Dishonored 1 [WORKING]

He slipped through a service hatch, crawled through ducts slick with grime, and dropped into the private chambers of the Pendleton twins—the men who held Emily captive as leverage. They were drunk, arrogant, their faces painted like porcelain masks. One was detailing, with a laugh, how he planned to “train” the young empress.

He was shaking because for the first time since the Empress fell, he had chosen not to kill. And the mark on his hand had gone quiet, as if even the Outsider was watching to see what he would do next.

The Golden Cat was a silk-draped hell of perfumed vapors and captive women. Its patrons were nobles who paid in coin and cruelty. Corvo had learned their names from the Loyalists—Admiral Havelock, the spymaster Pendleton, the inventor Piero. They promised to restore Emily to the throne if Corvo did their bloody work. He didn’t trust them. But he trusted the Lord Regent even less.

He Blinked across the courtyard, landing without a sound on a wrought-iron balcony. Inside, a guest was arguing with a courtesan. Corvo pressed his face to the glass. The man’s throat was bare. His coin purse was fat. It would be so easy to slide a blade between his ribs. dishonored 1

She pulled back, eyes wide. “Can we kill them? The bad men?”

Three months ago, he had been the Lord Protector, the Empress’s shadow and sword. He had watched Jessamine die on the floor of her own tower, her blood seeping between his fingers as her daughter, Emily, screamed. Then the usurper Burrows had thrown Corvo into Coldridge Prison, branded him a murderer, and left him to rot.

A chokehold. A quiet drag. Two unconscious bodies slumped behind a velvet curtain. He picked the lock on Emily’s door with a hairpin, and when the hinges creaked open, a small figure launched herself at his legs. He slipped through a service hatch, crawled through

Emily squeezed his neck. “You’re shaking,” she said.

Corvo knew the truth the Loyalists had not yet learned: in Dunwall, mercy was a luxury. But so was vengeance. And he had not yet decided which one would cost him more.

Corvo’s grip tightened on his folding blade. He was shaking because for the first time

“Corvo,” she whispered, her face buried in his coat. She was trembling. She smelled of cheap perfume and fear. “I knew you’d come.”

Corvo exhaled slowly. He chose the harder path.