This was what Flynn got for dancing with a hot girl. Really, did all of the girls in this town have to be maniacal serial killers?

The last thing he remembered was her hand striking the side of his neck. For such a pretty little hand, it sure held a lot of strength. Enough to knock him out, tie him to a chair, and drag him back to this...place.

He didn't know how exactly to describe it. It wasn't that it was too gorgeous to put into words or too hideous to even comment on it. It was that he literally couldn't see it. Death himself wouldn't be able to see through the darkness if he had tried.

He shuffled his feet around, feeling the soft, squishy and utterly disgusting ground underfoot - it was almost like he'd been thrown in a pile of slime. The room stunk of over-watered soil and rotten potatoes. Maybe he was underground?

Immediately, he rolled his eyes at the thought. Seriously, what sort of idiot kidnapped someone and tossed them into a hole in the dirt?

Flynn wriggled around in his seat, only to find that his knees had been strapped firmly to the legs of the chair. So were his hands, tied tight enough that Flynn worried if it had cut off his blood circulation. As if that wasn't enough, he felt a cloth, sticky with his own saliva, shoved into his mouth and halfway down his throat.

He reached his index finger around to poke at the knot fastened around his wrists. It was stiff. Whoever had kidnapped him, definitely knew what they were doing.

Well, so do I, he thought, allowing an ounce of pride warm his chest.

The Black Bones weren't and would never be the smartest of the gangs, but they hadn't been dumb enough to neglect teaching him how to untie knots. He slipped another finger into the loop and tugged at it. It loosened a little, but when he reached his middle finger around to completely untie the rope, his finger grazed something warm. His finger froze where it was, halfway through the movement. Flynn paused and gazed curiously into the darkness.

It didn't take long for his curiosity to morph into horror when he felt whatever it was attach itself to his pinky. Nails dug in and he scrambled away with a yelp of pain. But he didn't get far enough before he heard a crack.

The pain arrived seconds after he'd realized his pinky was broken and it was certainly in no haste to leave. He screamed, but the sound was muffled by the wet gag still blocking his mouth. He bit his tongue to stop his screams, instead trying to calm his racing mind down.

"THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR TRYING TO KIDNAP ME! NOW, YOU'LL UNTIE ME RIGHT NOW UNLESS YOU AIN'T SCARED OF LOSIN' ANOTHER FINGER!" The voice was female, a little raspy with the barest hint of an accent. He'd heard it before, but he couldn't quite place it...

He shook his head. No, it didn't matter who it was. It didn't matter that he was short a finger. All that mattered was getting out of here.

Flynn coughed and sneezed and even prodded the cloth with his tongue trying to get it out of his mouth, all while keeping his fingers away from the crazy lady behind him, who hadn't been bluffing with her threat. Finally, finally, the gag fell away. It landed with a wet splat on the floor next to him. His next breaths came in frantic gasps before they slowed just enough for him to form words:

"I-" Pause. "I'm not-" Pause. "I'm not the person who kidnapped you." He let his head hang down in exhaustion as beads of sweat dripped into his eyes.

"HOW'RE'YA TOUCHIN' ME THEN?"

Flynn didn't even have the will to roll his eyes. "I'm tied to you dumbass."

"Oh..."

"Yeah."

"...real sorry for breaking your pinky."

He gritted his teeth. Granted, he'd gone through much worse than just a broken finger, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell. "Nevermind, what's your name?"

"Arabella."

Recognition flashed through his brain as he realized who she was. "Wait, Saban? From The Storm Riders?"

"Yeah, who're you?"

"Flynn Turner of The Black Bones. At your service m'lady." He deadpanned, until the sharp heel of a boot kicked his shin.

"OW, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR?" He cried, clenching his teeth as he pulled his foot farther away from her.

"Pa said you're the one who spray painted my car last week!" she growled.

He scoffed. "It's no big deal, you'll be fine. I'm pretty sure we have bigger problems here-"

"S'not 'fine'! You spray painted your face onto it!"

"Oh come on, I gave that old thing an upgrade. You probably loved it." Flynn smirked.

"Say that again and I'll break another finger."

"You and your fingers..."

"It ain't MY fault you're a sore loser. You only pulled that lil' stunt 'cause Pa won the last race against five of your best racers."

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't have left your car out in the open."

"Ha! You didn't deny it!"

"Deny what?"

"That you're a sore loser."

Flynn groaned, letting his head fall back on the chair. "Well, I am sore - these stupid ropes are cutting into my ankles and I still have a broken pinky."

A pause.

"You still there?"

"Wait, shut up a second."

"Politeness is your greatest virtue." He scoffed.

"I said, shut it Turner."

"Oh, so we're on a last name basi-," He immediately cut himself off as her sharp nails dug into his ring finger. "OKAY, OKAY, I'LL SHUT UP NOW."

They sat in prickly silence for the next few minutes. Flynn couldn't hear much from her as he strained his senses to pick up anything useful. But his eyes could only barely see the glint of Arabella's signature hoop earrings, much less anything else.

"I think I finally got somethin'." Her voice cut clean through the quiet like a shark fin through water.

Flynn sat up a bit straighter, shaking his sweaty brown hair from his face. "What is it?"

"When you said your ankles were tied, I realized that mine weren't 'cause I was able to give ya a good kick before." She chuckled before continuing. "So then it kinda dawned on me that I got me an extra knife in the pocket of my boot-"

"You have a pocket on your boot?"

"Uh, yeah, of course. Anyway, I just gone 'n got that knife out with my feet so I might be able to get it to my mouth to cut the ties off my hands."

"And my hands, right?"

"Sure..."

"WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?"

The only answer he got was the sound of steel sliding against rope. He repressed a sigh and instead leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. He'd be out of here soon, Arabella would cut him free in just a few more minutes...

SNAP!

The sound of the last thread of rope breaking echoed across the incessant silence, making his ears rattle.

"'Kay, I'm free. Give me five minutes an' you'll be out."

He waited patiently while she fiddled with the knot. It took her longer than it normally should have (apparently her dark vision awas just as bad as his) but eventually the bindings fell limply to the ground as if they were rats dropping dead from a heatwave.

Flynn stood up so quickly it hurt. He hadn't realized he'd been sitting in the same position for who knows how long until he felt the strain in his muscles. He flexed his fingers one by one, wincing once he reached his pinky, but ignored it, instead laying down on the dirt floor. Setting his injured arm in his lap, he stared up, imagining that it was a night sky and there were glimmering stars gazing lovingly down at him. The darkness had started to become almost cozy, he wished he could just fall asleep. He probably would've if he hadn't been interrupted by Arabella.

Unbeknownst to him, she'd started digging at the dirt. Her finger scooped up handfuls of dirt before discarding them on top of him, only to go back in for more. He sputtered, tasting the earthy soil before spitting it out.

"What are you doing?" He snapped, staggering aimlessly in the dark. He felt like a blind old man as he held his arms out, grasping at empty air. "Where are you?"

She disregarded him, shuffling her hands slowly across the soil before the sound stopped. Suddenly, he felt her warm fingers in his as she placed something smooth and rough in the center of his palm. He clutched it tightly in his palm and held it out in front of him like a trophy.

It took him a second to realize it was a rock.

"Seriously?"

He heard a sigh, and she grabbed the rock away again. He closed his eyes again, expecting her to lay down next to him and fall asleep as well. Slowly, he felt himself slipping from conscious, the quiet a silent lullaby-

Scrape.

He sat up, grogginess gone, replaced instead with irritation.

"'M tryin' to start a fire."

"What?"

Scrape.

"It'll work"

He sneered. "Yeah right."

SCRAPE.

"It WILL." He heard her start to strike with more force, and he imagined her pretty features were set in a determined scowl as she kept going.

SCRAAAPE!

"Hey, I don't think-"

SCRAAAAAPE!

"ARABELLA-"

Crackle.

A flicker of brilliance ignited the dingy room. He covered his eyes, temporarily blinded before slowly moving his hands back down to gawk at the fire. It wasn't much, but Flynn's hopes soared higher the brighter the baby flame grew.

"Huh," He muttered. "It actually worked."

Arabella moved the flame in his direction, just enough for Flynn to be able to see the shadows streaking across her narrow face and under her eyes. Her body was slumped forward, like it was carrying the weight of the world on its shoulders. Her eyes were half-closed. She didn't even look like the Arabella Saban that everyone knew. She just looked exhausted.

"Look, I know 'm gorgeous and all but could we kindly redirect our attention to figurin' out how to get out this place, 'stead of admirin' my beauty?" She raised a dark eyebrow.

"Well, aren't you humble..." He quipped, grabbing the flaming stone from her and rotating until the light found an old wooden door. It managed to look deader than Arabella, its wood disgustingly damp and moss growing from the gaps underneath it. The carcass of some sort of rodent rotted at his feet and he recoiled. Arabella came over to his side and made a gagging sound.

"Ew, what the hell is that?"

"Us if we don't get out of here." He muttered grimly.

There was a moment of silence before he sighed and spoke again. He gazed intently at the rusted keyhole of the doorknob.

"You have a bobby pin?"

"Do ya think every girl carries a bobby pin 'round?"

"I don't know, that's how it works in the movies!"

"This ain't a movie, it's REAL-LIFE." She hissed, giving him an exasperated look.

"Why aren't you freaking out about any of this then?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it as if to consider what she was about to say, before opening it again.

"What?" He swiveled to stare at her.

"'Cause this whole thing, it seems too...organized? It feels downright fake. Staged."

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"Why didn't they tie my ankles and gag me? You were the only one with that crap on."

"I mean...kidnappers are human too? They can make mistakes, you know."

"But we're the heirs of two real powerful gangs, wouldn't they be a li'l more careful 'round us? And this-" She snatched the rock he'd used to spark the fire from him. "-this here's flint. It's usually only found by riverbeds. We ain't nowhere near a riverbed, I reckon we're underground, actually. 'Innit a bit weird how convenient it was that it was just...here?""

"What, you're saying they kidnapped us and wanted us to escape?"

Arabella shrugged, pressing her lips together thoughtfully. "Maybe."

Flynn bit the inside of his cheek. She was right, it was a bit suspicious that he'd been the only one with proper bindings. She was even right about the flint thing. And now that he thought back to it, there was one thing missing-

"Shit."

"What?"

"Do you know the heiress of The Blood Lilies?" He asked carefully.

She nodded "Sonora? What 'bout her?"

"I was at her birthday party before. I saw someone grab her and spray something in her face before I passed out. There was another boy too, I saw them dancing before, his name was 'Kasper' or 'Kester' or something like that. I think he got kidnapped too. So why aren't they here with us?"

"Only one way to find out," She tilted her head towards the door before shooting him a crooked grin, one so bright that it almost made him smile back, despite their bickering minutes before. "Ya think I could knock it down?"

He studied it for a moment before making a face. Apparently taking this as a yes, she took a few steps back and rammed her shoulder into it. There was a tiny creak, almost imperceptible before the door fell back with a thump.

The two stood in shocked silence as a dull light flowed into the room they'd been in seconds ago. The flickering fire extinguished, leaving only sparks in its wake while they stared in awe at what surrounded them.

Two hours before, Flynn would've said that Sonora's birthday party had been the most extravagant thing he'd ever seen. But now, surrounded by the expanse of animals - from adorably chubby pandas to stealthy tigers, from vicious wolves to majestic unicorns - all carved to perfection from gleaming cubes of ice. They glowed a kaleidoscope of colors in the dimly lit room. Ivory snow delicately blanketed the room in white, slowly melting into water and dripping off the snouts or tails of the ice creatures. A single chair stood in the center of the room.

Unlike the glamorous winter wonderland surrounding it, the chair was rather ordinary - almost like one of those foldable ones people would bring out on the 4th of July. Three teenagers stood behind it.

"Tuan?" Arabella rushed over, embracing the blank-faced boy tightly and planting a soft kiss on his lips. This seemed to surprise him and he almost stumbled over the tail of a sculpted snake. Its motionless, frosty coils looked so real that Flynn could've sworn it had once been real.

Next to Tuan was Sonora, her pretty little face set in a serious expression. As she frowned at Flynn, an ounce of pity sparked in her brown eyes, although it quickly died replaced with the cold brown of dead autumn leaves. The ginger boy who stood at the very edge of the trio, kept tugging his curly hair so hard that he was a bit worried it'd fall out.

But what worried him most of all, was the person in the chair.

Flynn had imagined many things to be behind the now collapsed door - a hidden bedchamber, or maybe a passage leading back to the kidnapper's house. But he certainly hadn't imagined his kidnapper to be sitting right there.

He had almost mistaken her for one of the ice sculptures. She had the whitest hair you'd ever seen, like it had been dipping in a puddle of starlight. It was the hair he'd run his fingers through hours before, during the party. Those palm, slender arms were the ones that had wrapped around his neck. That smug little smile was the one she'd given him before she'd pulled him in for a kiss.

Her masked face happened to be the same one he'd seen, snickering at him before he'd fallen unconscious in her harsh grip.

A lacy white thing of beauty, her mask fit perfectly across her features, only just covering her inky, soulless, eyes. If one looked closely enough, you'd see it resembled the face of a fox - with majestic ears and a long, slim snout dotted at the end with a speck of black. It was identical to the animal that sat in her lap: An arctic fox.

She parted her lips to speak, letting her voice pour out, high and lilting, as if she was holding back a joke that only she would understand. But what she actually ended up saying, was, not in the least funny.

"Congratulations, you passed the first test! Barely. Oh well, it is what it is, can't exactly kill you now." She giggled. "Welcome to your new headquarters, to your new home. Welcome to The Menagerie."