The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

The devil tempts us not; 'tis we who tempt him,



Beckoning his skill with opportunity.



-George Eliot



Eight years before, Gavriel came apart.



First, the Spider cut open his belly.



Then he took out his guts and knotted them around the bars of his cage.



Ropy blue garlands.



They gouged out his pomegranate-seed eyes.



They fed him fouled blood and bile and his own skin.



They cut him with knives, flogged him with razor-tipped whips, and drove rusty nails into the soles of his feet.



When he healed, they did it again.



Until everything hurt all the time forever.



Pain so vast and terrible and huge it blotted out thought.



And so when he came back to himself, his memories were disjointed.



He'd ripped out someone's throat, but he was no longer sure whose.



There'd been blood everywhere; he'd slipped in it, clotted like soured milk.



There was hair, too, a nest of it in a drain.



And he remembered who had urged on his tormentors, the face of the creature who smiled down at him.



I could tell you, Gavriel thought. I could give you someone else in my place.



Someone you'd like better.



Someone you'd hurt worse.



But no. They'd taken every other piece of him.



He would hold onto revenge.



It would be his fairy story, his lullaby, sung softly by flayed lips.



Off-key and deranged.