When Arwin and Lillia emerged from the kitchen and into the common room, they found the rest of the Menagerie waiting for them. The only one missing was Esmerelda, who technically wasn’t even part of the guild and had just been hanging around — and Arwin suspected that was more to argue with Madiv than it was for work purposes. “Is this an intervention?” Arwin asked, squinting at the solemn expressions of gathered members of his guild. “Because I feel remarkably unnerved. Nobody important died, right?” “Someone died, but they weren’t important,” Rodrick said. Anna elbowed him in the side and he coughed. “Sorry.” “It’s not an intervention,” Anna said, pulling her eyes away from Rodrick and letting out a small sigh. “But… well, there’s no easy way to say this. Rodrick and I were speaking last night, and—” “You were doing a lot more than speaking,” Olive said, glancing at the other woman out of the corners of eyes. “Lillia should really consider making slightly thicker walls.” Rodrick started to grin before he caught Anna’s expression and hurriedly coughed into his fist to conceal his expression. Anna squinted at the one-armed warrior, who reddened. “Not the right time?” “The walls suggestion might be a good one,” Anna grumbled. “And you are completely ruining the atmosphere I am attempting to create here.” Olive gave Anna a sheepish grin. “Sorry.” Rodrick put a hand on Anna’s head before she could say anything more. “The Secret Eye are meant to be impartial, but a lot of the time, that doesn’t end up being the case. There are so many different agendas in the kingdom. So many different guilds that want something — and a lot of people that aren’t happy with how they or their guilds get ranked. The Inquisitors were a group of people within the Secret Eye that handle all of that.” This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. “We were assassins,” Anna said, her gaze falling to the ground. “Of a sort, at least.” “How is that possible?” Olive asked. “I mean you no disrespect, but unless you’ve been intentionally avoiding using your skills, you’re no assassin.” “Because I wasn’t that kind of assassin,” Anna said. She swallowed before continuing. “Generally, anyone who would have an issue with the Secret Eye was someone strong enough that they couldn’t just disappear. It would cause too much of a stir. Our purpose was to ensure that didn’t happen, so we couldn’t just go and kill our targets.” Olive’s eyes went wide and she drew in a sharp breath of realization. “I heard rumors of this, but I thought they were just superstitious idiots. You went after your target’s friends and loved ones instead of them.” “We couldn’t kill the bull. The kingdom needed it alive — so we made a leash.” Regret soaked Anna’s words and it was a moment before she spoke again. “Most of the time, the mere threat was enough. Most of the time.” Arwin’s stomach tightened. He didn’t want to ask the question at the front of his mind, but he couldn’t keep himself from it. “Who did you kill? How many?” “With my own hand? Not many. I made poisons, and those were usually enough. Not every target had to die… but some did, and it was my fault. I don’t know how many. I wasn’t privy to the full extent of what my work was used for,” Anna admitted, her voice taut. “But I occasionally heard word of what had happened to people. I could recognize the signs of my own work. I — I’m responsible for a lot of terrible things. Deaths. Disfigurements. Broken families. All because of my work.” “Why?” Lillia asked. “Why would you do something like that?” “The reason doesn’t matter,” Anna said with a shake of her head. “I was willing to sacrifice others for my own sake because I wasn’t the one driving the dagger into their hearts with my own hands. I convinced myself it didn’t matter because someone else would have done it if I didn’t — but the fact of the matter was, I did it. Nobody forced me to. It was my choice.” “She was sick,” Rodrick said. Anna glared at him. “Rodrick, be quiet. They—” “Should know the entire story,” Rodrick said flatly. “I’m not justifying Anna’s actions, but she’s only telling you half the truth.” “I don’t want to influence—” “They’re not children, Anna,” Rodrick snapped, pounding a fist against the counter to silence any argument. “Everyone here can make their own decisions, but they deserve to know everything. That was what we agreed on.” Anna’s shoulders slumped and she inclined her head. “Fine.” “As I’ve said before, I was once a Paladin in the Adventurer’s Guild,” Rodrick said, running a hand through his hair nervously. “My immediate superior and his wife recognized a pattern in the sicknesses of family members of high-ranking people throughout the kingdom, and we’d heard rumors that they were working from within the Secret Eye. When he reported it to the upper members of the guild, nobody acted. He pushed, insisting that we couldn’t let someone terrorize the kingdom — and he was silenced.” “Someone killed him?” Reya asked, her eyes widening. “Yes,” Rodrick replied. He started to pace back and forth across the room, wringing his hands together as he spoke. “His death was ruled an accident, but I know it wasn’t. And I knew I would be next if I or his wife tried to bring up what happened. So I went off on my own. I abandoned my post in the guild and used my connections to sneak into the Secret Eye. Over the course of years, I worked my way up its ranks. I’d always been good at sniffing out information, but they made me great. I made friends. I sucked up to my superiors. They had absolutely no idea. But I got cocky. They found me sniffing around where I wasn’t meant to be. I fought back — but not everyone in the Secret Eye was evil. Most of them weren’t. They were just following orders, and I killed an innocent man and betrayed my oaths. My powers shattered and I was captured. They had me dragged to the dungeons to figure out what my motives were — but I wasn’t easy to break. They needed someone to keep me alive while they questioned me.” “That was where I met Rodrick,” Anna said, averting her gaze from everyone. “The dungeons. They brought me in to keep him alive while they tortured him.” “Would have died if she hadn’t been there,” Rodrick said. “She did more than heal me. She spoke to me when the other Inquisitors left. She told them it was because she was Keep reading on NovelHub - where stories come alive! Turns out, she was sick. Dying from a poison that her mother had ingested before she was born, and that had been eating away at her from childhood. She needed money to buy supplies.” “Money that I couldn’t earn through normal jobs,” Anna said. “I needed more money than I could have ever hoped to make. The poison was incredibly potent and spread throughout my entire body. Other healers couldn’t remove it, but I could temporarily neutralize it through my own poisons. The Secret Eye heard of my talents and picked me up. They gave me the materials I needed to make poison, but that is no excuse for what I did. I sacrificed my morals and the lives of others to try and buy my own.” Rodrick nodded and his pacing drew to a halt as he let out a slow breath. “Anna told me all of this when I was imprisoned. I realized that she was the person I set out to kill, and that she was trapped there as much as I was. She was a child when the Secret Eye took her in, and I couldn’t fault a child that had nobody for trying to survive.” “But he could certainly try to convince me to be better,” Anna muttered, a tiny smile flickering across her lips before it fell away. She sniffled and wiped her face with the back of a sleeve before continuing. “Rodrick spent every second we had telling me about himself and his superior. About what the value of a life was. He did all of that after refusing to give up his real identity. If he had, they might have gone after his superior’s wife as well to remove any loose ends.” Arwin swallowed. It felt like a lead ball had caught in his throat. If he’d been in Anna’s shoes, he would have liked to say that he’d done differently, but he honestly couldn’t know for sure. His thoughts were a mess. “How did you escape?” Rodrick smiled. “Anna saved me. Broke me out after one of the Inquisitor’s sessions. We both ran for it. None of them ever expected her to betray them, so it was almost easy. Then we ran. Been at it ever since.” “How is Anna alive, then?” Reya asked. “She’s dying, isn’t she?” A bitter smile pulled across Anna’s lips. “Turns out, I’d cured myself of the poison a long time ago. The leader of the Inquisitors was keeping me sick. He must have been adding poisons to my meals and water. I never found out what, but shortly after Rodrick and I escaped, I found that the poison had purged itself from my body. Years of being the vehicle of death… and it was for nothing. I wasn’t even saving myself. I’m just a murderer that was scared of dying.” “Until someone showed you better,” Rodrick said firmly. “You never had anyone to show you a different path. You chose to save me even though you believed doing so would result in your own death.”