Then the cell door opened.
Charlie. Hooded. Moving with the careful quiet of a man entering a restricted area on borrowed time. His face was gaunt. Time had taken from him, the progressive tax of a slave kingdom levied on every body within its borders.
The man who had smiled in the dark while bandaging a girl's back looked hollowed out, running on the same fumes as the girls he was protecting, and the protecting was costing him everything he had and he was still showing up.
Fin's respect for this man was no longer a feeling. It was a fact. Structural. Load-bearing. The kind that didn't require re-evaluation because the evidence was already conclusive.
"Serena?"
She lifted her head. The motion was slow. The motion of a body that had learned to conserve every calorie, every movement, every expenditure of energy, because waste meant death and death meant the chains won.
