Chapter 125: WHAT IFRITH BROUGHT BACK

Chapter 125: Chapter 125: WHAT IFRITH BROUGHT BACK

Theon looked past her, toward the doorway, where Ifrith stood with his arms crossed and an expression that suggested he had been waiting patiently for Theon to finish being stunned. The doorway framed him in the low light of the chamber, his shadow stretching long across the stone floor, and there was something in the set of his shoulders that spoke less of ease than of endurance. He had the look of a man who had already carried a weight to its destination and was now waiting to see whether the destination would hold.

"Ifrith." Theon’s voice came out flatter than he meant it to. "Explain."

"Explain what?" Ifrith’s tone was mild, but there was a wariness underneath it, the careful evenness of a man choosing his words. "You’ll have to be specific. There’s a lot to explain today."

Theon did not look at the girl as he could not afford to because If he looked at her again, he feared the whole night would come crashing back into him in a single, unmanageable wave — the forest, the blood, the impossible shape of what had stood there before it had fallen. He kept his eyes on Ifrith instead, on the familiar lines of his face, on the guarded patience that had always made him both useful and infuriating.

"Start with why there’s a dragon in a human form standing in my room."

Ifrith exhaled through his nose, glanced once at the girl, and then back to Theon. The glance was quick, but it told Theon more than he wanted to know. Ifrith was not afraid of her. Not exactly. But he was careful around her, the way a man is careful around a fire he has already seen burn something down.

"After we carried you back," Ifrith said, "and she went down — her body started changing. Shrinking. It happened fast. One moment there was a dragon bleeding out on the forest floor, and the next there was a child lying in its place."

The words hung in the room like smoke. Theon let them settle, turn over, resist meaning. He wanted to ask how fast and what it had looked like. He wanted to ask whether Ifrith had been afraid and considered — even for a heartbeat — that the merciful thing might have been to end it before it could become anything else. But none of those questions would change what had already been done. They would only fill the silence with things neither of them could answer.

"A child," Theon repeated.

"Unconscious," Ifrith added, as if that detail mattered more than the rest. "She didn’t wake up the whole way back. I couldn’t just leave her out there like that — not after what she’d already turned into. If she was as dangerous as she looked in that first form, leaving her alone to wake up in the middle of the forest seemed like the worse mistake."

Theon dragged a hand down his face. His palm was cold against his skin, and the roughness of his own breath sounded loud in the quiet. He understood the reasoning and even agreed with it, in the cold, practical part of his mind that still functioned even when the rest of him wanted to simply lie back down and pretend this night hadn’t happened. Ifrith had done what any sensible man would have done had by not leaving a unconscious dragon in the wild. He had not abandoned a child to the dark instead he brought the problem home, because the alternative was to leave it where it might wake alone, frightened, and capable of anything.

But understanding it didn’t make it easier to sit with.

*You brought a calamity into the imperial Academy*, Theon thought, watching the girl’s still eyes track him without blinking. "You brought something that could burn this entire place to the ground before breakfast, and you tucked it into my room like a stray you found on the road.*

He did not say any of it aloud. There was no use in it now — the choice had already been made, and rehashing it wouldn’t undo the fact that she was here, breathing, watching, waiting for whatever came next. Ifrith had made a decision in the field, with blood on the ground and the night pressing close, and Theon had not been there to make a different one. That was the simple truth of it. Everything else was just the mind gnawing on a bone it could not crack.

He let the thought go though It took an act of will to do it, but he managed, exhaling slowly until the tightness in his chest eased. The chamber seemed quieter when he breathed again, though the girl’s presence remained, a stillness at the edge of his awareness that refused to be ignored.

"Fine," he said at last, rubbing at his temple. "It’s done. We deal with it from here."

Ifrith’s shoulders loosened, just slightly. It was a small thing, barely a shift, but Theon caught it. He had known Ifrith long enough to read the relief that moved beneath the surface, the way a man might relax when he realized he would not have to carry a burden entirely alone.

"That’s all you have to say?" Ifrith asked.

"What else is there? You already made the call. Complaining about it now just wastes both our time." Theon sighed, long and tired, the exhaustion of the night finally catching up with him all at once. It pressed down on his limbs, settled behind his eyes, made the edges of the room seem softer and less certain than they should have been. "I’ll figure out what to do about her later today."

He glanced toward the girl again.

She hadn’t moved and hadn’t even blinked through the entire exchange, watching the two of them with the patient, unreadable attention of something that had all the time in the world and had simply chosen, for now, to spend it here. There was no fear in her face, no confusion, no childish uncertainty. There was only that steady regard, calm and complete, as though she were listening to a conversation far older than the words being spoken.

Something in the back of Theon’s mind prickled — faint, but insistent, like the first note of a sound just out of hearing. It was not the girl neither was it Ifrith. It was something beyond the walls and the room, beyond the quiet of the Imperial Academy settling into its nighttime breath. The air itself seemed to tighten, drawing close, as if the world had leaned in to listen.

Theon straightened up an called out to Ifrith.

"Ifrith."

"Yes master.?" Ifrith answered in a benevolent voice.

"Something’s coming." Theon facial expression tensed up as he said it.