Chapter 19 - Mythical Creatures (2/2)

That was how dangerous this place was. It was all unfamiliar. Suddenly, the carriage jolted violently, rattling.

A black-clad rider saw her blanch and bury her head. He was the one guarding the area around the carriages.

Ronée tried to bob her head towards him to show that she was okay, but the man was clearly looking right past her to meet Nabel’s eyes. Eyes which warned against letting the same mistake happen a second time.

The man passed the message on to the carriage driver with a nervous look. The carriage sped onwards, quickly but carefully.

Ronée peered ahead to a distant place beyond the huge tree. On top of a hill, animals that Ronée had never seen before were chasing each other. They yowled.

Perhaps they were not animals, in fact, but monsters. The brown monster that was leading the chase pounced on the monster that was fleeing and bit into its neck.

At that moment, Nabel gently covered her eyes with a warm hand. “I don’t think you’ll enjoy seeing what comes next.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Ronée agreed and turned her gaze to the inside of the carriage. The structure of the carriage was also very different from what she remembered from her childhood.

Ronée had to admit: the Western Continent certainly was a strange and dangerous place. Yet she was not uneasy. She still felt much freer than when she had lived at the Rieda Manor. She felt like she could breathe for the first time.

She sucked in as much air as she could fit in her lungs and let it out again, laughing. Her heart pounded. Nabel kissed the back of her hand again.

Her hand felt so delicate that he thought it might break if he squeezed it too hard. Nabel closed his eyes. He needed to be patient. He wanted to ask if something had happened. He wanted to ask if there were people who had wronged her and if they were unharmed.

He could not bear to just leave them to remain in the world. But he did not want to dig up Ronée’s bad memories. “There’s no need to insist on hearing about her painful past,’” he thought to himself, just as a young Ronée once had.

Nabel took a short and quiet gulp of air. He already had many plans made inside his head – among them was a plan to drive the loathsome House of Rieda to ruin.

He already had the way to do it within his grasp. He placed his hand over Ronée’s again as he mulled over Nesha’s report.