I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 95: Time to Heal

Chapter 95: Time to Heal

Irene had no choice but to get her father back to bed considering such strenuous activity and an outburst had badly affected him. There was still a lot of healing left for him to do.

His arm was healed, but it wasn’t the only place he was hurt. Another mage had healed shut a few other cuts on the man as Stanley worked on him. The amount of blood he lost the day before was astronomical.

As the girl quietly sat down in the chair she had used before while her father was unconscious, she didn’t lift her eyes. Even though she felt uncertain, she didn’t want to leave her father alone.

Perhaps it was the aged version of her brain that could recognize his emotions were practically not his own as he adjusted to a new phase of life that had been cruelly handed to him. Of course he was going to be resistant.

Finally having calmed down, Arthur lay where a maid had propped him up with a couple of pillows and he anxiously looked towards his daughter who wasn’t looking at him.

"Forgive me, Irene," he repeated the same words from before.

Her head snapped up.

"What is there to forgive?" she asked. "It wouldn’t be normal to react calmly, would it?"

He didn’t want her to seem so grown up at that moment and self-reliant. It was as if the past day had aged her tremendously. They didn’t even have a proper greeting for the first time in months before he was forced to realize all the growing up his daughter had done in his absence. Now she was the one being forced to be calm while he lamented from bed.

The knight didn’t have an opportunity to further rectify the situation because Sir Gunnar rushed into the room looking like hell after having to keep it together all night.

He went right to the other knight’s left bedside and clasped his remaining hand as well as his shoulder.

"You gave us a hell of a scare, Arthur," Gunnar muttered. "I didn’t know what I would do if we lost such a good knight during this fragile time in the knighthood. I am not ready to lead by myself."

The very real threat of the Commander’s health declining and the second in command being bedridden for the time being had been hanging over Gunnar tremendously. To see that Arthur was well enough to get riled up gave the other knight a glimmer of hope.

"You won’t have to," Arthur responded, but he felt no conviction in that response.

He didn’t know what the future held for him.

"That is of little importance now," Sir Gunnar brushed the words off despite him being the one to lay out his worries. "First you must heal. The mage says that you lost a lot of blood and should be working on restoring yourself first. Everything else will come later."

However, the knight wasn’t finished even when he left Sir Arthur’s side and acted as if he was going to walk out the door.

"As for you," Gunnar said as he turned to Irene, "I found you sleeping on the floor last night. You ought to take better care of yourself. We can’t afford our future knights getting sick at this moment."

Irene nodded, but she didn’t have it in her to voice a response. Sir Gunnar didn’t seem to take offense to that because he nodded in understanding before he left.

There was a heavy silence as father and daughter contemplated the words that Gunnar had burdened them both with. Irene was trying to be hopeful about the future while, on the other hand, Arthur was contemplating how he would break the next news to his daughter.

He was feeling the most lucid he had since he woke up. Since he wasn’t one to sit around even with an injury, he needed to be proactive and keep moving forward.

"You will have to pen a letter to your mother and send it through the mages—whatever it costs," the knight finally directed. "Tell her the truth. Tell her that I will be there in a couple of weeks because that’s where I will stay for the winter. You will also be staying in the Duke’s Tower to continue training to be the best knight you can be. Our lives will continue on as if this didn’t happen at all."

Irene’s reddish eyebrows lowered.

"But it did happen, father," she objected. "You are going to have to learn how to wield a sword with your other hand. I’m going to have to repair the armor that they had to cut off of your unconscious body. Everything has changed in a matter of a day." She stood up. "I will continue on my path to knighthood, but this experience will not soon be forgotten. It can never be forgotten. Please rest."

She left him with heavy words and his expression told her as much.

Irene had to leave the room to do what her father asked of her. It would be the first letter she sent to her mother since she joined the knighthood as an apprentice.

For the first time in such a long time, the girl went all the way to her barrack and she was surprised to see that everything had been dusted in her absence. Not only that, but her saddlebags had been brought to her room and her bed had been made in case she wanted to rest.

Whoever was looking out for her was a kind person. She couldn’t even guess who it was because so many people had her best intentions at heart in the knighthood.

For some reason, penning a letter to her mother was incredibly heavy as she was honest about what had happened and what her father’s intentions for the future were. She assured her that everything was on the mend.

As she read over what she had written before, she realized she had written very little about herself specifically. The horrible thought occurred to her that her mother likely wasn’t wondering anyway. Her father was the most important matter at hand.

Irene stayed in the barrack a few moments more, finally able to wash her face and change into clothing that wasn’t ones she had traveled in. It felt good to be at least somewhat clean. She would have to take a more serious bath later on.

After the girl went back to the main residence, she went to the mages, uncomfortable with what she was about to request despite what her father had done to Stanley earlier in the day.