Beast of the Frozen Night

Those ferocious red eyes turned to his aide.
Ashton, who belatedly realized his mistake, hurriedly lowered his head.

“Ashton.”

“Forgive me.”

“Don’t make me say it twice.
Your father never crossed the line.
His son should know what that means.”

“Yes, forgive me.”

Daymond, who had been staring at Ashton’s head, lowered his eyes to the floor and shoved his sword into the scabbard with a nervous hand.
Daymon knew that he was taking his anger out on Ashton, but even he couldn’t understand why he was so nervous.

As he put down his sword and sat down in the barracks, Daymond’s mind was complicated.
He wanted to return to the castle right away.

He wasn’t worried about an empty house.
What filled his mind was the woman called the Grand Duchess.
Angroanne…  just seeing her calmly in her room, seemed to dispel his uneasiness.

’

Funny.
Am I missing that woman?

Daymond strongly suppressed his momentary speculation.
He held no love or affection for her.
Nevertheless, contrary to his cold reasoning, his instinct encouraged him to return to the castle quickly.
He felt… bad.

He was about to wash the blood that had clung to his hands with a bucket of water brought by a low-ranking knight.
Someone didn’t even ask for permission beforehand, and the barracks curtain was pulled back.

“What insolence.
How dare you not ask for His Grace’s permission!”

Ashton shouted at the rude knight, but the knight quickly knelt in front of the Grand Duke.
His breathing was quite heavy, probably because he had hurried all the way here.

Seeing the knight’s complexion, Daymond’s eyebrows curled up.
He looked away as if he wasn’t interested, but suddenly got up from his seat.
He wasn’t one of the knights that he had brought here.
Rather, it was a member of the knights who should have remained in the castle.

“Your Grace, please forgive me.
The matter is urgent.
The Grand Duchess…”

’

“What did the Grand Duchess do?”

Daymond quickly moved to stand before the kneeling knight.

“The Grand Duchess has gone missing.”

“…”

The knight, who struggled to utter his last words, slowly lifted his head in the silence that came.
And he saw the Grand Duke’s face contort like a beast.

It was something he had never seen before.
It wasn’t human.

* * *

The coldness on her fingertips, the uncomfortable feeling of being crushed by something.
She couldn’t breathe properly, as if someone had clamped a hand around her neck.

’

She barely managed to wipe the unpleasant touch on her eyelids with the back of her raised hand, and her wet eyelashes clung to her.

What happened? There was an avalanche.

That was the last thing she saw.
The shocked face of the knight commander and the shouts of the people disappeared in an instant, as though she had become deaf.
Apparently, she lost consciousness after that.

Lifting her stiff eyelids with difficulty, Anne lifted her head and looked around her.

For some reason, there was a small space where one person could barely lie down and breathe.
Judging by the few wooden blocks lying around, it seemed that the avalanche had been held off by a small pile of debris.
She didn’t know how long it would last, but she was able to breathe for a while, so she was lucky.

Anne tried to lift her body.
Her body didn’t move the way she wanted to.
She looked down at her leg, which seemed to be under a heavy boulder, and sure enough, part of a broken wooden pole rested on her leg.

“Haa…”

’

Despite all her efforts, Anne, who had given up on removing the pole, reluctantly wrapped her hands around her shoulders.
The bitter cold made her teeth chatter.
The thick clothes she had worn were useless.
The same was true of the robe that had become wet with snow.

“For now, I have to conserve my energy.
Abreham should be looking for me by now.”

He couldn’t just watch the sight of her falling under the snow.
He would dig and try to save her.

She shook her head calmly, trying not to be agitated by the tight air.
She had read in a book that in a situation like this, if she were to scream, her breathing would become heavy, which could lead to a more difficult situation.

I need to make sure I don’t lose too much body heat.

Judging that she might not be able to recover her frozen body if she moved, Anne hugged herself tightly to maintain her body temperature as well as possible.
While she was trying not to lose her mind and decided to continue her wandering thoughts, she suddenly thought of the strange dream she had had the night before.

She thought it was something in the vaguely distant future, but considering the current situation, it wasn’t.
The same thing happened, she was fighting in front of death, but the target changed from a monster to the snow.