I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 57: New Friends for the Winter

Chapter 57: New Friends for the Winter

The next time Irene opened her eyes, she woke up with far less confusion than when she woke up after being injured.

The first thing she saw as she turned her head away from the window filtering in light was her father asleep in the armchair at the corner of her room. The girl smiled. He looked so much younger than when she was twenty. Things had weighed heavily on him the older she got, it seemed.

It was nice to see him younger again.

"Dad," she uttered and reached towards him, but his chair was far from the bed and she had to reach.

To her surprise, there was only a dull ache where there was once a searing and persistent pain as she moved her body. Before she went to sleep, she could hardly sit up without much effort and the help of someone else.

She dared sit up all the way and slide the blankets off of her legs.

Arthur was woken up by his daughter squeezing him tightly with a hug. Immediately, he was on alert.

"You should be asleep," he insisted, considering it was still morning which meant she hadn’t been under the sleeping spell for a day like the mage said.

"I feel fine," she argued.

To prove herself, she sat on the edge of her bed and pulled up the cream-colored tunic. Revealed was her body void of bandages and what was once a festering grey wound was a scar with faint veins leaving it. She placed a hand on the soft, fragile flesh of the fresh scar. It was tender but it wasn’t painful.

"I can’t believe it," Arthur muttered. "The mage actually knew what he was doing."

"Stanley," she remembered. "Is he still here? I ought to thank him."

Arthur tried to stop his daughter considering the last time he saw the mage, but she was insistent on going. He stepped into the hallway as she got dressed and finally put on boots for the first time in a few days.

The moment the girl opened the door and appeared in the hall, she began feeling dizzy and stumbled so much that she had to hang on the doorframe so she wouldn’t fall over.

"You ought to eat something first," Arthur gently chided. "Drink something as well."

"I will see the mage first," Irene persisted. "Help me get there then I will go to the dining hall."

She wanted to move and return to things as usual. It suddenly felt like she could take on the world. At least until she stood up and moved around for real. Her head felt a little bit fuzzy and her stomach groaned in objection as she insisted on not feeding it once more.

Arthur, as usual, was helpless against his daughter.

"Then we ought to hurry," he said.

Hyper-aware not to reveal her secret to anyone else, Irene justified that she was still recovering as she held onto her father’s forearm to walk forward. She was unstable on her feet and had no other choice.

However as they went around the bend of the Duke’s Tower and into the largest front tower, she heard right away why her father was hesitant to allow her in the mage’s presence.

"Ten!" Stanley shouted. "I will bring ten with me."

An unseen other person was thrown into a coughing fit before the recognizable voice of the Duke was heard.

"This isn’t a school for mages!" he snapped despite the roughness in his voice. "I am unsure of what you expect of me."

Arthur noticed his daughter walking faster as she neared the library and he matched her pace, ensuring she always had him to grab onto so he wouldn’t fall.

Considering the library’s doors were wide open for anyone to hear the arguments between the Duke and the mage, Arthur felt it wasn’t discourteous to allow Irene inside.

As soon as she appeared in the doorway, the old men cut themselves off and turned their heads.

"You have already woken up," Stanley realized and quickly stood up.

With a final glare at the Duke, he pulled his robes tighter against his body before walking forward to the apprentice he wasn’t expecting to see until that evening.

"I have," she confirmed. "And I feel much better. I came here to thank you."

"It’s my pleasure," Stanley flourished his words, so much unlike his usual self. Then a grin spread across his lips and he turned victoriously to the Duke. "Do you see, Your Grace?" he taunted. "My magic is good magic. So very useful to a knighthood such as this."

By that point, the Duke had his thin arms crossed over his chest and he frowned at the mage.

"These knights are trying to insist that we require mages if we want to survive the next few years," Duke Arlin said in disbelief. "And the mage is even louder than them."

Arthur placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and nudged her forward until she could sit at one of the chairs along a table.

"You have already heard my argument, Commander," Sir Arthur explained. "While His Majesty in the civilized south is taken care of because he lives inside of a walled city, all of us in the wild north have no choice but to adapt in the ways we see fit. The way we see fit is with mages. Just look at what he did in less than a day for my child. You haven’t been out of your chambers in a while. Iro was inching closer and closer to a horrible outcome if it weren’t for the mages."

Irene’s eyes widened as she looked at her father. She had never heard him speak so passionately about something before. Her entire life she had known him to be someone who wasn’t prejudiced and she was pleased to see that nothing had changed.

There was a heavy pause in the room as Arthur’s stern eyes looked at the Duke and Stanley stood off to the side looking a bit smug.

Duke Arlin eventually let his firm posture go and he slouched a bit as he wrung his hands together. He hadn’t been well and was unaware of just how the general consensus throughout his own home had started changing.

To go against His Majesty was death but he also would have his position weakened if the people didn’t trust him because he made decisions out of bias.

"For one winter we will test whether or not mages and knights can live alongside one another," the Duke relented. "Although I only have so much spare space."

"I share one bedroom with nine other mages as it stands," Stanley persisted. "I will do it again if I have to."

Irene thought of the shabby dwelling the mages were in the last time she saw them. She felt strangely relieved if they had somewhere more comfortable to stay especially since they had helped her feel so much better.

The Duke simply waved his hand and decided he would retire for the time being.

Since there wasn’t much more to say and Irene had gotten her thanks out, Arthur insisted she eat something and truly work towards feeling better.

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