every color and pattern I could imagine. Small, large, and every size between, there had even been a big one that had unfortunately been a dud. I remembered how the small explosions had echoed over the cliffside and the acrid smoke they had filled the air with. Keeping the memory of the senses sharp, I let myself feel the excitement I had felt before Azza had returned and cast it away.

  Then, without any idea how to do what I was going to try, I attempted to glamor my unmanifested working.

  Blue like the ocean. Blue like Nami's eyes. Blue like Sam.

  The more I brought my focus to the thoughts that would turn into the glamors, the harder it became to hold my working. When I shifted my focus back to my working, the thoughts of the glamor would slip from me like water through my fingers. Quickly losing the ability to hold either, I let the built pressure push my working out of my palm. and a streak of red power jumped up from my hand and smacked against the ceiling with an audible bang.

  "Shit! I said to make it small!" Anna yelled as she shielded her eyes from the red dust raining down over her.

  "Sorry," I sighed as I took the small loss and waited for the angered heat of my afterglow to come for me. It would be minor, easily calmed, but I had learned that being prepared for it made it much easier to not let it take me.

  Anna slowly peaked her head out from behind her arm. "Let's try again. The cord this time."

  "No." I snapped at her, but I brought my power back to my hand regardless of my ill temper.

  She had grown so used to my verbal disagreements that she had told me she found them more cute than anything.

  The longer we had trained, the more fireworks I made or times I could bring my cord out of me, the less consuming the rage of my afterglow had become.

  The first time I had felt it, it had been strong enough to reduce me into little more than a raging beast. I had torn out a sorcerer's throat with my teeth and would have done worse if I had been able to. It had been blinding, all consuming, like the flames that had burned Rhiannon away on the night of Empyre.

  After months of practice and repetition, after the countless times I had snapped at Anna in anger, it had become a suggestion. As long as my workings were small enough and I did not hold them for very long, my afterglows were like the black oven that warmed the house.

  It was hot, I could feel it in my face and hands, but it would only burn me if I touched it.

  That wasn't true if I let too much of my power out. Two weeks before we had taken the black gate to Hymneth, I had blown the rose patterned rug in my room at the manor apart and locked myself in my closet for several hours.

  That was how we had learned the valuable lesson that there were only so many times a night I could channel my aura.

  I waited for Anna to finish writing down whatever she had found important enough to record.

  "Ready?" She finally asked as her eyes left the page and returned to me.

  "No." I said, but nodded in agreement and brought my aura back to my palm.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  All it took for my cord to take shape was thinking of things I wanted that were out of my reach. I would have loved to be drinking the remainder of the hot chocolate that still steamed in the pot atop the stove. The half round of bread and soft cheese on the counter looked like a veritable feast to my empty belly. Anna. I wanted to take each of them into my grasp and let them fill the needy places within me.

  With those wants held in the front of my mind like the memories of Adrian's fireworks had been a moment before, I lowered my hand to my side.

  Blue like the ocean. Blue like Nami's eyes. Blue like Sam. I thought.

  Blue like the ocean. Blue like Nami's eyes. Blue like Sam. Blue like hot chocolate. No. Hot chocolate isn't blue. Blue like the ocean. Blue like Nami's eyes. Bread. Cheese. Anna. Blue like Anna. I want the ocean. I want.

  "I can't." I said as my focus broke and a plume of annoyingly red dust settled onto the floor at my feet like the ash that escaped from the oven when Anna added a new piece of wood.

  "Easy, easy. Why can't you?" Anna asked me in her soft voice.

  The loss threatened to send me back against the door, but I fought against it. Kicking at the dust, I caught the tip of my injured toe on the wooden floor. In equal amounts of anger and pain, I balled my fists and stomped my foot. "If I knew why I couldn't, I could."

  "The necklace." Anna reminded me as she brought her pen back to the page.

  I pulled the tight fabric of my shirt collar out from my neck and reached into it. A small glass vial hung from a thin chain around my neck. I brought it out and held it within my sealed palm. A lock of raven black hair packed down against the glimmering yellow dust that filled the vial and a tiny cork held it all in.

  The sight of it alone was enough to turn up the corners of my mouth. Anna had made it for me shortly after my birthday and unlike the only other piece of jewelry I had ever been given, I had chosen to put it on. The hair was Anna's and the dust was what had remained of the yellow firefly that Glim had snuck into my clothes when I had been in the colosseum.

  Both things brought me joy and both things warded off the rage of my afterglow. The more I used it or the more of myself that I used would lessen how much it helped me, but it was effective nonetheless.

  "Better?" Anna asked.

  "Better." I answered her.

  "Good," She smiled. "Why can't you do it?"

  I returned the necklace to its place beneath my shirt. "“It’s like trying to walk to the left and the right at the same time. It's impossible. It feels like I'm going to split in half, like I'm going to end up like one of those logs."

  A stack of split wood filled a boxy iron frame that sat against the right wall of our quarters. Alexei had refilled it for us twice since we had moved into the shack but I had never seen him cutting it.

  "Autumn?" Anna said, her nose scrunching as she held back a laugh.

  I pointed my finger at her and furrowed my brows "Stop looking at me like that. That means I'm doing something so dumb that you think it's cute."

  "You are thinking about it too hard. You don't have to do both at the same time." She laughed, having lost the war of restraint she had been waging against herself.

  "Yes I do? If I show my color and then change it all of a sudden, they will know what I have done." I argued back.

  "One step at a time, dummy. Remember when you couldn't cover a whole pillow? Let's just see if you can change the color at all." She said and waited for me to try again.

  "Fine, but I am taking a break after this." I told her and focused my aura for the third time.

  For all of my attempts, I had never stopped bending the branch. Part of my usual training was holding it for as long as I could and my ability to do so had grown gradually. There had been one night I had almost fallen asleep with my eyes still aglow with my color.

  I thought of the hot chocolate, bread, cheese, and Anna once again. With a roll and quick flick of my wrist, I pushed my power out of my left hand and sent it coiling onto the floor. It was half again thicker than my thumb and grew thinner towards its tip. My fingers wrapped around it like it had been made for them. I resisted the impulse to snap it down and break a hole through Alexei's ceiling.

  Closing my eyes, I tried to create the glamor that would let me pass whatever trial I was put through the following day.

  Blue like the ocean. Blue like Nami's eyes. Blue like Sam.

  It no longer felt like I was trying to split my mind. Once my cord was manifested, I could hold it in reality for as long as I could bend the branch. With all of my mind I focused on the glamor and the illusion I was trying to create.

  Blue like the ocean. Blue like Nami's eyes. Blue like Sam.

  Nothing happened. My aura still pressed against my channel but I felt no more of it pass through.

  Blue like the ocean. Blue like Nami's eyes. Blue like Sam. I thought harder.

  No matter how desperately I willed the red of my cord to cool to blue, I could not manage to do so much as stain it.

  My focus did not break or slip, I let it and my cord slip from my grip willfully and gave up.

  The cord turned to dust in the shape it had been coiled in. A heavy breath slipped out of me and I sagged back against the bathroom door feeling like I would fall to the floor.

  I closed my eyes against the afterglow that clenched my jaw and brought violence to my hands.

  I would fail. Azza would take us. My journey to Lun Arcanicil and the hope I had held at being an underwitch in full had been nothing but a joke to The Mothers that opposed me.

  Anna placed her hands on my arms gently and spoke in little more than a whisper. "Do you need it?"

  "Yes." I answered without opening my eyes.

  She kissed me, long and soft and sweet. Somewhere within it, the rage that was building inside me lost its heat and I became myself again. It was the most potent antidote we had discovered for the afterglow, but since both of us knew there would be times that she was not there to administer it, it was saved until it was absolutely necessary.

  The definition of necessary was different between the two of us, but we had found a compromise that we were both happy with.

  Anna pulled away from me but kept her hands on my arms. "You've had a long day. I'll make dinner tonight, You've had to learn enough. Go take a bath. Take your trips and try to find something that will help. We will try again after you have eaten."

  Under other circumstances, all of the things she said sounded pleasing, but I did not believe I had enough of my antidote.

  "Autumn, no," Anna said as her nose scrunched once again, evidently able to see what I desired in my eyes. "This is serious. I'll be here the day after tomorrow. The trial won't."

  I could have slipped past her guard with little to no effort. The near infinite amount of games of points I had played had trained my eyes to look for every opening available to me.

  “You could come with me. We could do it together like our first night here. It saves hot water and you know I won't be able to find anything useful anyways.” I said, hoping my offer would be enticing enough for her to not hold me to the three memories a day standard she had set.

  Of course, we couldn’t, literally. The bath was barely big enough for me to sit in it with my legs straightened. It was deep enough that I could bring the water to my shoulders while I was sitting straight up, but it was disappointingly too small to fit the two of us.

  "We had to do that. And, No." Anna said as she gave me a playful shove and went to start the water.

  Not long after, I had left my clothes in a pile on the floor and closed the bathroom door behind me. The bath looked like someone had stolen a giant's wash bucket and hidden it away in the little shack so its rightful owner could not find it. It was nothing but wooden boards, iron bands, and the metal spigot that only produced freezing cold water.

  Our first night away from the manor, Anna had heated our bath water pot by pot on the top of the black stove, but it had taken so long to fill it, I had devised another method that was much quicker.

  Bringing my aura back to my palm, I thought of Adrian's fireworks and let the pressure build.

  In a spray of cold mist and flashes of red light, I let my own explosives stream from my hand until steam began to roll off the top of the disturbed water.

  It was quick, but messy, and I took extra care to not slip on the wet floor boards as I swung my legs over the waist high lip of the bath. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the still cold wood. I made no attempt to think of a name or focus on one of The Mothers.

  There was no use.

  Those convenient days in the pool of the well house had long passed.

  All I could do was wait to slip into The Well and hope that I stumbled upon something useful.