CH 45.1

“Haahh!”

Inhaling, Anne lifted her upper body. A cough escaped. She lifted the kettle on the table next to her and drank water from the cup. But she drank so hurriedly that the water spilled.

“Cough… cough… this…”

It was a strange but very vivid dream. She couldn’t forget the wind that brushed her cheek, the terrible voice that made her body tremble. Anne gathered herself.

“What kind of dream is this… And who was that man?”

Although she clearly saw his face, when she woke, she remembered nothing. Even though he hadn’t been wearing a mask, her glimpse of his features were so blurry that it was hard to tell who it was.

She didn’t know why she had dreamt such a thing, but she was reluctant to dismiss it as just a dream.

“It can’t be a memory. If that was the case, there’s no way I would have been in the North.”

Anne had stood in a forest full of snow that covered the whole world in white, and her clothing was also in a Northern style. She hadn’t been to the North for more than a few months and hadn’t been to the woods alone in all that time.

“Why must I have to dream of monsters…”

Suddenly, she recalled that the Grand Duke was currently subjugating monsters.

“What could happen to that person?”

It was a disturbing, strange dream. But she remembered how she felt at the end. There had been an overwhelming sense of relief.

After downing another cup of water, Anne inadvertently touched her forehead and, startled by the heat, removed her hand. Her face burned. It wasn’t that she was sick or had a headache. It was simply too hot.

“What’s going on?”

Everything else seemed perfectly fine, so she couldn’t tell what was wrong. Anne rubbed her chest at the sound of her thumping heartbeat, and muttered to herself quietly as if to alleviate her anxiety.

“It’s nothing… There’s no way I’ll go to the forest alone.”

There was no way that the Grand Duchess would be in distress alone in the mountains. After wiping away her cold sweat, Anne laid back down to go to sleep. She closed her eyes tightly to be rid of the strange feeling, but it took quite a while for her to fall asleep again.

Anne, who fell asleep claiming that she would not go to the forest, found on the next day that she was wrong.

* * *

The next day, Anne opened her eyes at dawn. She had had a hard time sleeping last night, so it was natural for her to want to sleep more, but strangely, the thought that she absolutely had to go to the greenhouse filled her head.

“Madam, you will fall.”

Emily, chasing after her, cried out restlessly, but Anne kept moving her feet.

Arriving at the small flower bed, her eyes found something slightly different. The green sprouts that had sprouted on top of the mound looked like they would soon bloom.

“Madam, why did you come here all of a sudden?”

Emily knew that Anne often visited the greenhouse to pass the time, but it was the first time she had gone there so early in the morning.

“I suddenly wanted to see the flowers.”

It was an unfamiliar sentence even though she said it herself. She always admired the gardeners’ support, but she had never looked for it herself like this… A flower was just a flower, but her body got up on its own as if it could not bear not to come.

Emily was puzzled by Anne’s answer, as she had never been very interested in anything, but she ignored it, thinking that Anne was secretly lonely due to the Grand Duke’s departure.

At the time when Anne was quietly looking at the sprout, there was a sudden uproar outside.

“Is something going on?”

“Wait. Let me ask.”

Emily rushed toward the door. Just in time, through the open door, the chief attendant Wald and the knight commander bowed silently and entered.

“Sir Abreham?”

He was the Commander of the Cromund’s Second Knights, whom she had seen a few times. Originally, he should have left with the First Knights, but the Grand Duke left the Second Knights on purpose as a force to protect the castle.

He was on his way to report, and greeted her with an unusual complexion.

“What happened?”

“It was said that several houses were swept away by an avalanche that suddenly occurred in the village of Tahor, which was close to the mountains in the north of the territory.”

“An avalanche…?”

“The area is a village on the border between Marquis Brussels and His Grace’ territory… It seems that Marquis Brussels’ troops have gone to subjugate the monsters, so they have come here to ask for help.”

“You mean the village was buried?”

The startled Anne asked. The snowstorm that had been blowing ferociously for the past few days was frightening, but it seemed that last night it had been too much.

It was the middle of winter. Avalanches occurred because the terrain could no longer hold off the heavy snowfall.