It was just as empty as Irene had remembered it to be when she was an apprentice herself.
With knights gone, including a few apprentices who had been paired with them or were a part of their families, the Duke's Tower seemed awfully bare. The only thing she was able to do since her duties had mostly ceased was read the books in her room over and over again. Otherwise, she was sleeping quite a lot.
She tried to keep her own sword moving during the morning practices so she wouldn't start to get rusty because this life of winter stagnancy was starting to make her a bit stir-crazy. Reading the same books over and over again didn't help either.
However, her hero came to the rescue when he invited her to his library at breakfast. She had declined, saying that she didn't want to ruin one of his books, but he assured her that she wouldn't.
