The heavy door screaked and thumped shut behind Amari, and Fenn snapped his teeth at the door his old not-friend had disappeared out of. Nothing she said could be trusted, not anymore. Except, he supposed, the promise of more pain. If her goal was to make his feelings toward her match hers toward him, it was working.

Though he was relieved that she was gone, there was an unnerving tension in the silence that followed.

An eye for an eye. The phrase was common, but Fenn remembered it in a very specific context. Amari had said it to him before, in their last encounter, as she healed a gash in his shoulder. A gash she had made with her own knife. The phrase suggested even distribution of pain, but what had he ever done to warrant this kind of hurt? Pulling his legs closer to himself, the boy smearily wiped away the tears still leaking from his eyes. He refused to look at the misshapen gob of goo on the floor of the cage. Why on Althanas had he assumed she was safe? Why on Althanas wasn’t she?

Nothing she said could be trusted, not anymore. Except, he supposed, the promise of more pain.

Fenn dared to lift his gaze to Daugi. Small spasms still jerked the wolf, but only minutely. She was unconscious, or asleep -- hopefully not dead. He really did not want her to be dead. That would leave the little Fae entirely alone in the world.

...was he dying? Fenn absently stared at the cuffs around his wrist; they were there, a heavy and tangible weight, yet… he almost didn’t notice them anymore. The skin around them was so badly burned, he wasn’t sure it was capable of feeling anymore. Was this how it felt to die? Pain, pain, pain, then nothing? His world was getting darker, but the sun was still shining through the small window above the stove, and through the ceiling. He thought he already understood how it felt to known oneself a condemned man, one slated for the pyre. Horrifically, he realized that he knew nothing of that dread until now. He had known the feeling of throwing oneself to the capricious hands of fate with death as a possible outcome. But now the cards were on the table, and Fenn knew himself a dead man with certainty.

A last stab of fear pierced his heart. Fenn was not ready to die.

And yet he was alone, trapped in this rotting room. That might have scared him, but Fenn was so emotionally drained that all this thought gave him was sense of listlessness. None knew where he was, or what had happened to him. No daring escape was around the corner, no second chances were being handed out. Fenn adjusted his cuffs listlessly. Lifelessly. He wasn’t going to get the chance to suss out where the other frost fae were; he wasn’t going to get to collect more little treasures for his personal hoard; he was out of adventures. Dulled by his mistreatment, the boy’s green gaze flicked up to meet his blood-soaked companion. Mostly, he was just scared of how Daugi had gotten dragged down with him. As the darkness close around his mind, Fenn reached out to give the still wolf one last on the matted fur of her paw -- that was all he could reach.

...maybe he did deserve this, and he just didn’t know it. Still, he wondered, why.