Anna and I whispered to one another under the obscuring sound of rushing water.

  “I could see it in his eye. He misses her. That has to mean something, right?” I asked her from where I sat on the edge of the nearly full bath.

  She answered me in the same hushed tone I spoke in. “It could mean a lot of things. You are sure he said that there is no one else alive and not that there was no one else alive?”

  “I am not certain. My memory is not the most reliable thing.” I sighed, disappointed that I could not give her a more firm answer.

  She reached past me and turned the silver handles closed just before the steaming water reached the lip I sat atop.

  “Maybe you’ll find something in The Well tonight. Get your memories over with while I go clean up your mess.” She said and kissed the top of my head as she stood.

  “Wait! You tricked me,” I shouted and followed her up. “You said we had to come in here so Alexei wouldn’t hear us!”

  Anna laughed. “We did have to come in here for that. He said he can hear when I wake up, we’ve got to be smart. But, just because you’re a busy little schoolgirl now doesn’t mean you get to skip out on your other responsibilities, got it?”

  “I should have known.” I said, shaking my head.

  If I had not been so tired and her shorts had not slipped up her thigh the way they had when she had gotten up off the floor in front of our bed, I hoped that I would have had the presence of mind to see her trick coming, but I was, they did, and I hadn’t.

  “Yes. You should have.” Sam growled from where he sat atop the sink.

  His presence alone was an insult to my intelligence. I should have known that he would have been nowhere to be found unless he knew I was going into The Well.

  I followed Anna to the door and looked at the mess I had made.

  A long trail of bright blue dust snaked across the floor. Starting where Anna had stood by the fireplace and ending in the scattered circle of dust we had landed in, I knew I had never made a working that was quite so large.

  My mask of Ire lay in a pile by the door and the empty plates that had once held the cold dinner I had devoured.

  “You don’t have to clean up. I’ll be happy to do it instead of my memories.” I offered.

  “I don’t mind, really. You make messes, I clean them up. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to live with you.” Anna said with a smile that nearly brought me to my knees.

  “I make messes?” I asked, perfectly content to watch her clean until I died of thirst.

  “Yes.” Sam growled in answer.

  “In more ways than one,” she laughed. “Now go, it’s late.”

  I thought about arguing with her, but as tired as I was, I had no illusions that I would win. So, I did as I was told and got into the bath.

  The warm water felt good on my tired body, and it took little to no time at all for my eyes to shut.

  Making no effort to focus on a name, my mind wandered from what Anna had told me about the empty library to the metal weight that I would be pushing the next morning. It settled onto the hall of conquest, with its mirrored floors and the serpent skeleton that Alexei had named but I could not remember.

  I had made progress with him that day, and if I stayed calm, I could do it again.

  Somewhere in the thoughts of my guard and his mother’s silver armor, I slipped back into The Well and felt myself fall. . .

  From the circular room of strange black material, I stepped into The Well proper with a plan in mind.

  “Hello?” I called out, my arm held limply to my side and taking slow shuffling steps towards the shelves of gradient yellows.

  Attempting to look as pitiful as I could, I wandered past shades of cream and starlight towards dark brasses and golden browns. “Do you remember when we first met?”

  I did not have somewhere in mind that I was trying to get to. What was important was that I looked hurt, tired, and lost.

  “You said I reminded you of someone. Do you have a habit of becoming involved with weak little girls?” I said with a pitiful laugh.

  There was no response, but I knew better to expect one so soon. Just like my attempted slow endearment with Alexei, creating enough pity in the metallic heart of the thing at the bottom of The Well proper would take time.

  It had taken me time to learn points. It was taking me time to complete my first assignment in Implementation. Anna and I had been attracted to each other almost immediately, but it had taken time for us to grow together and intertwine.

  I knew better than to expect a sudden change in the things behavior, but that didn’t mean I was free from frustration.

  Staying calm and finding a new use for Anna and I’s third agreement, I made my way back towards the black room.

  “When Mother Azza was punishing me, you showed me a memory of hers. You brought me here and took me from my pain. I have never thanked you for that.” I said as I took the stone stairs and traded the room of yellow tomes for blues.

  I stopped at the top of the stairs and leaned against the wall like it had taken all of me to reach the final step. “I think that is because I do not understand why you have helped me.”

  Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I continued. “When I knocked all the books off the shelves and they were pulling me from memory to memory, you stopped it.”

  Ask questions.

  “Why do you care? It can’t just be because of a passing reminder to someone. How do you even know someone else? You are in my mind,” I shuffled my feet over to one of the plain wooden tables that had taken up in The Well after my time in Patience’s library. “Do you know that I don’t remember stealing The Well? Or, stealing you? I’m not sure what the right way to say that is.”

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  There was still no response and the silence grated against me like Azza’s sand, but I kept myself calm as I hopped onto the table and let my legs dangle off its edge.

  I continued. “You are stuck with me though. They can’t take you out until I view every single memory in this place.”

  It could have been the memory of Azza’s punishment or the fuzzy nothingness of when the books had fallen on me, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was how tired I was or how much I had used my aura. Maybe I had put on such a compelling performance that I had begun to believe it myself, but somewhere in my one-sided conversation, I stopped acting.

  Like Alexei’s longing slipping through his restraint in the hall of conquest, my true feelings began to slip through the pitiful act.

  “I need help. There are too many memories and I can’t even start with what interests me because I can’t find them. It’s all too much,” I spoke honestly, my voice echoing through the shelves of blue. “If there were anyone else I could ask, I would, I really don’t want to be a bother, but you are it.”

  Sadness that had nothing to do with an afterglow brought a cold ache into my heart.

  “I don’t even know what you look like. Do you like being here? Do you have a choice? I don’t even know your name. We could be friends. Anna likes me, you might too.” I called out.

  The silence was a different kind of loneliness than I had ever felt. To know that someone could hear me and was perfectly capable of answering my offer of friendship, but chose not to, made me feel even smaller in the near infinite library in my mind.

  With the smallness, embarrassment stung my cheeks.

  How actually weak had I just sounded? Why I had ever thought I needed to (act) pitiful, I did not know.

  Embarrassment gave way to shame and the shame gave way to anger. The anger pushed me off the table top and brought a writhing need to express that heat into my hands.

  My first agreement and my third agreement with Anna came into frustrating conflict with one another.

  I could not be myself and stay calm at the same time.

  Autumn Aubrey made messes.

  Autumn Aubrey hated silk and she made messes.

  Those two truths were as close to understanding myself as I had ever come.

  It may have been due to the limited experiences of my short life, but for the life of me, I could not think of a way to tear The Well apart calmly.

  “I didn’t mean that! I can’t believe you thought I wanted to be friends!” I shouted as I brought my power to my palm and held it out towards the shelves of blue.

  What Anna did not know wouldn’t hurt her. I was fairly certain she could not read my mind, so there was no way she would ever know unless I told her.

  I focused on the book closest to me atop the top shelf. It was sickly blue like a bruise, and tipped from its place with just the right amount of my will.

  It smacked against the floor with an echoing thump that did nothing to make me feel better.

  “You aren’t stuck with me! I’m stuck with you! Laying around in the back of my head and you won’t even talk to me? I’ve never met anyone so rude! And Samsara is my familiar, he is the rudest thing in all of chaos!” I shouted as I tipped another book, and another, and another.

  Before I really knew what I was doing, I had emptied both of the top shelves and sent the blue books falling in cascading streams. They rained down at my feet and I decided that the rest of the books would look much better if they joined their fallen friends.

  Cornflower, periwinkle, midnight, shades of near black and blue stained whites all crashed at my feet in a tide of crumbled pages and open bindings.

  “If only Precept Seram could see me now!” I laughed a high laugh and swept another shelf clear with nothing but my will.

  There were no more books on the shelves that surrounded me.

  “I don’t want to be your friend!” I screamed as I snapped my hand towards the shelf and sent it leaning backwards. For a brief moment, it hung in place, balanced on its bottom back corner.

  Like I was blowing a fly away from my face, I pursed my lips and pushed a short stream of air through them.

  The bookshelf fell back and took the one behind it down with it.

  One by one, they all fell in a wave of disarray that I had brought to bear.

  When the final shelf caught on the wall and all the books that fell from it had settled, I threw my hands above my head in triumph.

  “I am the ruiner! I am the one who ruins! I have named myself so,” I shouted, feeling none of the regret I had for felling the arrogant tree. “I don’t need your help!”

  After the heat of my tantrum faded, which did not take very long, and all I was left with was the mess I had made, I found that I did not feel any better.

  I did not feel bad for what I had done, but I was still embarrassed, still hurt.

  I knew it was silly, but if there was one place in all of chaos that I got to be silly, it was in my own mind.

  Lucky for me, The Well had a near infinite number of other floors for me to try and feel better by destroying.

  I turned back for the stairs.

  I stopped dead in my tracks before I could take a single step towards my continued rampage.

  The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end and an uncomfortable awareness settle over me.

  I was being watched.

  “You are right, little ruiner.” A strange, hollow, sounding voice whispered from behind me.

  I whipped myself around in fright and took a blind step backwards.

  The shelves that I had knocked over stood upright once again. All of the books were back in their place, down to the bruise colored tome I had knocked down first. Any trace of the damage I had wrought had been undone in the time it had taken me to make my turns.

  “Who’s there?” I called out, my heart pounding in my chest and my breath held.

  The voice that answered me was not cold in the ways I knew cold to be. It did not creep into my bones or send shivers down my spine.

  It was nothing, and there was nothing in it that sounded like it came through the lips of a living thing. Like porcelain or stone, it was unfeeling, unchanging, a constant hollow sound.

  And yet, it spoke words I understood.

  “The one whose name you do not know. The one whose face you have not seen. The one who you wished to be your friend.” The voice answered.

  A shape took form in front of me in an outline of a towering figure. Arms, legs, what looked to be the shape of long flowing hair, the figure was easily a head taller than Arthur or Azza. Keeping the colors of what lay beyond it, it took a single step before fading out of my sight like a fleck in my eye.

  “I-“ I started without knowing what I was going to say.

  It was the thing at the bottom of The Well. I had heard its voice before. It was the only thing besides me that could be in The Well.

  “You are right, little ruiner,” The mouthless voice repeated. “You do not need my help.”

  I shook my head, desperately searching the space between the blue booked shelves for another sign of the thing. “I don’t understand.”

  “Her. The young one whose memories you seek. Call her name with your power at hand. What you wish for shall come to you.” The thing answered, sounding much farther away than it had a moment before.

  It cannot be that simple. I thought to myself, thinking of all the times I had searched aimlessly through The Well.

  “Katarina.” I called out with my aura pressing against the seals over my navel and palm.

  It was that simple.

  Icy blue light began to shine in front of me like the ghostly embers of a freezing fire.

  The same pale shade as the crystals in Radomir’s pass had been, it coalesced in my upturned palms and at long last, I held Katarina’s book in my hands.

  “I will trouble you no longer. Farewell.” The voice spoke again, but I did not answer it.

  Before I could think to sit down, I had opened the book and brushed my fingers against one of the white pages.

  Standing in the center of what had been a destroyed library only moments before, I felt myself fall into the memories of The Mother in Blue. . .