There had never been a time in my life that I had needed someone to repeat something they had said as many times as I did after The Mother in Gray had told me the truth.

"From the first day that I was named a Mother, I began building this place specifically for The Well." She said, finding yet another way to explain what I could not grasp.

I took my hands back from her and brushed my hair off of my face. "Is that why you asked me if I remembered this place?"

I didn't, not even a little bit. The silver faced clock, the marble floor, the dim light that lined the bottom of the curved wall, if I had not just been told that I had been there before, I would have bet my life that I never had.

"That is why I have done everything I have done today." She answered as she stood and stretched her arms up above her head and yawned.

It took her all the way up to the tips of her toes, and when it was over, she let herself slump back down at her waist loosely.

It was hard for me to believe that she was the same Gray that I had been around before. In the small amount of time since she had finally looked me in my eyes, she had been far more expressive than I had ever seen her before.

"Forgive me, I have been so involved with my own interests that I have not considered you properly," She said as she stepped over to me and offered me a hand up. "If you do not wish to speak of this, I will respect your wishes."

That would have been nice if I had any idea what I wished for.

"Is that why you told Merick he was wrong so many times?" I asked as I took her hand and let her pull me up

She nodded. "Please do not judge him for the tone he took with you. If I asked him to bring me tea, he would turn it into some epic adventure."

"But why was he wrong? You said he had just recovered, but he didn't seem sick at all." I said, still trying and failing to understand what I had just done.

"Will you walk with me?" Gray asked as she started back towards the room that felt so much like Lun.

I told her that I would by following after her and leaving The Well room behind me.

"This is what I was wearing when it happened. "Not something like this, this exactly. This is how I wore my hair, and I had left in such a hurry that I had forgotten to put on shoes." She said when we were both under the watch of the painting of Katarina's sons.

My eyes wandered up to both of Alexei's as she spoke, and I found myself wishing that he were there.

"Why did you leave?" I asked as she came to look at the painting beside me.

"Observe this, see how it has been mended," She said as she raised her arm and showed me the side of her black and white shirt. There was a long place where the pattern of squares was broken. She traced it with the tip of her finger as she continued. "The Father in Red had been laying siege to the borderlands of Triskelion for weeks. Our sorceresses and knights had held strong, but they were against a Father, there was little they could do to actually defeat him. The Orange and Purple Lady were sent. The Red Father brought his Lord to face them. I was sent into the field of battle next to prevent all of Triskelion from being raised."

She took a breath and pointed up at Alexei. "Your guard was there at the end. If it had not been for him, The Lord in Red would have done far more than split my shirt open."

She turned away and took me from the Lun room and back onto the lift that had brought me there.

I crawled onto it and sat in its middle, trying to pretend that I was just sitting on the floor.

That made Gray smile. "Again, forgive me for not answering your calls when you were here. You were close enough to the end that disturbing you would have only complicated the pursuit."

"It was dark, and I hate these things," I admitted, feeling a little embarrassed at how quickly I had let myself be scared. "And the clicking was getting on my nerves."

"You are not the first to feel that way. If there had been any other way for someone to measure time when they were within The Well, I would have done away with that clock in an instant," Gray said as she shook her head and furrowed her brows. "It has been so long since it was used, I had almost forgotten how much I dislike it."

"You can hear it in The Well?" I asked, speaking in such surprise that my voice echoed against the walls of the dark place we were being lifted across.

Gray helped me up again as the lift came to a stop. She bumped her shoulder into me as we passed through the wall of glamor. "Now I know what I will do with it if it is ever removed. How did you know?"

Without her flat tone, since she had looked me in the eyes and come alive, I could not help but think that she reminded me of Mallory.

"How did I know what?"

She spun back around and pointed at the illusion of the wall that we had just come through. "That it was a glamor?

"Oh. I bumped into it and it didn't feel like a wall is supposed to feel like." I answered honestly.

She tapped her forehead with her brow. "The most simple explanation is more often than not correct, Underwitch Autumn. Learn that from me instead of needing to learn it for yourself."

Tera appeared at the right end of one of the long halls. She looked back over her shoulder before seeing Gray and I closing the glamor door behind ourselves.

"Mother Gray, I am sorry. I did not know if we were still-" She called out through the shade over her mouth that all of The Mother's guards wore.

Gray held up a hand. "We are not. All of you have done well. Gather them and meet me at the exchange room upstairs."

"Yes, Mother." Tira said with a bow before turning around and going back the way she had come.

Gray carried on and I carried on after her, the path I had taken over and over again seeming all together different.

"Does she always do that?" Look over her shoulder?" I asked, remembering all three times that my punishment had been stopped for Gray to remind her of it

Gray nodded. "Only when she is not thinking about it, the poor girl, but she would not have been on the day that you found your way here. She was just making her rounds. As were the rest of them. Slayte had spent her free day walking the city with a scholar from the loreium in Don Garrell, so her legs were sore. Garon always drags his feet, and Merick had just recovered from coldroot. Which, if you can avoid it, you should try to never catch. Having fluid in your lungs is bad enough without it hardening.

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That painted a vision in my mind that made a shiver run through my body.

"Do not let it trouble you, it takes far more for a sorceress to become ill than it does a mortal," She said as she put her hand on my shoulder. "Come, there is one last thing I must show you."

Back down Merick's hall, through the entryway that had been hidden behind the massive metal door, and up the stairs to my starting point, she led me to a set of double doors that I had never seen before.

All of the guards I had met during the repetitions of my punishment were gathered together and talking quietly.

Gray placed her hand flat on one of the doors and looked me square in my eyes. "This is the exchange room. Your mother was here on business for The Mother in White when you wandered away from her and found your way to The Well."

"It took fifty four minutes for me to take it?" I said, finally understanding why I had been asked to do the strange things that I had done.

"No. It took fifty four minutes for you to be found," Gray corrected me. "And if The Mother in Blue had not been within my domain, it likely would have been longer."

I knew by the way the Lun room had looked which Mother in Blue she was speaking of.

"Do you not remember any of it? The hours I spent with you when you were allowed to wake?" She asked.

I stared into her haunting silver eyes and tried my best to find anything like what she was talking about. "Nothing."

"You are better for it." She sighed and touched my shoulder.

Her eyes narrowed. What don't you understand?

How has this been a punishment? I thought back at her. It feels like I have made you happier.

"You have," She answered out loud. "And I have never been one for punishment."

Seeing her lips move made me realize that she had spoken to me in my mind.

"I forgot that you can do that." I admitted.

She had touched me quite a bit during my time with her. What else had she heard that I had not meant for her to?

"You think of Anna almost constantly. And your mother. A man named Arthur, and your guard."She answered the question that I had not asked out loud.

She evidently was able to see that I did not enjoy what she was doing because she took her hand off of me. "Forgive me, I get carried away when I am not containing myself. But now I have a question of my own. You remember none of this, but you do not seem to be affected by learning of it. Why?"

"I don't know. I have never really thought about it before." I answered honestly.

That was the truth.

I couldn't even imagine what it had been like for little Autumn because I had no memory of being her.

But, Gray remembered, and she had said that it was her greatest failure.

I felt my face pinch into an angry expression. "Why aren't you furious with me? Azza buried me alive. Gwyn hunted me. Ali beat me until my middle was black and blue. All you have done is annoyed me by making me start over so many times, but you are the one I actually took The Well from."

"Your sisters that waved at you when we were climbing the singing stairs, are you identical to them?" She asked.

"No." I answered, the thought of being compared to Tana making me even angrier.

"Neither am I with my own. I have no lesson to teach you. I wish to cause you no pain. What is done has been done. I have learned what I wished to know, and that is enough." She explained and it made me even angrier than I already was because I did not know how to feel.

She gave me nothing and I could do nothing with it.

"Now, I do not wish to make myself a liar. If you are to be back at Lun by the time I promised in my letter, we must be on our way." She said as she turned to the group of her guards.

She said something to them about the rest of the day being their own before leading me back down to Anna and I's room.

Anna was exactly where I thought she would be, standing tall on top of the metal ladder, a book in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

"Autumn!" She shouted and nearly fell from trying to get down so fast.

I was still angry, but the intensity that Anna looked me over with started to shake me free of the heat I felt in my hands. My arms, my legs, my head, underneath the shoulder straps of my dress and behind the thin straps of my sandals, she left no part of me unturned.

"Alright, it doesn't seem like you're hurt." She said with a smile.

"My head hurts." I sighed and let myself fall against her.

Gray raised her hand from where she stood just outside the door. "I believe that I am to blame for that. If the two of you are ready, I will see you back now."

It took Anna no time at all to gather the things she had brought with her. All I had done for two days was follow people around. Well, I didn't know if Sam counted as people, but he had led me through the tunnels beneath Lun all the same.

If I had not been being led towards the place where I could crawl into my bed and pout until Anna started babying me, I don't think I could have taken another step.

"I believe that Namiana will be gathering The Mothers for another of your secret trainings soon." Gray said as we were climbing yet another set of marble stairs.

Lun had ruined me.

After using stairs that sang to me everyday, normal ones were just a chore.

"Super secret training." Anna corrected The Mother.

Gray nodded "Ah, yes. If I may ask, what exactly makes them super?"

"We were already training in secret, and it was better than calling it secret, secret, training." I said with a sigh.

I only knew that because I Anna had explained it to me once before.

"If I may ask another question, why were you training in secret?" Gray asked again as we came to the big room we had been lifted down into the day before.

Anna stopped and took my right hand by my wrist. She spread my fingers apart and held it out so Gray could see the nine colored rings that sealed the channel within it. "Because everytime she learns how to do something it gets taken away."

"That is indeed a good reason to train in secret." Gray said with obvious sadness on her face.

I didn't care how safe they were, I sat in the center of the lift with my legs pulled against my chest.

"You should look, Autumn. It's beautiful." Anna said, but I pretended like I didn't hear her.

"If you ever wish to come back and visit, I can arrange for it. Although, next semester the ladies' ball will be held at my academy. So it is likely that both of you will be coming here soon again regardless." Gray offered as the lift drifted to a stop.

Anna pulled me up and held onto me until I was off the dull metal and onto a proper floor. "I thought the balls were just something that happened at Lun."

"Most of them are-" Gray started before she stepped through the gate.

We went in after her.

"-except for the ladies' ball and the knight's ball. Every Mother's students attend those."

I shook off the uncomfortable feeling I got from the gate and found that we were back in the room with the pool. Unlike when we had been in it before, there was only one color shining out from the water and it was not mine.

"Bub." Nami's creature said as it spit a wax sealed letter onto the floor at Gray's feet.

She bent down, opened it, and then tucked it into the length of rope that was tied around her waist. "This is where we part. Your punishment from me is now complete, and I thank you for your cooperation."

Anna told her goodbye for us both, and led me out of the room while I was still wondering where Gup was.

As soon as we stepped into the ghostly light of the singing stairs, she looked over both our shoulders and stopped me.

"Hey, what happened? Something is wrong with you, I can feel it. What did she do to you?" She asked, her voice soft, sweet, and everything else I needed it to be right then.

I shrugged. "Nothing. I don't know. I had to walk the path I apparently took when I stole The Well."

"What!" Anna yelled and then covered her mouth with her hands.

I leaned into her. "I know. I feel like that is how I should feel but I don't."

She held me for a long while.

It could have been forever and it would not have been enough.

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