COLD. THAT WAS ALL she felt on that rooftop when she heard that voice, and it was all she felt now. Her fingers were numb from it, her lips chapped and blue. It was cold enough to hurt, cold enough that it felt hot. Eurion could hardly see a thing in the dim light, but a head of orange hair was unmistakeable before her cell.

"You're awake," Chalice murmured, their once wistful voice now bored and plain. It was like they were just a skeleton, reanimated to become the Queen's weapon. She tried not to be so pessimistic, but it was hard when everything still felt hopeless.

"You're alive," she said with a shiver. "How?"

They tilted their head to the side. "Did I die?"

Eurion swallowed. "Yes, Chalice, you died. Why are you helping the Queen?"

The druid went quiet again. She thought they might not say anything at all, until they finally did. "She helped me."

"With what? Bringing you back to life so she can use you to kill your friends?" Eurion scoffed. "Sure helpful of her."

"I'm sorry if you're my friends," Chalice told her, though any sympathy was gone from their tone. "I was confused when I woke up. She fixed it. I owe her."

Eurion shot to her feet and gripped the bars. "No she fucking didn't, Chalice, she lied to you. Snap out of it, as soon as you remember, you're going to feel really bad if you find out you killed me--us."

"I won't remember," the druid insisted. "Everything I used to be is dead. That's how it'll stay."

The thief shook the bars, startling the druid into gripping their blade. "Stop it! Just stop it! You're still there. Chalice Daines, you've survived hell. If you're walking today, part of you is still in there. I know it is."

"I'm sorry." They didn't sound sorry, though. They sounded dead. Eurion thought she'd never feel a pain like watching her best friend die, but this was almost worse. Chalice was there, standing right in front of her face, but she'd never felt so far from them. She felt like she was looking at a ghost. At least when the druid was dead, she could pretend they lived on in the trees, watching over her like a guardian angel, refusing to leave her side.

Eurion clenched her jaw. She knew it was hopeless, but she wanted so badly to believe they were still in there somewhere. "Why did you come here?"

They raised a brow.

"To me. My cell. Why were you here when I woke up? Why not someone else's?"

Chalice shrugged. "I just was. I guess you got lucky."

Lucky. Bullshit. Eurion believed in coincidences, but that was not one. She refused to let it be one. She refused to believe that Chalice wasn't there because they wanted to be, because they had something deep down urging them to stay with her. It couldn't be.

"Where's everyone else?" she asked, dropping the subject. She'd try to pull Chalice out when she had the energy, but right now she didn't.

"Her Majesty didn't want you all to be near each other," they answered. "They're in the dungeon, but far away. You won't be seeing them."

Eurion choked back a protest. She was worried for her friends, painfully so, but she didn't dare try to escape to find them, not yet. There would be no easy way to do this, but in order to figure something out, she needed to get rid of the crippling pain in her gut.

"Well... can I eat, at least?"

Perhaps her mind was just playing tricks on her, but Eurion swore she saw something flicker across Chalice's features. She didn't know how or why such a request would make them react, but she had to believe it did.

"Fine," said the druid, eyes flitting up and down her figure as if to try and decipher her with nothing but a glance. "I'll see what I can do."

* * *

Giselle wasn't hungry. The tray that sat before her feet was filled with the best Seelie cuisine, but it just looked like poison to her. She missed Selene like live-saving medicine, and she feared for Morgana even though she could feel him alive and well only a small distance away from her. Her loneliness made her hurt. Sometimes she needed solitude, but not like this. Never like this.

Her arms were lonely. She wrapped them around herself, but it would never come close to Selene's warmth. She missed her dearly, and it didn't help that the Lady was knocked unconscious last she saw her. It took a lot to knock Selene out, so naturally Giselle's mind wandered to terrible places, and all she could do was that her lover remained as tough as nails through all of this.

"You should be grateful," said the guard. His voice was scratchy like a bad wool sweater, it made her toes curl in aggravation. It wasn't raspy in a pretty way like Selene's, whose voice she'd give anything to hear. "The Queen doesn't have to feed you, but she's being nice."

"Titania is never just being nice," Giselle hummed. "She wants something in return, and she'll take it the moment I accept a single bite of that mess."

The guard crossed his arms. "I didn't know you to be so stubborn."

"I'm not stubborn," she said. "I'm also not an idiot. I'll put my foot down if it means not getting myself in danger when a fool could avoid such trouble. Now, do you have any more business here? Or can I ignore her offer in peace?"

He didn't look pleased, but he was wise enough to know she wouldn't change her mind, and he turned to leave, letting Giselle suffer on her own, longing for the touch of her love.

Unfortunately, the Lady didn't have it much easier. There was a sharp, screaming pain in her skull when she sat up, and even the dim lights of the dungeons were too much for her. Her clothes were caked in blood and grime, and her nose was peeling with a painful, unhealed sunburn that stretched across her cheeks with a hot agony.

"Giselle," she croaked out, but all that met her call was her own voice, echoing off of the damp walls and down the endless halls. The cell was illuminated by faint torchlight, but it didn't help much. She tried to make out whatever shapes she could in nearby cells in her attempt to find her friends, only to give up when she realized how little it did anything to help her situation.

"Giselle!" she cried out again, but there came no response. "Kit! Morgana! Eurion!"

She went down the list of companions several times, even after she knew they would never call back to her. It was driving her crazy to be locked in there alone, she didn't even know where she was. It was obvious it was a dungeon, but that was all she had. She paced circles into the floor until she felt an eternity had passed and she curled up on the ground once again to nurse her headache.

For all she knew, her friends were dead. Giselle was dead, her nephew and his son were suffering, her companions were facing the nasty side of fate, and she had no way to stop it. Selene was the best warrior in Avalon and she couldn't get around a simple prison cell. She felt like a failure.

No. She couldn't just give up like that, not yet. There was a thought in the back of her head, that somehow she'd know if Giselle was gone. And she didn't feel anything that would really tell her as much. She had to believe there was still hope.

The Lady pushed herself back up from the ground and felt around for something, anything that might give her a way out. Tucked within her extravagant ponytail Giselle insisted upon, Selene fished out a hairpin. If her previous battle with the Summer Princess was any indicator of where she was, she assumed it was Seelies, and she knew they were too smart to make it as easy as toying with a hairpin to free herself from the dungeon. But she had another plan.

She looped her arm around the bars, until she found her way to the lock. The pin clacked loudy against the metal, and she made sure to shake the bars at the same time. To her luck, her plan worked, and two guards rushed to the cell in a panic.

"You cannot escape from the Seelie Queen's dungeons," one bellowed. "Not that easily."

"Oh, I know," she murmured. With her arms still looped through the bars, she jammed the stick into the first guard's ear, then yanked the other into the bars, hard enough for his head to make a sickening crack as it made contact. After disorienting them enough, she held them both against the bars until the iron had them screaming on their knees, and she clutched the keys from their belts, fussing with the complicated locks until she was freed.

The guard who wasn't currently bleeding out from the ear looked up at her with crossed eyes, and she couldn't take his anger seriously. "You'll get your karma for this."

"My friend, you've done plenty to me already," Selene told him, ripping off his breastplate and kicking him into the cell. She took his friend's helmet and threw him in, too, but not before stealing his sword. The cell slammed shut and she locked it as best she could, fixing the two with a glare. "This is karma."

His eyes bored into her soul as she slid the helmet over her head, and her lips turned up into a smirk. The shield fell into place over her face and she turned to find her companions.

It felt too easy, though. If Titania truly wanted her dead, she'd have killed her the moment she had the chance. For some reason, she wanted Selene alive. As much as she loathed the thought of giving that bitch what she wanted, she had things to do, and being dead would be a bit of an inconvenience.

* * *

Kit knew he was in danger, that awful feeling was there at the base of his gut, that feeling of anticipation, the lump in his throat and the hair sticking up at the back of his neck. And still, all he could think about was cold fingers running up his back and exploring the skin of his torso, then dipping beneath his waistband and forcing a deep growl from his throat.

"This is a very bad time for that," Kit hissed.

"For what?"

Morgana's voice yanked him from his dreamlike state, but the moment his eyes opened, all he saw was the same dimly lit cell he woke up in hours ago. The Unseelie was nowhere to be seen, but he was in his head the entire time.

"Get out of my head, Morgana," he murmured, but he got no response this time. He knew the faery only had the ability to put things in his mind, not read his thoughts, but he really wished he could somehow tell him to knock it off. This was not the time nor the place to be messing with him, and Kit was still upset at him anyways. He wasn't in the mood.

That was when he noticed that it wasn't Morgana's voice that he heard, but Selene's, and suddenly he felt like throwing up. She was standing before his cell, dressed up like a guard and looking at him with a cheeky grin. "You good?"

"Shut up," he groaned, pushing himself up his feet. "Tell me something only Selene would know."

She rolled her eyes. "God, you're paranoid," she grumbled, but she didn't protest. "I used to babysit you when I was hardly old enough to take care of a kid on my own and I taught you how to throw knives. Your mom nearly killed me for that."

Something about that memory brought a warm smile to his face, and he made his way to the bars. "Fine, I'll take it. How did you get out?"

"Prison guards that aren't used to people living long enough to even be prisoners are weak links in security," she told him plainly. "I have no idea where anyone else is but I need to find Giselle before I freak out, so let's high tail it out of here, yeah? I'm not excited to face the Queen but I'm willing to take a few risks."

His lips split apart in a wide smile. "We'll save Morgana for last," he teased.

Selene pulled open the cell door and nudged his arm. "Now, I think we all know how you'd lose it if anything happened to him. Come on."

Kit wanted to argue, but he knew she was right. He left the cell and gave her a nod, and they began their search.