My next blink had a tear dropping from one eye while loosening the dried blood sealing the other enough for it to peel open reluctantly. I was positive I lost a few lashes in the process. I cringed away from the light that seared into my retinas, the steady flames lining the walls blazing brighter than they had previously. Or maybe it was just my eyes. Squinting, I could make out a head of light brown hair below my head that hung forward, my neck too weak to lift it. Not that I would if I could. It hurt to breathe, I didn't want to find out how much it would hurt to try and pick it up.
"Fine," relented the voice in the distance, sounding from just out of my sight's reach. It was followed by the light sound of footsteps and that ended with the drag of metal.
"Rory," the woman in front of me said in a warning tone as the footsteps resumed. A faint wet slosh joined to accompany them. "No! Don't-"
The soft-looking hair that held my focus suddenly shifted as the woman whose head it was attached to lunged to the side.
Out of the way of the ice-cold water that slammed into my chest with a breath-stealing force.
My eyes slammed shut as my breath stuttered in my chest. It took a moment for the biting chill of water to seep into my clothes, bringing with it a tremble that wanted to rattle me to the bone. My lips began to shiver as the cold sunk in. It stung where the loss of blood didn't numb my skin, making me hiss through chattering teeth as my chest constricted painfully to still the full body tremble that started. I wasn't sure if it would hurt less to just let it out to rattle my broken bones. I could already feel their jagged edges grating against one other with every shallow breath I took.
"Rory!" The name was shouted in outrage this time.
"What? I'm not touching her like that. She's filthy."
"That only made it worse! Now, she filthy and wet."
My eyes snapped open again just as a tall and willowy woman with red hair so bright it was nearly orange stepped into my line of sight to catch it with warm brown eyes that sat behind a gold pair of glasses. Their warmth contradicted the ice lacing her features.
"Oh, look, she's awake," she dryly announced to her friend, adding the weight of another set of eyes to the deadweight hanging from my wrists.
A cloud of my breath had the sight of them growing hazy. "C-co-cold," I stuttered past lips I could barely feel enough to form the one-worded plea for help.
It was all I could do; beg. Dignity came at a price I couldn't afford. I hadn't been able to afford it for a while now. All that had me holding my head up and putting on a facade that had me charging forward through a magical nightmare was the man- no, fae in my basement who was no longer there.
As it turns out, he never needed me to save him. If he did, he would have died in that basement.
At the end of the day, I failed him. My promises meant nothing.
I... I deserved this.
My clenched muscles relaxed to let the shiver I was holding back make its way through my body, rattling me down to the bone.
"You can thank Rory for that," the brown-haired girl, Aster, said as she made her way back to me. Her name sounded familiar, but I struggled to place from where with a train of thought that refused to flow straight. She placed a hand on the side of my thigh that had the cold drenching my front growing warm. As the water reached a pleasant temperature that chased my shivers away, I found my body involuntarily relaxing. As much as it was possible to while aching and hanging from limp wrists.
