Commander and third in command walked to the tables with plates in their hands and a small meal piled upon each one. As they sat down across from one another, Irene hoped that her expression communicated nothing of the dread from having to eat with her Commander.

She wanted to enjoy her time alongside him, but she was simply too awkward and too unfamiliar with having a crush on another person. Considering it was winter, she hoped that she could simply shut herself away and get over all of this. Perhaps when spring rolled around again, she would have finally shed these ridiculous thoughts and feelings.

She recalled a time when her mother told her that reading a romance novel could help her decipher her way through feelings. She also recalled her resistance to it and telling her mother she would never need something like that. She wasn't a hopeless girl who would ever get caught up in feelings for a man. The things she wanted to build for herself were too important for anyone to stand in the way.

Yet now… perhaps she would have to make a hobby of reading novels. There was never a more perfect time than winter where knight work decreased since monsters went dormant.

It seemed her final hurdle was the winterization trip before she could figure out how to settle herself down and be satisfied in the adventure-filled life she had chosen for herself.

"Go on," the Commander urged with a small smile. "I'm dying to know what Felix was referring to."

Irene couldn't bring herself to eat just yet. Her throat felt dry.

"It was my first year in the knighthood," she began. "I wasn't even the apprentice to anybody just yet since I had arrived. A few of the knights and the apprentices all went into the mountains for my first monster culling. I had to have been eleven."

The Commander had begun to eat, but his eyes didn't stray from Irene for long. He was enthralled by her story already.

"Go on," he urged.

"We hadn't even been in the mountains long," she admitted. "It was our first morning after sleeping in an old hunting cabin on the way up. I was one of the first to exit in the morning just after Sir Gunnar and a goblin had gotten close enough to shoot an arrow into my side from a crossbow. I couldn't move. I felt so ashamed of myself for ruining the winter culling."

The Commander was thoughtfully chewing when something occurred to him. He swallowed his food before continuing on.

"You couldn't move from an arrow wound?" he wondered. "I know crossbows are quite overkill, but I feel like the way you're tough now would have been the case back then as well."

She smiled halfheartedly. This conversation was bringing back feelings she had forgotten about.

"I think that's what Felix thought as well before he tried to clean up my wound and found that there was poison spreading through my body," she responded lightly. "The others didn't even know I was poisoned until they returned after fighting the rest of the goblins."

Henry was in disbelief once more.

"Poison? As in…?"

Irene nodded. "We assume now that it was the same poison we went to war trying to prevent the goblins from accessing. For years we dealt with evidence of the poison before the monster war. By the time all of the Hydrogians saw it, it was a familiar sight to us."

"Then it's true the Chemoians are far more tough than I even originally believed," Henry admitted. "Glad that the poison didn't take you out as it did for many of the others. You have been valuable to the knighthood from the beginning."

Irene smiled faintly and nodded. "If I was the first to be hurt by the poison so Stanley could figure out how to handle it on a larger scale, I would do it again."

"Quite honorable indeed," the Commander remarked with a short laugh. "I hope that going back into the hills doesn't stir up bad memories for you then."

"No need to worry about me," she assured him. "I have been up many times since then. It's easy to forget what's behind you when what is in front of you are monsters set on destroying everything you love." But rather than keeping her the center of conversation, Irene put it back on her Commander. "Instead, we should be worrying about how you handle your first winter culling. It will be unlike anything you've experienced in Hydrogia, I'm sure. There is no dragon to rely on to keep the monsters away."

The Commander had focused on his meal, but at the slightly teasing edge Irene's tone had taken, he quickly glanced up at the woman. Usually only Felix was on the receiving end of her jokes. He wondered if perhaps she was starting to trust him a bit more. He hoped that showing her that he would care for her even when she had too much to drink had made him seem more trustworthy in her eyes.

Seeing him disarmed felt like a win to Irene and she was finally able to dig into her breakfast, feeling slightly more satisfied with the outcome of their conversation. He seemed to have taken her challenge well.

She silently hoped that it was the beginning of her appropriately getting used to the man since he was trying his best but it was her own mind who decided to push too far and give her a crush on the man. They were going to see a lot of one another over the winter. The only option was getting a hold on herself.

When the two of them were finished eating, the Commander turned to Irene.

"Would you mind fetching Felix and going to my study?" he asked. "I have a letter I need to respond to, but speaking to both of you about the coming weeks is of the highest priority."

"Of course," Irene responded. "I will retrieve him and be there shortly, sir."

Even better was having Felix there as some sort of buffer so that she didn't have to be the center of the Commander's attention, after all. Once their bowls were placed in the necessary wooden buckets for the maids to take away, she excused herself and found Felix near the barracks and checking in with a few of the knights who were on an earlier patrol that day.

They both returned to the Commander's study together, curious as to what he needed in the wake of the winter monster culling trip.

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