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She put space between them, her hand still covering her mouth. She shoved the mop head into the bucket and slid it back with her.

She tapped her knuckles against the door. “I need to change the water.”

The guard opened the door and took both her cleaning tools. She’d been hoping he would let her out so she could have a moment to collect herself.Damn!

Many minutes later, the guard returned with a fresh bucket and a clean-ish mop. It was still stained with the Duskwalker’s blood, but it at least looked wrung out.

Her eyes darted to the blood between his knees and around them, since she hadn’t cleaned there yet either. Her eyes crinkled in emotional anguish. She didn’t want to approach him again.

Should she just cry insanity to get out of this? The fact she was wearing a Demonslayer outfit was a disgrace, but she’d been dealing with far too much shit over the last twenty-four hours that she was just waiting to break.

However... as weird as it was, the fact he’d tried to freak her out had put her back up. She didn’t like it, not when she may be the only person in this whole fortress that felt sympathy for him. Call it petty, but it eased some of her distress.

He’s bound, Emerie. Get your shit together. What’s he going to do? Jump out of his chains and go ‘boo’?

With a renewed resolve to escape this room, she stormed forward. She tried to quickly clean around him so she could leave. His knees were mostly unscathed, which she was thankful for as she shoved the mop head at them.

She ignored his threatening sounds, drowning them out with her panted breaths.

Then her eyes grew wide once more when black, glittering dust started to flutter around him. She didn’t know what was going on, but when she tried to clean it away, nothing happened. The flurry of it grew up his limbs.

She flinched as arrows clattered to the ground, as though they were being pushed out of his body. The process was slow, but he shuddered and groaned at the loss of each one.

“H-hey!” she called out while backing up, her startled eyes glued to him as she twisted her face towards the door. When her back slammed against it, she bashed at it with the bottom of her fist. “Something weird is happening.”

Yeah, something weird, and she didn’t know if it was dangerous or not! Could the Duskwalker use magic? If so, what if he blew her up or something?!

Then again, he would have done something like that by now to escape if he could.

The guard opened the peephole long enough to observe, rasping, “holyshit,” before shutting it.

Just before the last of the sharp, pointy sticks with feathers attached to their ends popped out of him, that female strutted in with two others following.

Like his current unwanted companion in his holding space, she was the only other person not wearing a mask and hood over her face. The guard from earlier, as well as the other two newcomers, wore their uniforms from head to toe.

He could only make out their eyes.

He noted the two females looked similar, besides a few differences like their skin tone and hair, and the newcomer had more wrinkles on her face. She also had a cold, unfeeling gaze, whereas the other female had eclipses of many emotions – many of which she’d turned to him, as well as others she’d tried to hide.

Wren, as he’d learned their leader was called, raised a brow when another stick clattered against the ground. He breathed a small sigh of relief.

“He’s shedding the arrows,” she commented, before her gaze drifted over his bound form. “So, this is how they heal. It was roughly this time last night that he approached the fortress. Considering he’s remained wounded the entire time, I was wondering how they could survive an attack and emerge unscathed weeks later.”

“What of his chest?” one of the faceless males asked.

Ingram wondered if they knew their uniforms made them appear like Demons. He wondered if it was on purpose.

Wren cast the male a bored glance. “That came later.” Then she brought her blue eyes back to him. “Didn’t it, Duskwalker?”

He gave her a light growl, unable to muster a proper one.

Had he not been missing his entire heart, he might have attempted a better threat. He hadn’t expected them to remove it, or for it to disintegrate like black sand in the doctor’s palm right before his very orbs. They hadn’t been able to keep it, which he was pleased with – despite the pain that had brought.

He did vaguely remember them saying that thearteriesandveinsit had been attached to had moved and reattached somewhere else. He figured that’s why blood was still coursing through his body, flowing like a river; just not pumping. He’d lost every ounce of energy, and instead was pushing blood around like a continuous stream to keep him alive.

Once the lastarrowslipped from him, Wren’s interest in him died. She turned to his unwanted companion.

“Looks as though you have more to clean.” Then she sighed, while shaking her head. “You look like shit. The fact you haven’t finished cleaning just a few small puddles of blood and haven’t gone to bed is beyond disappointing.”