Chapter 144

It wasn’t the best time for travel. Aden’s divine power was all directed elsewhere to the battlefields where he and the knights were facing monsters. As a result, the April winter was undeterred in the rest of the winter region.

Etra was completely covered as she rode, only her eyes showing. If she wasn’t so conditioned to the cold and the bitter winds, even attempting this ride would have been folly.

There wasn’t much she could do for her poor horse, but she had no choice. She had to make this journey and had to make it as quickly as possible. Even if she could have made it on foot (which was questionable, in this weather), time was too much a factor. She couldn’t let her warm region Mistress succumb to the winter region’s cold.

Even as it was, even if she switched to a fresh horse in the warm region and headed back immediately with the herbs, the journey would still take longer than she wanted. Would Ilyin hold out that long?

“Ha!” she cried, urging the horse on faster. She could see the boundary of the winter region now, a sharp line where winter stopped, as though the weather had been cut though with a knife.

Spring seemed to be coming to the warm region, on the other side of the line she could see the snow was thin, and patches of dirt were already appearing here and there on the ground.

And she saw another thing – there was a carriage approaching. Reflexively, she put her hand to her sword.

“Wait,” someone on the carriage cried, and the voice was so familiar she flinched. Milo the Acid Merchant jumped from the carriage. She brought up her horse short, almost rearing, just inside the warm region.

“Whoa,” she said to it soothingly. Stopping after riding so hard, the beast took a moment to calm. She looked to Milo

“Milo?” she asked, “How …”.

“You wouldn’t have had the time,” another voice said from inside the carriage. Etra’s hand flew to her sword again on instinct as the speaker leaned their head out of the carriage. It was an older woman, heavily wrapped in what looked like all the clothes she might have owned.

“We prepared the herb already,” she said. “I’m excited to see how cold the winter region is.”

Etra knew her as well. It was Ilyin’s grandmother, Bertha.

***

The mansion seemed unusually noisy as Aden drew close. No one came out to meet him, but the din inside was greeting enough. And the Delrose’s guard contingent was different, heavier. The other families’ atmosphere seemed different as well, but not as much as Delrose.

He peered curiously at the mansion. What was going on? Aden had a sudden, ominous feeling.

A heavier guard meant something had happened to a Delrose within the mansion. His ominous feeling sharpened, and he urged his horse on faster, sliding down the hill.

“Your M-,” the Delrose knight at the guard started to say, then bit his tongue and corrected as he waved him inside the mansion. “Grandmaster! It’s urgent…. Hurry!”

Not many knights could speak that way to the Knight Grandmaster, who was known to be as cold as Delrose’s master. The other house members, not knowing that the Grandmaster and the master of Delrose were the same person, looked curiously between the knight and Aden.

Aden’s face froze. He bid the horse forward immediately, passing through the mansion gate and stopping in front of the doors. He cast aside his snow-covered cape and ran inside.

“Your Majesty!”

Once he reached the 7th floor, everyone addressed him with his proper title, though it just reminded him that he couldn’t be addressed as such outside. Why do I have to care about what other houses hear in my own mansion, he thought.

It hadn’t bothered him in quite a while, but he was feeling particularly sensitive now. It was a worry, that ominous feeling, and once he saw Ves’ pall face and her bloody hands, once he caught the smell of blood in the 7th floor hallway, that feeling broke into realization, a realization his mind didn’t want to acknowledge.

“What is it,” he asked.

Ves felt as though she were clinging to a thin rope at the top of a steep cliff. No, more like she was standing on a thin ice bridge made by the Duke of Winter, a bridge that could collapse the second he let his emotions overtake him. She realized that everyone on the 7th floor could become an ice sculpture in an instant if he lost control of himself.

Ves realized that all 7th floor people may become a statue and could be carried out. She was like being tied to a single rope on top of the very steep cliff.

“Your Majesty,” she said. “Calm down.”

“What is going on?” Aden asked again, with no change in his expression. His mind finally gave in to the realization that he wanted to deny. “How’s Ilyin?”

There was only one reason the subordinates would be running around so hectically on the 7th floor. And normally, the door to Ilyin’s room would have been closed. Now it stood wide open, which said that urgency was more important than formality just now. Aden walked past Ves and into Ilyin’s room.