He didn’t reply, and Shortbeak felt a cold feeling settle in the pit of her stomach. Fallow had talked to her before about… about reasonable use of force when dealing with bandits. Not all of them were evil murderers. Most were just desperate griffons who had fallen on hard times. She had pretended to listen; she had pretended to take his advice on board; she had pretended it changed anything about how she had felt back when she was barely more than a cub. Just like she was pretending, really hard, that the griffon currently at her mercy wasn’t what she knew he was.