CHAPTER 395: THE SNOW ISN’T SO PURE

The snow truly was closing in, and the valley felt quiet and smaller. At times, if one looked out the window for the first time in a long time, the difference between the white sky and mountains was practically indecipherable.

Irene woke up at dawn, surprised that she was up earlier than usual, but decided to get a head start on her day. Perhaps she could warm herself up before she had to face apprentices. Feeling a burn in her body when the outside was so cold sounded like a good plan.

After she built up her fire a bit more and washed her face, she opened the thick, wool curtains that protected her room from the cold and was met with a strange sight. There was nothing in front of her window.

Or rather...?

Outside started moving, and the ground below her started to shake. She fell to her backside and felt a sense of deja vu. The situation felt familiar, and she recalled her time in the Sunstoian north.

Realizing the reason the ground had shaken in the far north, she slowly moved to the window and pulled the curtains back again. When whatever was outside of her window slowed, she could count the scales on the magical beast...

The wyrm.

She gasped.

And then sat up in the bed she had been sleeping in.

Irene’s hand went to her racing heart, and her ivy eyes darted around the room as she righted herself. Oh, thank the gods, she was in her room, and there was no ground shaking to be felt.

As she calmed down, she felt out of breath. How wonderful it was to be in her barrack rather than mere feet from a mind-controlling monster that could lure her in once again.

She rested her forehead against her knees before realizing there was a chill in her room and she ought to build up her fire again or lose the flame and have to start from scratch.

It was the perfect hour to wake up after all, but the thought of a wyrm appearing didn’t leave the back of her mind as she went through her day.

+

Irene’s day always seemed to bring her back to the library.

If there was a silver lining to the situation with the Commander, it was certainly that Irene practiced hard with her sword to get out all her frustrations. She would usually try to go to the practice yard after her final meal or at some point during the day.

She was even inspiring others to get out there more often and practice with her. When the apprentices weren’t occupied with knight school, they would occasionally join Irene in her incessant urge to blow off some steam. At least it was allowing her to solidify her position as third in command because, if one of them were unlucky enough to get to her on a particularly frustrating day, they would soon learn that her sword skills far outweighed what they had to offer.

Irene, the one who swore to be the greatest knight, was creating a new generation of apprentices, certain that they wanted to do the same—if not only to beat her in a proper match. As much as they had accepted her for who she was, it would always sting to get beaten by a woman.

So much reading and sword practice was allowing her to forget any of the uncomfortable feelings she was trying to navigate through.

All her stress relief would crumble when a certain someone would purposefully put himself before her, none the wiser to her internal battle. She felt so awful that he seemed genuinely interested in conversing with her, while her want to talk to him was far from innocent. He would truly hate her if he found out what she was thinking.

"What has caught your interest today?"

The Commander’s voice made her prickle up internally, but externally she managed a calm facade that didn’t give way to her mental strife.

When the knight glanced over her shoulder and saw the Commander with a small stack of papers in his hands, she knew it was yet another casual visit. As if her presence in his library had interrupted his work for the day, and he wasn’t supposed to be there at all.

She couldn’t imagine that he simply just wanted to see her because he had grown fond of their conversations as much as she had.

By that point, she had been sure to stay far from nonfiction to further worsen her already dreary winter mood, and Irene pulled out the book she had been thinking of revisiting.

"It’s just a book about a monster," she admitted softly.

"Haven’t faced enough danger while being locked indoors?" Henry wondered, suddenly interested, and he dropped his papers onto one of the long tables before stalking forward towards the section of the library Irene was in. "Is this how you normally spend your winter?"

Despite his coming closer, Irene hadn’t revealed to him just which monster she was reading about, and she finally turned the cover to him. In dark blue writing against an icy, grey backdrop, the word "Wyrms" was revealed.

"Well, most past winters I had to stay at the Duke’s Tower because I was an unpaired apprentice, regardless, so I’m mostly used to this slowness," she admitted. "However, last winter..." She let out an even sigh. "The snow reminds me of last winter... Could I confess something to you, Commander?"

That piqued his interest even more. He raised his dark eyebrows at her and nodded. "You can trust me. What we talk about stays between us."

"Well, give me a moment. Let me find the passage."

Irene leaned against the bookshelf and flipped through the pages until she was deeper into the book. The words were coming back to her. Even if it had been years, she recalled the passage that told about the magic that wyrms possessed, though in far less detail than what she had experienced firsthand.

"Here it is," she announced, perking up.

The Commander stepped forward. He had fallen back, not wanting to put pressure on the woman. He now invaded her space, and she had no choice but to silently accept it because she was pointing to what was in the book.

"As you have seen for yourself, dragons possess a magical orb which our kingdom deems invaluable," she explained quietly. "Wyrms are much the same. That much has been confirmed by the basic research that has been done on them." Her eyes left the book, and she momentarily forgot she was normally more nervous about the close proximity in which they were conversing with one another. "When I was stuck in a snowstorm in the Arctic north last winter, I came across a wyrm that put a spell on me. If it weren’t for my father’s intervention, I would have undoubtedly become that beast’s meal. I can’t remember hours of time because of the spell."

The Commander gazed at her for a few moments, realizing this was something she was genuinely worried about. Rarely did he hear of others who went through similar situations as him, facing beasts that no one was ever meant to see in their lives.

"Has this been an ongoing worry of yours?" he wondered.

"I uh..." She felt a bit guilty and cracked a small smile. How could she tell him of the ridiculousness of her life? How she had a dream before that made her change the course of her life and now the rare dreams she had worried her to her core. "I had a dream, rather, a nightmare. Now it won’t get out of my head. I’m petrified that me and my father’s inability to defeat the beast will put it on our doorstep one day and I will only get in the way since there’s no way of knowing if the magic it put over me could be activated again if I cross this... creature."