Chapter 50: Secrets Make Friends
"Your secret is safe with us," Agnes persisted. "I understand why a girl wouldn’t want to reveal herself in a knighthood full of men and boys, but I also can’t help feeling horribly sorry that you’re hiding yourself. You were in danger of being revealed without anyone else able to protect your secret."
It was an aspect Irene hadn’t fully considered before considering her excitement to simply barrel forward into the knighthood and become someone who wasn’t weak.
She treated herself as invincible since her strength was growing and goblins were no longer the biggest threat in her life—ironic considering a goblin was the reason she was in that bed in the first place. It was hard to remind herself that she was still a person just as before with a life to lose.
Felix acted as if she was close to death when he was there. Before he joked, he looked truly miserable at the sight of her.
"I don’t know what to do about it now," Irene admitted. "Will I be afraid to risk my life in the chance I get hurt again and my secret is revealed?"
Agnes’s smile was sympathetic and she reached towards Irene’s right hand, gently squeezing it in hopes it comforted the hidden girl.
"We don’t know each other well, but please know you can rely on me," she persisted. "What you’ve chosen to do is quite honorable. There’s not another person who knows?"
Irene wasn’t used to physical comfort from anyone outside of her father. She had to resist the urge to pull her hand away because it made her feel nervous. Her father’s method of comforting her was forcing her to smile by handling her roughly, the same way a bear might cheer up its cub.
Although she figured the two of them were truly more wolf and wolf cub.
"My family knows," she admitted. "My mother hates it and my father is worried, but I don’t want to be weak. I like this better than the life that was going to be mine."
Her ramblings made no sense to someone else who didn’t know what she had been through but the words fell out so easily.