Page 35

What was right and wrong? Good and bad? Evil and righteous? Emerie was tired of being in limbo.

She was heart-sick from it. Unable to eat, unable to sleep. It festered within, causing her skin to itch until she threatened to break it apart. She was covered in small rashes underneath her uniform.

She would eventually need to pick a side and wholly accept what they did.

It barely took any time at all for her to clean up the blood from the room, and she was stupid enough to approach him to wipe the worst of it from his thrashing face – the tip of his beak. She spooked quickly and backed up. Not long after she asked for a new bucket of water – an excuse to remain with the Duskwalker – he eventually calmed, albeit very gradually.

Or, rather, when the remaining bits of blood on him dried.

He gave wild huffs through his nose holes, his chest rising and falling in rapid succession. She knew his red orbs were upon her, and she didn’t find them as hollow and soulless as she once did.

“You–”

“Leave me alone!”he yelled, jerking and causing the sound of bones to rattle from him, as well as thechinkof his chains.

“They will just use a different doctor,” she told him.

“Then I will destroy that one too,”he rumbled, his words unnerving.

Her skin rose in goosebumps.

“Did it feel good to kill him?”

She didn’t know why she asked him. Maybe she wanted a reason to hate him, to make her okay with all this happening.

“Yes,”he snarled.

A humourless, singular snort of laughter escaped her.I felt that way about the bandit.

Since she’d also asked for a cloth, she approached the Duskwalker again now that he wasn’t mindlessly thrashing.

“I’m going to clean you,” she informed him.

She needed to do something in this room before they took her from it.

“Don’t touch me.”

Emerie ignored him and wrung her cloth of water before she faced him. He jerked, but his bounds kept him in place.

“Were you lying when you said you came here for our aid?” she asked, dabbing at his chest to rid him of a few crimson droplets.

This time, she thought it best to start with the place they weren’t just fucking with.

“You look like a Demon,”he snapped, the swirling vortex of his orbs reddening.

Emerie paused with her eyes narrowed. Then she hooked her index finger into the side of her hood to unclip her mask and pushed both away.

“Is that better?” she asked, already noting the colour of his angry orbs softening.

“Yes.”

He wasn’t lying.Considering his reaction to her uniform, it was obvious he felt hatred towards them.

Emerie held her breath as she gently gripped the underside of his beak, expecting him to jerk. He didn’t, his orb redness fading even more, and she was able to comfortably wipe the seam of it.

She noted the tension in his shoulders eased, and she thought he may have even rested a bit of the weight of his head in her palm.

Then her eyelids flickered when his orbs changed to a colour she’d never seen before. An orchid hue of purple.