This is what you<br />
get, you know. For failing.<br />
What<br />
exactly was it that she had failed? Those were more or less the words<br />
she had sputtered forth, each syllable infused with a sharp little<br />
thread of terror that made her tone crack at the edges. Cold iron<br />
clattered musically around her wrists, metal on metal, singing in<br />
mockery of her plight-- and he just laughed, raucous and maleficent,<br />
every trace of what once might have been human sympathy drained out<br />
of his voice like a wet dishcloth wrung dry.