Being on the battlefield for so long, Irene always woke up with a sense of urgency. However, at that moment, her body and mind felt so heavy. She couldn’t even open her eyes.
From the outside, her eyelids only fluttered, but they didn’t open up fully. She turned her head away from the warmth on her face.
That also led her to the realization that she was warm—so warm.
They were headed towards winter. The nights were starting to be uncomfortable. Something certainly wasn’t right about what she was experiencing now.
It seemed to take all of her strength to clear out the fog and cobwebs in her head. She pushed herself off the bed with a gasp as a searing pain went down her chest.
"Agh!" she screamed and clutched her loose tunic with both hands, but it was too soft to be a tunic.
God, it hurt so badly.
The girl’s green eyes finally opened and looked down in shock. The material was far too sheer to be the clothing she normally wore.
Not only that, but underneath the nightgown, bandages wrapped around her chest. Her developed chest. The one that looked like it did when she was a woman.
But she died when she was an adult and came back as a child! Had none of that been true?
By the time there was a disturbance at the door, she was practically hyperventilating. She was panicking that the life where she had come so close to being a knight wasn’t true.
She truly believed that she was in bed because of the injury that took her from her first life.
"Irene, what is it?!" Arthur cried as he rushed in. "Are you in pain?"
He sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed his hands into his daughter’s shoulders. She was in no shape to be sitting up, so he willed her to lie down against the stacked-up pillows.
"I’m not supposed to be here," she responded, continuing to hold her throbbing chest.
However, what he thought was her thinking she was supposed to be in the battlefield, but what she thought was her waking up in the life she had seen in the past, were both answered with one response.
"I took you home," Arthur explained. "I almost lost my daughter to the battlefield."
Surprisingly, she was relieved to hear that the war hadn’t been a nightmare. It was her reality. She had gotten stronger and grown a lot.
Except, at this realization, tears also began to fall from her eyes as she came to terms with everything. If her present life was the one that she wanted, then that meant Leif was really dead.
"Then Leif..." she gasped.
"I’m so sorry," Arthur whispered, knowing there was nothing more he could do than that.
He then opted to hold his daughter’s hands since he imagined hugging her with one of his usual bear hugs would hurt her further. She was gripping her chest earlier, and he was alarmed by that.
There was nothing said for a few moments as Arthur leaned against the pillows that Irene was already lying against. She leaned her head into her father’s shoulder.
"What happened to me?" she whispered. "I only remember Leif dying."
Arthur’s already stern eyebrows lowered further. He wasn’t expecting her not to remember. It just proved how much being on the battlefield had affected her mind.
"You tried to face an army of goblins without a bit of armor on. Not even gloves, boots, or your own weapon. If you didn’t get stabbed to death, you would have certainly frozen to death if left out there all night," he explained. "You made a grave mistake, but since you can’t remember, I feel as if this is punishment enough."
Irene’s eyes squeezed closed.
"I need to be out there with the others," she insisted. "Please, father. Let me go."
"You’ve been asleep for a week," Arthur responded, speaking more firmly than before. "For you to still be in pain as you wake up, I know that you aren’t ready to even wield a sword yet."
She immediately tried to sit up straighter, but then she realized it was her leg that was hurting as well.
Letting go of her father’s hands, the girl pulled back the blankets and revealed her leg, which had been splinted so she couldn’t bend it at all. She gasped.
"I broke my leg?!" she cried.
"You will not see the battlefield for quite some time," Arthur persisted. "If ever."
Despite all of the aches and pains in her body, the girl sat up to stare at he father in horror.
"You can’t do this to me," she responded, horrified. Follow current novels on N()velFire.net
Each movement made her head ache. She hadn’t had a proper meal in longer than a week by that point. The fact that she was still able to move around after suffering such blood loss was amazing in itself. As told by Stanley, they had been feeding her restorative teas in hopes that they would do something to help her when she was finally awake.
Arthur didn’t like his daughter to be giving him such a defiant expression as if to silently tell him that she was going to do whatever she wanted to anyway. She challenged anyone to stop her.
"You’re misunderstanding what I’m saying," he assured her. "This war, you will not return to. You will not return to the knighthood at all until I’m certain you are healed."
"But I must be with the others," Irene argued. "It isn’t fair. How awful for me to be comfortable here while they are out there suffering!"
However, her raising her voice caused her to grasp her chest again.
"I understand how you’re feeling," Arthur responded. "But there are times when you need to stay back and heal so you can return a better knight. I have done this in the past. Losing my hand wasn’t the only injury I sustained out there, after all."
Even though she understood, she still couldn’t accept it.
If she were lying still, all she thought about was the losses that weighed so heavily on her.
"If I can’t help them right now, could I write a letter to Sir Gunnar?"