Telling The Circle of the Nine Mothers no was so relieving that I almost fainted.

I did not want to lay down. I did not want them to inspect their seal. The effort it had taken to break the red ring, both by me and those who loved me, had been no small amount. The imbalance it had created within me once I had found my color had nearly led me to very violent mistakes.

The blankets on my bed had been torn to shreds. Sam's flesh had fallen off him like a torn shirt after I had brought my power to bear against him. I had been a handbreadth away from splitting Anna's skull instead of the wall in my bedroom.

Rhiannon had looked amazed at the sight of my fireworks. She was The Mother in Red, the ring I had broken was hers, and there was no evidence that she was upset by that.

Once I had let go of my fear, there was absolutely no reason I would willingly lay back down and allow my aura to be sealed away again.

"You are in no position to deny us, Underwitch Aubrey. Do not make this more difficult than it should be." The Mother in Grey said from behind me.

"If you reseal it, I will break it again," I said honestly. "That's not a threat. I'm not trying to be difficult. Still, I am a sorceress, could any of you live without being able to use your aura?"

My words sounded strange in my own ears. I knew what I was saying and I knew that I was the one saying it, but I could not believe what I was hearing.

"Enough of this." Azza growled.

Pressure and weight, the same unseen force that had crushed me into submission inside Azza's glass pyramid, pressed against me. It was not sudden. She slowly brought me down by the force of her will alone. I gritted my teeth and tried to resist, but I could not hold against it.

"Is this truly necessary?" Nami asked, an unpleasant expression on her shadowed face.

"Letting this continue any longer is no mercy, for her or us. There is still much for you to learn about being a Mother." Azza said as I gave into her will and relaxed against the stone table beneath me.

It was uncomfortable, the scars on my arms and legs began to itch, but it did not hurt. Despite the fury in her golden eyes and the tension in her slender body, she was not trying to hurt me. If trying to kill me was the worst of her and healing my broken hand was the best, the restraint she showed in the throes of her anger was a fine middle ground.

"Should we put her out at least?" The Mother in Purple asked, another lit burner hanging from her lip.

"What are you two whispering?" Azza asked across the table.

Rhiannon and Glim had stepped back from the table and were speaking much too quietly for me to hear.

"Come." One of The Mothers that had been standing away from the table said as she passed by them.

I could not see her face. The way she moved, it seemed like that was intentional. By the color of her hair alone, I knew which Mother she must be. Pure white and lustrous, it hung down the back of her silken robe and stood in stark contrast against the pale pink petal pattern.

Rhiannon and Glim did as they were told. They joined hands with each other and did the same with The Mothers beside them.

From Rhiannon to Nami, Nami to Azza, Azza to Gwyn, Gwyn to Ali, Ali to Grey, Grey to Glim, and Glim to Rhiannon, they formed a circle around the stone table.

The Mother in White, with her back still turned to me, placed her left hand on Rhiannon's shoulder. Each of her fingernails were long and painted a pearlescent white that made me think her touch would be icy cold. Her right went to The Mother beyond her. All I could see of The Mother in Orange was tan skin and muscles of her back and shoulders.

"I don't really know what I'm supposed to do." Nami said, her eyes shifting to each of her sisters nervously.

"It is just Rhiannon's circle that has been broken-" Grey started.

"You don't have to do anything," Gwyn interrupted her. "Push your power into her hand and she will do the rest."

"Like the crystals." Glim said, her yellow aura already swirling around Rhiannon's wrist.

The Mother in Grey sighed. "Underwitch Aubrey, release your hold on your aura."

How had she known that I was still bending the branch?

"I would rather not." I answered honestly. The aura I had built inside me and the calm that came with it was all that kept me from panicking. I had no intention of using it, there was no reason for me to manifest my will.

"Perhaps it is time for us to take the mortal girl from you?" Azza said angrily.

"Let up. What if it was you on this table?" Nami said, the ocean of strength that lay within her coming closer to her surface when she glared at Azza.

Azza opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

White and orange light washed over Rhiannon's shoulder and the rest of The Mother's followed The Mother in White's example. Blue from Nami's navel, warm brown from Azza, green from Gwyn, purple from Ali, and grey from Grey all joined together with Glim's yellow. A variegated stream of aura passed from hand to hand and formed around me in a dazzling display.

The Circle of The Nine Mothers had formed, and I was caught in its center.

Rhiannon brought her hands forward and held them over my navel. Her eyes met mine through her false blind and her words repeated in my mind once again. Her rose red aura shone between her hands as the colors of her sisters flowed down her arms and joined with it. I felt my shirt climb up and the waist of my pants lower just enough to expose my stomach. With my flesh bared and the circle formed, Rhiannon lowered her hands and I felt a gentle heat against my skin.

Under the brilliant colors of The Circle of The Nine Mothers, my power was sealed away once again.

It had not been nearly as unpleasant as I had thought it would be and it would have been over if Azza had not said what she had. The anger her words had stirred into my aura had brought me two understandings.

Perhaps it is time for us to take the mortal girl from you?

While they had been sealing my navel, I had been gathering my power in my right palm. Azza's pressure and weight faltered as they began to release their aura and I swung my right hand towards her.

I pushed my power through my palm and my perfect red cord unfurled and coiled around her slender arm with a sharp crack. Drawing it back to my body, I rolled it around my hand until it was tight.

Azza's golden eyes went wide and the lines on her bronze skin began to glow.

"If you touch her, you'll have to fucking kill me." I spat my first understanding and meant every word. It was the most true thing I could say. Azza was a Mother. I knew how powerful she was. If she did come for Anna, I would be little more than an annoyance.

But, I would annoy her until she stopped me. I would hit her, pull her hair, spit in her face. Like Suri did Rhiannon, I would never relent. If she took Anna from me, the only end would be my death.

"That's it." Azza said, her lips pressing into a tight line and her jaw clenching.

Her sienna aura curled around my cord and turned to gold. It ran down the length of my power in a quick, shimmering, wave. Before I could take a breath, it ran over my hand and my heart began to race at the all too familiar feeling. My scars began to itch and I knew that

Then, as quickly as it had come, it fell away from my skin and glittered on my shirt harmlessly.

From Nami's navel, an endless torrent of water spun over my aura and surrounded Azza's arm like a whirlpool. Cool air drafted off of the working and the sound of it filled the air around the stone table.

Still holding Gwyn's hand, The Mother in Brown raised her free arm and golden sand swirled up from the ground and began to coalesce around her body.

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A slow swelling flash of green light shone out from Gwyn and when it faded, her left arm had changed. Just like when she had shifted in front of me in the depths of her deep forest, where her wiry arm had been before, something monstrous had taken its place. Dark green scaled, sharp white claws, she used her new limb to bring Azza's hand back down and pin it to the stone table.

Ali took a drag from her burner and looked up at the night sky. "Just once, it would be nice if we could all get together without it becoming so damn dramatic."

"I will not be treated as if I am the issue here," Azza shouted, her golden eyes scowling at each of her sisters in turn. "I am not the thief. I am not the one who has broken our rules. I am not the one who attacked her. I do not understand this. Why do none of you see reason?"

Within Nami's whirlpool and against Gwyn's hold, Azza's dust continued to writhe around her body. Slowly, it took shape around her and understood that she was about to become what she had been at Vowkeeper's Anguish.

Goldluster.

"Glim." The Mother in White said. She had taken her hand from Rhiannon and continued to face away from the chaos taking place on the table.

"Azza," I shouted, bringing her attention back to me so I could deliver my second understanding. "Take it out. Just take it out. If it breaks my mind, so be it. I've had worse. I cannot go on like this. This is not a life. I don't want to carry the weight anymore. Take it and you will never have to see me again."

"Finally, someone here says something reasonable. Listen, sisters, even she sees the folly in this." Azza said through a triumphant sigh as her golden sand slowed to a crawl.

"Do you mean what you say?" The Mother in White's voice came and took up so much space in my mind that my cord crumbled to a stream of red dust inside Nami's water.

"Yes." I answered, unable to do or think about anything else.

"Why?" She asked.

My focus gone, the afterglow that followed the end of my power brought new anger to my lips and I could not resist it. "Because I would rather be dead or mindless that to have to live like I have. Anna is not some fucking toy that can be taken away from me. I'm not a thing that you can lock away and forget about."

"This is very brave of you. Truly, I hope that you survive and we can wash our hands of this." Azza sighed again as she looked at me with what seemed to be compassion.

I didn't doubt that it was. She had healed me after all.

"We can not do this." The Mother in Grey said from where she stood above my head.

"Why? Who are you to fear something the girl is not afraid of? I will not stand for this!" Azza snapped, the compassion dying in the heat of her molten eyes. In an instant, her golden sand spun back up her body and her transformation began.

"Then sit down." Glim said with a small laugh as she floated down and sat atop Azza's shoulders like a child would their parent's. Her yellow aura came to light against The Mother in Brown's cheeks and Azza began to smile.

"The fear is not for her, sister. The fear is for The Well. Just as there is the risk of her mind breaking if it is removed, there is risk that her mind will break The Well." The Mother in Grey said calmly.

"We can't have that can we?" Azza asked lazily with a pleasant smile on her face.

Nami's whirlpool withdrew and dusted to the ground beside the table. Her ocean eyes never left The Mother in Brown. Gwyn's monstrous limb released Azza's hand and turned to dust as her sister's working had.

"Rhiannon?" The Mother in White spoke and from her tone alone, I knew what she was asking.

The Mother in Red turned to me and patted my leg. "You should rest, Autumn. Your afterglow will have passed by the time you wake."

"No!" I shouted, but the charm had already begun to lull me to sleep.

I drifted down into a bed of roses. The anger of my afterglow faded like a dream. All was well, all was warm, there was nothing in all of chaos that could harm me. Anna loved me. Arthur loved me. My mother loved me. Rhiannon loved me. I was safe. She made a vow to me and The Mother in Red, Vowkeeper, did not break her vows.

I never lost sight of the fact that I had been charmed and I never fully fell asleep. Rhiannon had brought me somewhere safe, somewhere that I could rest.

"She is not some twisted creature, she is a girl who made a mistake when she was too young to understand what she was doing." I heard Nami's voice echo in my safe place.

Sometime later, or it could have been the very next moment, I heard The Mother in Grey. "Yes. Well done, Namiana."

Anna loved me. All was well, all was warm. Vowkeeper did not break her vows.

"Do you think she hates us? It's not fair that I have to go last." Glim's high voice found its way into my bed of roses.

Anna loved me. All was well.

Anna loved me. . .

The warm place, the safe place that Rhiannon had sent me to faded and I came back to myself atop the stone table in the middle of the colosseum. I ripped her false blind off my face and rubbed my eyes until they cleared.

The Mother's were gone, only their colored dust remained around me. No longer surrounding me, their newest mark on me stood as a reminder of them. Identical to the seal over my navel in every way except for its size, a new seal had been placed over my right palm. Nine circles, nine colors, nine new rings to remind me that my life was not my own.

"Fuck!" I yelled in anger as I hopped off the table and kicked at a mound of Azza's sienna dust.

"Underwitch Aubrey." The Mother in Grey's voice sounded from somewhere unseen.

I whipped my head around and found nine of the archways that formed the inside of the colosseum had been darkened with unnatural shadow.

They had sealed my power away, ran, and hid before I could wake up.

Cowards. I thought angrily. Fucking cowards.

I tried to call out to them, but the binding that Azza had placed on me kept my voice silent.

Unfortunately for her, I had broken her power before and I was enraged enough to do it again.

Just like the glamor she had left on my face after Gwyn's punishment, I felt her power underneath my tongue. I could smell her scent of sun warmed stone and spices, I could taste it.

I brought my aura into my mouth and broke it.

Dust dried every bit of moisture in my mouth. I coughed and spit until the warm brown remnants of her binding lay in a damp mess at my feet.

"Underwitch Aubrey." The Mother in Grey repeated.

"Azza!" I called her name in triumph. After so long being tongue tied, the joy that came with saying what I wanted to say nearly sent me into a burst of laughter.

There was no answer.

"Gwyn, Rhiannon, Nami, Glim, Grey, Ali," I stopped my jubilant naming to take a breath and continued "I don't know what the fuck the other two Mother's names are. Why are you hiding from me?"

I had made a promise. Rhiannon would keep her vow.

I had to be myself.

My aura built within me and slammed against the seals. I remembered when I had blown all of the water out of the bath at the boarding house. I remembered the pain I had felt in my palm before my channel had opened. The hole in the ceiling and the knowledge that most palms and most soles could channel through both sides. Focusing all of my power into my left hand, I stepped forward and brought the memory of Adrian's fireworks to the front of my mind.

In a sudden and violent burst, I willed the channel in my left palm open and sent streams of my aura sailing towards the nine archways.

Red light, shimmering embers in the darkness, the faces of all but three of The Mother's staring back at me.

Darkness returned.

Rhiannon and Glim had been smiling, I had seen that first.

Azza had been leaning against the back wall with her head held in her hands.

"Oh fuck, I can't believe that worked." I laughed, bending the branch so my afterglow would not come for me again.

"What do you want, child? What circumstances will prevent you from continuing to defy us?" The Mother in White said, her voice driving out every other wild thought in my mind. She had still been facing away from me. All I had seen in the flash of my power had been the back of her.

What do you want? The Autumn I liked asked in my mind.

What a terribly difficult question to answer that was.

"I want sandals." I whispered, my eyes falling to the variegated dust that surrounded the stone table.

"Louder! Like your trying to scare off a pack of wolves!" Glim shouted from somewhere within the shadows of the arch way.

"I want fucking sandals!" I yelled back.

"Is that it?" Glim shouted back.

"No! I want to learn, properly! I want to be one of your roses, Rhiannon! I want to be able to go to seven columns without being terrified of having everything that I love taken away from me. I don't want to break your rules, but I will. I can't help it," I shouted, the power within me compelling me to lash out. All that I cared about swelled within me and the small passions I had found in my short life warmed me from within. "I want to be with Anna! I want to see chaos for myself! I want to be a sorceress in full!

"Do you mean what you say?" The Mother in White asked

"Yes!" I shouted back.

The remainder of my aura escaped through my newly opened channel and the dusty ground around my feet burst into clouds of red embers and dirt. I leapt back to the stone table to escape my own accidental attack and the loss of what I had spent brought me down to my side.

Silence blanketed the colosseum and when the dust settled, my afterglow returned stronger than ever before.

"Hello?" I shouted.

When there was no answer, I pushed myself up and shouted again. "Fucking answer me!"

They didn't.

I jumped off the stone table and started for the archways.

Rhiannon appeared from one of them and met me halfway.

"It's time to go." She said as she took me by my shoulders and turned me around.

"Wait, no! What happened? What is going to happen?" I asked, digging the heels of my boots into the dust to stop her from leading me away.

All I managed to do was throw dust into the air as she moved me regardless of my resistance.

"Not here. I will try to tell you some other way on a different day. I must take you home. Know this, you kept your promise, and I have kept my vow." She whispered quietly through a mischievous grin.

"I was myself?" I stopped resisting and asked her as we fast walked towards an open black gate.

"Yes," She said and squeezed my shoulder lovingly. "And what a wonderful soul you have turned out to be."