The more Ireya heard about the Black Dragon, the more uneasy she felt.
She didn’t know how others were handling it, but that night, she suffered from insomnia, tossing and turning in bed, unable to fall asleep.
Every ti she closed her eyes, she saw the Black Dragon rampaging across Green Field, spewing flas and burning everything to the ground in a terrifying vision.
Thanks to Li Yu’s action cara, the young girl didn’t even need to use her imagination for the monster’s appearance; her brain could readily process the existing footage into a horror movie that began to play on loop.
In the end, Miss Rabbit simply gave up on trying to sleep, got out of bed, threw on so clothes, and left her bedroom.
She had no particular destination in mind and just wandered aimlessly around the castle to clear her mind.
It was well into the night by now, and the majority of people were asleep, leaving the hallways deserted.
The only sound Ireya could hear was the echo of her own footsteps.
She rembered how as a child, she used to be terrified of getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom because her room was at the other end of the hallway, and it was a long walk to the outhouse.
Back then, her mind was filled with the ghost stories her nurse had told her, and she had a heightened fear of the dark and the shadows, worried that so creature might be lurking within them.
To avoid having to go outside in the middle of the night, she would even hold her urine, which resulted in her wetting the bed once when she was seven years old because she couldn’t hold it any longer.
After that incident, her father had extra torches installed along the hallway, lighting up the path from her room to the outhouse, making it bright as day.
Ireya didn’t know why that mory had resurfaced.
It had been more than four months since she beca the new ruler of the castle, but sotis, when she finished her day’s work and returned to her room to rest, upon opening the door, there would be a fleeting mont of disorientation.
She expected to see that familiar figure inside but would then be reminded by the empty bedroom that the person was no longer there.
Lately, her life had undergone too many upheavals. Since she started her ambition to beco the new Family Head of Arias, first she matched wits with her stepmother, then she was busy finding allies within, planning banquets.
Soon after, the lizard people erged from the swamp, began looting everywhere, and even made it to the front of Teacup Castle, after which she had to face the threat of the giant Dragon...
One thing led to another, and she hardly had any ti to process the pain of that person’s departure.
Maybe tonight, the sense of crisis the Dragon had instilled in her was so intense that she involuntarily sought comfort, or perhaps the bond between the ugly-faced man and Black Beauty stirred so of her mories.
In any case, the young girl was especially missing the forr lord of the castle right now.
Even though he wasn’t the most outstanding among the Arias Family Heads, especially now that Ireya had taken up his mantle and beco the new lord of the land, looking back at so of the things he had done, she realized they might not have been as brilliant as he had boasted.
This was probably what growing up was like; the parents who seed invincible in a child’s eyes would one day lose all their glory and beco re mortals once again.
But Ireya still wished that person could be by her side.
A gust of night wind blew by, and the girl realized she had already stepped out of the stone castle. The guard on night duty at the door looked surprised to see her but quickly recovered and hurriedly saluted her.
Miss Irelia nodded at the guard and was about to visit another place when she heard the guard say, "Miss Irelia, you’re here too. Are you looking for the old lady? She just went up to the city wall."
"My great-grandmother Ona, she hasn’t gone to sleep either?" the girl retracted her already half-stepped foot and asked.
The guard hesitated, but eventually told the truth, "Ever since Lord Ruse passed away, the old lady hasn’t been sleeping well. She often wakes up around this ti and goes for a walk on the city wall. She also told us not to tell anyone else. Do you need to inform her that you’re here?"
"No need, I’ll go up myself."
Having said that, Irelia headed toward the direction of the city wall.
She lifted her nightgown and climbed the steep stone steps one by one to the castle’s ramparts, and soon saw another figure on the battlent.
It was her great-grandmother, the elderly woman standing under the starry sky, staring into the distance at the forest, lost in thought.
Irelia didn’t approach to disturb her until Ona withdrew her gaze, and then she spoke, "Ruse used to enjoy doing this as well."
"What?"
"My father, your grandson, he also liked standing here, looking out over his lands."
"Yes, he learned that from his father, who learned it from his father’s father," the old woman said. "The n of the Arias family sotis seem as if they were all cast from the sa mold."
Previously, because she suspected that soone in the castle was colluding with her stepmother Vanessa, Irelia had for a ti stopped trusting her own relatives. But later, following Li Yu’s advice, the girl started to extend so goodwill to her family mbers again.
And afterwards, Ona had been very firm in supporting her great-granddaughter, and with her stance, it didn’t take long for the rest of the Arias family to also accept Irelia as the new Family Head.
Both sides made concessions, moving past the unpleasantness that had gone before.
But to say there were no hard feelings left would be impossible. Every ti Irelia thought of soone trying to manipulate the election to elevate her half-brother to power, she found it difficult to trust her relatives like she used to.
Including her great-grandmother, who had taken care of her for a long ti, the girl had consciously and subconsciously maintained her distance from them, and they rarely had private conversations like the one they were having tonight.
It was only when she got closer that Irelia noticed Ona looked much older than she rembered, all her hair had turned white, the wrinkles on her face had deepened, and her pupils had grown cloudy.
This was in line with what the guard had previously said: that since Ruse died, she had started sleeping restlessly and occasionally would go up to the city wall.
Irelia couldn’t help feeling guilty for the deliberate estrangent from before, so she spoke up again, "You’re right, about whether we should keep the lizard people or not, I rember you once said that a storm was coming, and in tis of crisis, extraordinary asures are necessary. At the ti, including myself, most people did not agree with you.
"But in the end, you were the one who was right. Considering the terrifying creatures lurking in that swamp, we indeed need the strength of those lizard people."
After a pause, the girl continued, "This has also been a wake-up call for . Besides Fosto, the people around are generally quite young, and although I don’t want to admit it... at tis, we may lack, uh... foresight. So I’ve been thinking, perhaps in the future, I should listen more to the advice of soone with extensive experience like yourself."
However, to her surprise, Ona shook her head, "I am too old, I’m no longer able to make plans for you like I did for your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfather. And the storm I spoke of, it wasn’t referring to that Dragon."
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