His gut tightened with tension at her words.
She is warier of me now. He’d been hoping to ease her worries, not worsen them.
He couldn’t help turning into that state. It had been because of anger and a reaction to his pain, to danger. To her being in danger.
Once she was finished, she stepped away and allowed him to stand and face her once more. She promptly turned her head away from him before giving him her side.
“But I wasn’t particularly pleased with the Demonslayer either. He put a sword to me!” She threw her hands up in outrage. “Why would I have stuck around and hung out with him if he did manage to kill you? You probably also would have ripped a limb from him before he did. Then he would have attracted the Demons, and I would have been killed by a swarm of them when night came.”
“Most humans are scared to be by themselves in the forest. You thought you would be safer by yourself?”
She rubbed her arm from her bicep down to her forearm.
“I wanted to become a Demonslayer if I ever got away from the village. They often hunt animals and cut them open to bleed them in order to create traps to attract Demons so they can slay them. I knew they would draw their attention, and the more distance between me and them, the likelier I could get away. We know enough about Demons that they’d rather go after the smell of a dead human who is easy food, than to attack a human running away from it.”
“That was… intelligent of you.” He turned from her and started leading their path once more. He heard her footsteps follow before she came up beside him. “You wanted to become a Demonslayer?”
That was curious. None of his other offerings had wanted to become one of those hunters.
“They are supposed to be people with little fear,” she answered quietly. “The more a human smells of it, the more it attracts Demons. Some believe that if you do not hold any, you can’t be smelt by them at all and can remain hidden, even in the night. I’ve never been much of an afraid person, even when I was a child.”
That wasn’t true. Demons could smell a human regardless of if it was afraid or not, but yes, not having fear made it harder to.
“You smell of it,” he told her. He wasn’t sure if she was lying to herself, but he could tell she was afraid.
“I never said I couldn’t feel it!” she yelled, making his head rear back. Her eyes widened, and she quickly cleared her throat. “What I meant to say was, yes, I know I’m afraid, but not like everyone else. I was hoping if I trained with the guild that they’d help me erase it completely.”
Hmm. That is indeed an intriguing notion.
“Why did you want to become one? To protect people you care for?”
“No.” Her voice was quiet as she said, “There is no one left for me to care for.”
It was then that he noticed how much her teeth chattered from the cold. He looked to her bare feet to see her dress was much shorter now and came to almost her knees.
“I just wanted to be able to travel the world freely. Killing loathsome Demons along the way would have been a bonus.” She looked to him for a moment. “I’m sure that might be the last thing you want to hear.”
“Not at all. I am not a Demon.”
She gave a short laugh as she looked away from him once more.
“I guess that’s true.” She pulled her hood more firmly over her head before she wrapped her arms around her centre and rubbed her arms as though for warmth. “What are you anyway? No one really knows.”
Orpheus wasn’t even sure what he was. There was some belief that he was part-Demon, part-human, part-other. Most just considered Duskwalkers as other, putting them in an unknown category. One of the many unanswered questions.
“Why do you keep looking away from me?” he asked instead of answering her. “Are you that disturbed by me now?”
He couldn’t hide the irritation in his voice. He didn’t like that she couldn’t even look upon him at all.
“With human blood on your face, making it obvious you’ve just eaten one? Well, yes. I find that rather creepy to look at.”
Hmm… He knew humans found the blood of their own kind disturbing. He reached down and dug his fingers into the snow to feel it munch around his glove.
“I did not finish eating him.” He started rubbing the wet powder on his face. The heat of his body melted it enough to wash the blood away. “I came to find you instead.”
“To eat me?”
“No, to find,” he corrected sharply. “It helped that I did not discover you running.”