“Un, deux, trois!”

My mother stepped deep inside Arthur’s range, striking at the center of his chest.

Arthur twitched himself to the side with a surprising quickness. My mother’s arm stretched past him and he sent his own two fingers streaking towards his opponent's hand.

My mother shifted her weight onto her back foot and leaned deep away from Arthur. In one seamless movement, like a twig springing back straight after being bent, she sprung upwards forcefully.

Arthur stepped back and plunged his fingers into my mother’s shoulder.

“Point, Arthur!” Springer called from the black board, a torn off leg of one of the big chickens clutched in his teeth.

My mother threw back her head and laughed as they reset. “Well done, dear. I will not underestimate you again.”

Anna had taken her head off my shoulder and emptied her tankard. Not a moment after she had placed hers on the grass beside her, she eyed mine, sitting mostly full between my crossed legs.

“Are you going to finish that?” Anna asked, already reaching for the wooden handle.

I pushed her hand away. “I’m not sure, but it is for sale.”

There was part of her that my efforts had not brought back. I could feel it. She raised an eyebrow at me, but it was short of her usual expressions, like a quarter of her was still pulled back and withdrawn, ignoring me.

“What’s your price?” She asked, beginning to give into my game.

I needed to keep her attention until I could find out what I had done to her. “Make me an offer.”

“I could just get up and get another one.” She said simply with a shrug.

I had not considered the availability of goods similar to mine. “You could, but the fine ladies at yonder stall are not offering what I am. The ale in this tankard is special. Magic.”

“Shut up.” Anna laughed, suddenly reaching for the tankard between my legs.

I grasped it between my hands and held it to the ground, looking around wildly with false distress. “Stop! Thief! Guards!”

Springer and Woolie both looked at me, but neither of them came to save me from the black hearted ruffian trying to plunder my magic potion. Thankfully, my strength proved enough to stand against her thieving hands and after a moment, she relented.

“Truly a desperate thief who doesn’t know what they are attempting to steal. You are so power hungry, you didn’t stop to ask what kind of magic this concoction carries?” I asked, holding the tankard to my chest like it held all the secrets of reality.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Anna said, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. “What does it do?”

“The liquid held in this commonplace container looks like ale, smells like ale, tastes like ale,” I said, waving my hand over the small wooden lid of the tankard. “But in fact, it is actually milk.”

“You’re a freak.” Anna said, seemingly unimpressed by the small wonder I was offering to sell her.

“I understand if you cannot afford such a treasure, most could not. It is no great shame.” I sighed, playing the part of the shopkeeper accustomed to disappointment.

“I can afford it. I could buy ten of them if you had them.” Anna said.

“Then make me an offer if you are so drenched in wealth.” I called her bluff and turned my nose up at her.

Anna hummed, as if she was thinking over some complicated puzzle. “I’m not sure if it’s worth what I have to offer.”

Fuck. I thought, realizing my own game had been turned around on me. I suddenly, desperately, needed to know what she possessed that was worth ten of my magic ales. Trying and failing to not let her know how bad I wanted to know what she had, I offered. “I’m sure we can reach some agreement.”

“You give me the ale.” Anna said, holding her hand flat against her chest.

“The magic ale.” I reminded her.

She nodded in agreement. “You give me the magic ale,” She looked into my eyes. At that moment at least, all of her was focused on me, no shadow in sight. “And I’ll show you how to find your color again.”

“Point, Lady Aubrey!” One of the guards called out.

Our tense haggling broken, Anna and I both looked up to the platform. My mother and Arthur were no longer in the center. While I had been focused on keeping Anna’s focus on me, the final duel of our little Galahad’s night had made its way across the white stones of the platform to the edge furthest from us.

My mother lay on her back. Her long red hair had fallen and hung a finger length from the lush grass surrounding the platform. Arthur loomed over her. Holding himself above her with his hands pressed into the stone, the silky red fabric around his upper arms blew out, splitting in several places. He moved to stand and revealed my mother’s two fingers pushing into his chest.

“Shit. We missed it.” Anna said, taking the tankard from my hands and beginning to drink immediately.

Arthur helped my mother off the ground and the two reset in the center of the stage.

The same gleam my mother had in her eyes when she had announced the feast the morning Sam had drug the massive boar into the kitchen glimmered in her emerald eyes. I caught a brief glimpse of Arthur’s face as he retook his stance, but he looked nothing like the man I had come to know as my friend. There was no smile or relaxed friendliness, only an emotionless mask that turned his face into something intimidating.

A roar rose from the city beyond the manor walls, drowning out whichever guard had begun counting the duelists off. Just before the cheers from the city died down, both of them moved in a sudden flurry of strikes and stabs and side steps.

Arthur pressed forward, the force of his strikes my mother evaded blowing her hair backwards like it had been caught in sudden gusts of wind.

Every step forward he took, my mother danced backwards, like water continuing to flow against a roaring gale.

My mother’s eyes went wide when Arthur began extending his strikes fully. He leaned into each attempted blow, nearly catching my mother in the center of her forehead twice with his improved range.

She swept her front foot out and behind herself in an arc with such speed that she threw herself to the side in a low spin. Landing on her feet at his flank, she had caught him overreaching and pushed herself off the white stones.

The band of my mother’s aura holding my hair back turned to dust. My hair fell to my shoulders and down my back.

My mother leapt from the ground

Arthur bent at the waist, throwing himself backwards violently.

My mother’s aim was true.

Her two fingers tapped Arthur’s forehead. She landed onto the stone platform and caught Arthur by the hand, keeping him from falling onto his ass the way I had done.

“Three points, Lady Aubrey! Lady Aubrey is the victor!” Springer applauded from where he stood alongside Woolie. It could have been the two guards clapping echoing off the manor house, but I thought I heard a third pair of hands coming from somewhere else.

“Come, girls,” my mother beckoned for us to join Arthur and herself on the platform.

I helped Anna up, her empty tankard and the hollow husk of my potion’s container left laying next to the impressions we had left in the soft grass.

“You are much better when you are defending, remember that.” I heard my mother finish advising Arthur as we met them in the center of the stage. She patted him on his cheek before taking him by the shoulders and squaring his feet within one of the white stones of the platform.

“Anna, dear, you stand here.” She said, placing Anna in her own stone next to her brother.

“And that puts you here, little Delpha. Well done this night,” My mother smiled at me and put me shoulder to shoulder next to Anna. She took up at the end of the line beside Arthur and waved to the guards.

Springer walked to the end of the platform, pulling up the front of his blouse to cover his muscled chest. “In fourth place, Autumn Aubrey!”

Applause followed the guards' pronouncement. The section of white stone my feet were placed in became outlined in iridescent light. Then, I felt myself move as the stone raised from its counterparts. I turned to Anna and found that I had to look down at her to meet her eyes. She smiled up at me, but it did not meet her eyes fully. Part of her had slipped away again. Arthur’s usual grin had shone through the placid mask he had been wearing only a few moments before and from my pedestal, I was almost an even height with him. Looking a bit tired around the eyes and with strands of her red hair stuck to her face with sweat, my mother applauded nonetheless.

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I thought of The Mother in Red atop her lion of rose red fire, sending the people of Erosette into a frenzy from her arrival alone. All of the people in my life I was closest to were cheering for me. I felt full, warm, and present in that moment to a surreal extent. It could only have been a fraction of how she had felt.

Springer interrupted my moment. “In third place, Anna Lao!”

Just like mine had, Anna’s section of stone began to glow at its edges and I watched as she rose above, her pedestal twice the small height of my own. I expected her to gaze down at me from her superior height and say something snide about how she had beaten me or how easily I had been shocked by her desperate maneuver. Instead, all I received was a shrug of her shoulders before she turned to Arthur when Springer called his name.

As it was the first two times, Arthur’s stone glowed with what could only be my mother’s aura and raised the tall man to new heights. He smiled, his crossed arms bulging against the blown out fabric of his sleeves.

That should be me. I thought, finding it an impossible task to make myself clap for him. The only reason he had beaten me was because I had been watching Anna. A victory over someone who was distracted by worry for someone they. . .for their dearest friend, was not worthy of celebration.

A roar from the city rose up again, dying down just as Springer finished proclaiming the victor of our little Galahad’s night. “Idensyn the Lion!”

I clapped for my mother. Looking up at her standing above all of us, elegant and proud, how could I not? She was my mother. Even if deep down I thought I could beat her with enough practice, she deserved the height she had been raised to.

She quieted us down with a finger to her lips.

Sure of what I was hearing after the second time, someone indeed clapped a little longer than the rest of us from the direction of the manor.

“I am honored, thank you, but I cannot give the hand of The Red Mother to myself,” She turned on her pedestal and lowered her hand to Arthur. Bare for only a moment, her thin fingers washed in her iridescent aura before it bled into a laced glove of pure crimson. “What will you ask of me?”

Like he had known my mother would pass the prize to him and had spent the evening thinking about his request, Arthur enveloped my mother’s hand within his own and looked up at her. “Marry me.”

“What?” Anna blurted.

“No.” A deep voice gasped, its speaker unseen from somewhere beyond the hedges.

Springer and Woolie played the part of the shocked barmaids, gasping and covering their mouths with their hands.

I was speechless. Granted, I had only learned what “Marriage” meant a couple hours ago, but I was nearly certain I understood what Arthur had just asked of my mother.

My mother was silent and unmoving, wide eyed disbelief painted across her beautiful face.

A full body laugh bent Arthur at his waist. He leaned down without releasing my mothers hand, his face turning the same color as her laced glove. “I’m sorry. I had to,” He wheezed, standing back up and wiping his eyes. “It was too easy.”

No one found Arthur as humorous as the tall man found himself. Everyone else in the garden let out a collective sigh as the sudden tension caused by the joke vanished.

Everyone but my mother.

She waited until Arthur had settled and then squeezed his hand. “I accept.”

“What? Anna blurted again, looking at me as if I had any control over what was happening.

“No!” The same deep voice shouted from beyond the hedges.

My mother lowered herself until she rested on her heels, looking down at Arthur like a keen eyed hawk that had just spotted its soon to be prey. Arthur had gone completely still, looking up at my mother like a rabbit that had just realized it had caught the eyes of something that meant to eat it.

“There is no reason to delay, dear. Let us fetch your mother. She should be present for the wedding of her child.” My mother said, deadly serious.

Arthur shook his head. I could not be certain because his back was turned to Anna and her back was turned to me, but it seemed like he was desperately trying to pull his hand from my mother’s grip.

“No, wait. I,” He sputtered. “Wow, you're strong. I, uhm, it’s not that I don’t think,” He exhaled, making an exasperated fheww sound. “I was joking!”

My mother took her turn to laugh. “So am I. You sweated less during our duel.”

We all found my mother just as humorous as she found herself, laughing alongside her once it was clear that there would be no marriage on Galahad’s night.

Everyone except Arthur. He chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his head with his hand and looking like he narrowly escaped some unfortunate and painful fate.

“Now,” my mother said, the change in the tone of her voice enough to bring us all back to her. “No more jokes, what will you ask of me.”

Arthur, still looking partially distressed, gave his request. “Can I have a longer bed? I asked you when we first moved here, but you must have forgotten. My feet hand right off the end of the one I have now.”

“Oh, dear boy. Is that why you have not been sleeping soundly?” My mother exclaimed, concern filling her emerald eyes. The pedestals that had lofted us in the unfair order we had finished the tournament in sunk back to the platform below us.

“I didn’t think anyone had noticed.” Arthur shrugged.

“Springer. Woolie. Come with me,” My mother commanded, pulling Arthur off the platform and towards the manor.

The guards, unfettered by their barmaid outfits, hurried away from the stall at my mother’s word.

Woolie, the one I had made laugh by calling him a lady, stopped in front of where Anna and I had been left on the white stones of the platform. “I left what you asked for on the counter, Lady Anna.”

“What did you ask for, more ale?” I asked.

Anna shook her head. “No, I saw you weren’t eating and asked Mr. Woolie to set some of the chicken aside for you.”

“Oh.” I said. Even when she had been mad or upset with me, I still had to figure out the which and why, she had cared enough to make sure I ate dinner. If we had not been in full view of the guard, I might have kissed her.

Springer shouted over his shoulder from the mouth of the garden. “Woolie, hurry. I think Bool’s keeled over from a broken heart”

“Thank you, Woolie.” Anna said to the guard.

“Your welcome, Lady Anna.” Woolie nodded, a pleased expression behind his dark beard.

“Thank you, my lady.” I said, bowing to him with every bit of manners I could muster.

The big man, dark chest hairs curling over the bosom of his dress, looked over each of his shoulders. Then, he turned his eyes to me and spoke. “You are welcome, Lady Autumn.”

At that, he broke into a heavy trot across the lush grass and Anna and I were left alone.

Wrapped neatly in a piece of red fabric that looked conspicuously close in width and length to the torn away corner of the curtain that hung off the back of the stall, Anna took the chicken and finished the last remaining tankard of ale that had been left full. We reached the backdoor of the manor and found it propped open. A confusing mess of shouts and commands echoed out of the house. Just before we passed Arthur’s room, the tall man himself came sliding backwards out of the room, holding one end of his upturned bed.

“Leave it to you to wait until it’s late to tell someone you can’t sleep.” Anna said to her brother.

“Pivot!” One of the guards shouted from within the room.

“Shut up,” Arthur said as he was flattened against the wall, the wooden footboard pressing into his torso. Through clenched teeth, he grunted and pushed the bed back through his door. “Hold on.”

Was that why he had wanted to talk to me? Had he been trying to tell me that he couldn’t sleep? Something, I did not know what, made me feel like that wasn’t the case.

Anna waited for me at the foot of the stairs as I skulked around the kitchen and gathered two bottles of wine for her. We started up to our rooms, but my mother’s voice stopped me in my tracks.

“Autumn,” She said. I looked down at her. The silky red robes she had been wearing just a few moments before had been replaced by one of her usual wraps and a cloak fastened around her neck by a white pearled broach. Despite her clothes, she looked like she was on the verge of sudden and inescapable slumber. “Tomorrow’s preparations will require much from me. I will not be able to meet with you.”

“Can I wear my normal clothes?” I asked, counting down the seconds until I could be free of the sweat soaked silky torture device. Maybe The Mother in Brown will drag silk over my skin to punish me. An errant thought ran through my mind. As relatively gentle the imagined punishment seemed, I did not think I could bear it if it was true.

“Yes, my little Delpha, there will be no uniforms for tomorrow's celebration.” She answered, taking the small velvet purse I had not seen in her hand and tucking it into her cloak.

Anna chimed in. “Where are you going? It’s pretty late.”

The dress, the cloak, the purse, how had I not realized my mother was leaving?

“I can not bear the thought of one of the members of my house being unable to rest. I must acquire proper bedding for your brother before I rest.” My mother sighed.

She’s going to the city. She owes me a favor. Ask to go with her. The thoughts came quickly in my mind, but not quick enough.

“Sleep well, girls. Tomorrow is my favorite night of Amoranora.” My mother said, leaving us and the manor through the double doors at the front.

Before we finished climbing the steps to the third floor, I was pulling at the red sash tied around my waist. I left the loose pants strewn outside my door. Without pause, I put the bottles down on the desk and dashed into the closet to free myself fully.

Anna knocked on the door just as I pulled one of my simple white dresses over my head and let out a relieved sigh when the fabric didn’t slide over my skin smoothly.

“Can I wear one of your dresses? I don’t feel like going back to my room.” She asked.

I opened the door and swapped places with her. “I’m not giving, you are borrowing.”

Anna went into the closet and snapped the lights on. She closed the door most of the way, leaving a crack so I could hear her. “I never got those clothes back, you owe me.”

“When you find a trader that sells mortal clothes somewhere within these walls, show them to me. I will steal them for you.” I answered, taking the curtain wrapped chicken from where Anna had placed it and dropping myself to the flowery rug. The skin was blackened from the fire, but the meat was moist and tender. I tore into it with my hands, leaving nothing but a pile of clean bones and burnt ends a moment later.

“You really are a monster, aren’t you?” Anna asked from where she sat on the edge of the bed, the leatherbound notebook resting beside her.

I had been so possessed with devouring the food in front of me that I hadn’t noticed her leaving the closet. My white dress looked good on her. It stood out against her tan skin and dark hair in a way that it did not against my own paleness. “Still your monster, right?”

She had called me that, behind the boarding house after the first of the lich’s creatures had burned away into thick black smoke.

“Of course,” She said, looking confused. She pointed at one of the wine bottles sitting on the desk. “Open that and let's get started, Samsara won’t wake up will he?”

I looked up and sure enough, a dark lump sagged in the middle of the canopy that hung over my bed. Another thing the chicken had distracted me from. Standing up and opening the bottle with a little help from my aura, there was one thing I had noticed.

Anna had returned. Any trace of the shadow that had been cast over her earlier had vanished.

Did I risk bringing the darkness back by asking what I had done to her or pretend like nothing had happened?

“Glamor is up first. Make yourself me.” She instructed.

I did as told.