Page 11 of The Pretty Savage

"Oh, really?" One thing a lot of people did not know about me was that I loved history. The architecture, the stories, the fact that there were centuries behind us and there was always something new we could learn. "Is it an old town?"

"Oh yes." He nodded. "Some say that it was around since the Roman Empire, and it became really important once the Germans took over after the Empire’s fall. Its position definitely gave it an advantage against the attacks."

"I bet," I murmured, looking at the passing houses and buildings, appearing gray from the clouds that were hovering over Wolfhöle. "Are you working for the Academy or…?"

"Oh no, no," he chuckled. "They hire the drivers from our company whenever they need us. The Academy, well…" He smiled nervously. "People there don't really interact all too much with the rest of us down here."

I frowned. "Why's that?"

"There are many stories surrounding that place, Ms. Vega. Many mysteries that date back to the Dark Ages, and some of the locals say that the building itself was cursed the moment it was gifted to Heinrich der Löwe."

"But wasn't it a church first?" That much I knew.

"Yes." He nodded. "But the disappearances and suicides drove the people to close it. Until, of course, it got reopened as an academy after World War Two." If only he knew what kind of an academy it was. "I don't know." He shrugged. "I don't want to scare you, because I personally don't really believe in most of those stories, but a couple of years ago a young boy jumped from the cliff where the Academy is, dying in Lake Valenheim the moment his body connected with the water, so the rumors have started spreading that the curse is back."

"The curse." I chuckled. I didn't believe in curses. But I did believe in negative energy, and considering that Europe had a bloody history, especially in this area, I wasn't surprised people believed in that. But it was cute, in a way. "Does that mean I'm one of the cursed ones as well now that I'm going to attend the Academy?"

He looked at me through the rearview mirror without an ounce of mirth and somberly answered, "Only if you want to be."

He didn't say it as a threat, nor in a bad way that would have me preparing myself to attack, but those words… They held more truth than I wanted to admit, and the last couple of months I wondered the same thing—was I really cursed, or did I actually allow myself to become cursed?

I blamed myself for many things, and one of them was the fact that I failed to see that the monsters didn't just live outside the gates of the command center—they were inside. They were our bosses, our friends, and I’d spent years living with them, becoming one of them, because I didn't know better. I was just a child that wanted a family, someone to love me, but there was no love there and the moment that thought materialized in my brain, I knew I had to get out.

I just had to be smart about it.

"How long is the drive to the Academy?" I asked, interrupting the otherwise silent atmosphere between us.

"Just about twenty minutes," Elias answered. "Look," he pointed to the right, "that's Lake Valenheim."

My head swiveled to see it, and I agreed with the comments I saw online—pictures definitely did nothing to showcase its true beauty. It spread through the center of the town, touching the shores where a myriad of little houses stood proudly, and while the cloudy weather didn't exactly amplify its beauty, I could only imagine what it looked like during the summer.

"You can't really see it now, but the color of it is like nothing I have ever seen. It's almost green during the summer, with quite a lot of little boats going around, taking tourists from one side of the town to the other."

I had so many words on the tip of my tongue, but none of them came out. I was, for the lack of a better word, mesmerized. I’d been to many places around the world, but none have ever even come close to the beauty of this one.

"There's an old story connected to the lake."

"Do tell," I murmured, my eyes firmly plastered on the lake we were slowly passing.

"The locals call it the Lake of Tears." He laughed. "They say that a nymph called Araetha lived here many, many years ago, and she fell in love with a human man who was a soldier in the war. They thought they could defy the world and stay together, but the villagers had different ideas and they killed him, destroying their happiness." My throat closed at that. "Araetha cried herself to death, mourning the loss of the man she loved, and before the old gods brought her to them, drip by drip, those tears turned into a lake, flooding the village and destroying all their crops. It was her revenge on them."

"Jesus," I mumbled.

"I know, right? It is a fascinating story, but I guess that it is supposed to serve as sort of a reminder not to meddle in other people's lives and to just let them live and love."

That was one way to look at it, but it wasn't what I understood from that story.

Grief was a powerful tool that could be used both for good and evil, and the nymph, she used it to exact revenge on those that wronged her. That was what I could relate to.

The skies darkened the moment we started driving up the mountain, while the anticipation slowly built up in my core, knowing we would soon be reaching the gates of the Academy.

Elias fell silent shortly after he explained where the best restaurant was in town, and it was probably my fault. I wasn't feeling like chatting with him as the exhaustion slowly took over. I could go for long periods of time with no sleep, but I was straining myself now, and it didn't help that the past few weeks were already as hectic as they could get.

I couldn't see the trees we were passing, but I knew we were deep in the evergreen forest I saw from the train station. With the lack of the light outside, I couldn't exactly see the road or anything on it. I complained at first when Alena told me there would be a driver waiting for me, because I wanted to ship my motorcycle to Germany, but I was thankful now that I relented and accepted the offer for somebody else to drive me.

There was no way I'd be able to do it without crashing somewhere, not to mention that the constant rain that followed us from the town would've made it even more impossible to drive up the mountain.

The pressure built up in my ears the farther we went up the mountain. I hated when that happened, but every time the pressure popped I felt like I could hear everything ten times better.

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