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She remained silent, unable to find a suitable response. Instead, she just inspected Wren’s face, her lips tight and her right hand refusing to unclench.

“You’re starting to understand, aren’t you? You can see why I’m doing this.” There was humour in Wren’s eyes, even if it didn’t reach the rest of her face. “If I free you from solitary, I trust you will keep what you learn to yourself. Yes?”

“I would never be so stupid as to leak information,” Emerie bit out. “That’s how I find my head on a spike above the main gates.”

“Exactly,” Wren confirmed, that humour finally touching her features to give her an ugly sneer. “Now, let’s continue your training.”

She was ushered to sit at a different table within Wren’s office, where there was already a pile of leather-bound books waiting for her.

Emerie usually enjoyed reading, but she couldn’t think of anything worse right now.

Her workload was so daunting, the stack felt bigger than mount Zagros itself.

Beneath her Demonslayer face coverings, Emerie paled.

She watched as they dragged out the corpse of the doctor who had been the one wielding the scalpel against the Duskwalker for the last few days. The beast was rattling his chains as he fought against them, having just enough freedom to thrust his head one way and then the next.

He snapped his long beak, and even attempted to peck at one of the Elders trying to wrangle rope around it in order to secure it.

Honestly, the death of the doctor could have been prevented had they not wanted to go poking around inside his mouth.

One of the Elders also wouldn’t have lost their fingers in the process. They’d tried to help fight off the creature as he pecked and bit at the doctor’s neck, chest, and face, and accidentally put their hand in danger’s way.

Part of Emerie believed the doctor deserved it, the other half of her rebelled against the death of a human. And just how many had this one Duskwalker killed?

“Release me!”the Duskwalker roared, wriggling with all his might for freedom.“Release me!”

Within seconds, his beak was tied shut again, and she doubted they’d risk releasing it again.

He’s just defending himself,she thought, eyeing the human blood that streaked right next to her and out the door.If he’d been telling the truth about why he came here... then he was just defending himself outside the gates too.

She didn’t know if it was true.

Every second of every day, Wren’s voice whispered in the back of her mind. Emerie couldn’t help agreeing with much of it; a lot of it was reasonable, even if itwasundeniably sick and twisted.

“See?” Wren snorted as she glanced back at Emerie, who was hiding her inner panic with a casual expression. “When given the chance, he’ll kill.”

The forceps the doctor had been using to hold his tongue lay on the ground and reflected the flickering firelight, as did the scalpel he’d been intending to use. Where, Emerie wasn’t sure.

She couldn’t deny the truth of it, not when it had happened right before her. She squinted.But I’ve bitten the fingers of a bandit when he tried to remove my tongue.

Then she’d managed to get to freedom and slice her attacker’s throat.

How was it any different? It fucking wasn’t.

They cranked the wheels on either side of the Duskwalker to angle the table forward and force him to kneel again.

“I’m guessing I’m on cleanup duty?” Emerie sneered, causing humour to light up in Wren’s usually cold expression.

“I was going to give you a break, but with that tone? Absolutely.”

Emerie didn’t even move out of the way as they exited, forcing them to barge into her shoulder. Then she waited for them to give her cleaning tools as the Duskwalker continued to roar.

He was uninjured – they hadn’t managed to hurt him yet – but he wasn’t calming.He seems enraged.She eyed the ground.Is it because of the blood?

Funnily enough, she found it easier to clean up the blood of the guildmembers. Perhaps it was because they’d gotten what they deserved.

She didn’t know what it was, but she was becoming desensitized to their deaths, and more vulnerable to him. Yet Wren’s constant barrage of opinions just spun her mind into a confused ache.