Adelicia stood still, stiff as a candle, and quietly observed Victor’s methodic approach to finding the unseen creature – whatever it may be. If fear hadn’t taken her voice, she might have retorted how insulting it was to be told that panicking would not help them; what did he know of fear, after all? What, was she supposed to just [i]will[/i] her beating heart to slow down? To turn down her leaping thoughts, eager to jump to horrible conclusions? She could not even say that he was wrong, for surely, he was not. But it was not fair that she should be judged for something she had no control over. More than anything, [i]her[/i] feelings at this very moment proved to her that she, at least, was still human in some measure. The same could not be said for the thing in human skin that stood before her.

Yet, in the end, it was all the same. If she did not put herself at his mercy, she was instead at the mercy of whatever nameless and unseen terrors made this city their home. Perhaps her life had never been in her own hands, not once since the day she was born. It had simply not occurred to her to look at it this way. In some measure, she could almost understand the desire to become a hunter. Although nominally servants of the church – like herself – it was nonetheless an act of liberation and a promotion of personal agency. Victor had no need to feel fear, for he was in control of his own fate. The only thing holding him down was her frailty, not any flaw of his own. How much did he hate her, she had to wonder?

“Take me inside, or wherever you will,” Adelicia quivered with bated breath, “My fate is yours to decide no matter where we go.”

Resigning herself to the inevitable, she approached him without hesitation anymore, for it was useless to escape him, or the dark things observing them. What will be, will be – and so she reached out her hand to him and prayed that he was, after all, the lesser evil.