It felt strange to wake up in my bed.

What felt even weirder was that I thought of it as my bed. I’d only slept in it three times since receiving my Mantle thirty-six days ago. Even having a Mantle felt strange. Learning about my class, what it would mean if I was discovered, and even learned that Rix was a class that I was pretending to be.

There were so many other weird things that I’d experienced in the last five weeks, but waking up with Ether using my chest as a pillow felt right.

I’d only known the white-haired, red-eyed woman for less than two weeks of the total time I’d been at the Cathedral and it felt like she’d been with me for as long as I could remember. I lazily traced my finger over her arm. The movement didn’t cause her to stir in the slightest. She was a sound sleeper and one who had a little difficulty waking up.

I heard a noise and looked around the room. Gesai Alard, our new assistant teacher, was getting up from her bed near the door of the large building that housed our dorm. Other than two bathrooms against the back wall, there was nothing else inside of the single-story building. Calling them bathrooms felt disingenuous though. They were a room of showers and a room of toilet stalls and sinks. I was still having to get used to the different dimensions of the dorm. Before we had been taken it had been half the size it was now.

The redheaded teacher looked over at my bed and frowned before heading outside. It was still early enough in the morning that our main teacher, Trent Vowler, and Rix Zeb, my classmate, would be the only two awake. Honestly, I had started to wonder if Rix ever slept, but if the other redheaded woman in the building did, she found time when I wasn’t able to see it.

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As much as I wanted to stay in bed and snuggle with the warm woman laying on me, I had a feeling that I needed to head outside too. I knew that with Trent, planning sessions happened in the courtyard outside the dorm and if I wanted to know what we were doing, and possibly have some input on that, I needed to be out there.

I grabbed the pillow from under my head and slid it underneath hers and I rolled out from under Ether. I slipped into the blue jumpsuit that I’d left on the floor next to my bed the night before, stepped into my boots and began walking past the row of bunk beds in the middle of the room to get to the door.

There were eleven beds in the room, two at the front for the two teachers, three single beds on either side of the room and three bunk beds in the middle of the room. There were only two students claiming spots on the bunk beds, and both of them were in the bunk closest to the front of the dorm. Just as I passed by them, I heard feet softly hit the floor behind me. I turned around and came face to face with the black-haired, green-eyed newest member of our team.

Ozet, though only her parents got away with calling her that. She was tall for a woman, at five foot eight, though that was still four inches shorter than me. I had the advantage of having my shoes on, which made the height difference seem larger.

“Going somewhere?” Oz began getting into her green jumpsuit that looked like mine except for the color. There were two parts to our team, the Blue, of which were the first six of us, and the Green, which currently only had two members.

The Cathedral was expanding the roster of teams from four to eight, which meant that we were going to have to fill the other four spots with recruits that hadn’t made the original cut.

“Gesai is out front with Trent and…” I squinted to see better in the dimly lit room and as I suspected, there was no one in the back-left bed. “Rix.” I motioned at the front. "I have a feeling they’re talking about what we’re doing today and I thought I’d join them.”

“Sounds good.” Oz looked at the blonde woman sleeping on the bottom bunk. Satisfied that Ren Zavel was still asleep, she turned back to me. "After you.”