A Deadly Bite

37 || A Losing Battle

Fiesi loses track of what it is to be awake and asleep. Both are filled with awful, blinding darkness, and both hurt; the pain follows him even into his dreams. Blistering cold becomes everything. Frost lines his stomach and scrapes his throat every time he dares to breathe. Even his fingers are frozen, creaking and aching when he moves them. The cage sways listlessly. In the deeper parts of sleep, it's a raging sea tossing him back and forth and clogging his mouth and nose with salt, but most of the time it is simply what it is: hard, freezing, unforgiving metal.

He yearns desperately to summon flame, but doesn't dare. Nathan's presence flutters eternally in and out. He's not always there, but still terror seizes Fiesi's heart whenever he thinks of reaching for the forbidden light. He can't suffer any more than he already is. It's all already too much.

Some bleak part of him is hoping thirst or starvation claim him first, but that's a long road. And besides, won't Nathan just bring him back again?

His stomach turns over, snarling. Gritty sourness swamps his mouth. Face buried in his cold arms, he whimpers, half-wishing he had the energy to scream. Even without that horrible, horrible concept, death is still no escape. Death is worse. Death is always worse.

Dim light burns his eyes.

With a hiss, he lifts his head, fingers splayed in front of his eyes to shield them as he squints. His heart has sped up. Some nonsensical relief pumps through him at this crack in the darkness, a hypnotising desire to crawl towards the light as if that is escape. The bars in front of him are blurred, though they settle as his eyes adjust and the spots dancing in front of them fade, the grey edges of his prison and its room of nothingness sharpening. Beyond the bars, a flickering lantern approaches. The shadow-clad figure who carries it takes longer to identify.

The sight of black hair and pale skin skips jagged strings of lightning through his chest, though the sparks are quick to wink out. The tacky bitterness rolling under his tongue has a different feel to it, less dark and terrible and more simply wrong. His gut twists unpleasantly, an itch prowling through his veins, and he cringes back. He never did like to suffer Harlow's stare for too long.

There's nowhere to escape it here, however. Harlow barely breaks their eye contact as he sets the lantern down at his feet, then moves another step closer, so that the flame's amber strands turn the lower rim of his black cloak to silver while surrendering his face to far dimmer shadow. It only serves to further steal the light from his green eyes. His gaze is flat, his expression nothing at all. It's infuriating.

Palms flat against the cage's floor, Fiesi struggles to push himself up, the cage shaking as much as he does. He settles for tilting up his chin, lips twisted into a snarl. He doesn't like how tall Harlow is, either. "What do you want?"

"To talk," Harlow says simply.

Fiesi exhales through his nose, then grimaces. His wound apparently still objects to him breathing too hard. He flashes a wry, weary half-smile. "Well, I've got all day."

"Neither of us want Shaula free."

"Don't we?" Fiesi raises an eyebrow. He rolls carefully onto his side, then props himself up with one arm, allowing him to better hold Harlow's piercing gaze. "It seems" -- he winces as his stomach twinges with the movement -- "pretty clear to me that you're quite firmly on Shaula's side, Captain."

Harlow's lips twitch at the title. He folds his arms. "If you insist on taking such a black and white view as all Tía do, I'll take the lantern away and tell Noli to pay you another visit."

"No, no," Fiesi says in a hurry, tongue tripping over itself. His arm wedges protectively against his chest. "No, I--I can think in many colours, actually. My opinions are a kaleidoscope. Do carry on telling me why we're miraculously on the same side."