[Author's Note: I don't really expect anyone to read this. But if, somehow, enough people do read it and, more importantly, find that they like it, I'd consider expanding on it. Well, let's just start with this. I hope you enjoy. And remember that I don't own Prince of Thorns.]

You talk all these words, every day, and never once stop to think where they come from. Like "revenge." Pretty one, that. I always liked the short words the best. Sweet and to the point. It's old, I'd guess. Sounds like Builder speak to me. Off the coasts of Normardy, maybe, or from the mother tongue of ancient Roma.

He stopped moving, and I came back to myself. Was it over? Was he finished with me? My eyes met his. He grinned.

"Still alive, then?" he asked. "Good. Thought you'd gone off and died on me. Couldn't have that, could we?" His grin deepened. "I want to hear you scream first."

And he began to move again.

The thing about these words is that you can never tell how old they really are. If you went back, back to the time of the Builders, could you still talk with them like natural? Would they know what you meant if you went from person to person, saying, "Have you seen this boy? Have you seen this boy? This young, pretty boy with this girlish face and this white smile?" Would they ask me why I was looking for him? And would they understand it when I answered, "Revenge"?

He stopped moving again, and I could tell from the warm feeling pooling inside me that he was done for true now.

I said nothing, did nothing, as he got off me and began fastening his trousers. This boy.

When he was through and dressed full, he looked down at me and shook his head.

"Has she died again, Makin?" he said, turning to the man behind him in line.

"She's just a quiet one, Jorg."

Jorg. Jorg. Jorg.

I had a name.

"True. Better than her sister," the boy, Jorg, said, jerking his chin at something on the ground beside me. My head moved slow to see what it was. I didn't feel curious. I didn't feel anything.

Mary lay beside me. Her dress was torn off. She was bruised and battered. Tears streaked her face. We must have looked similar. But there was a man sitting atop Mary, and I was free. For now.

"I like a girl who keeps quiet," the man Jorg had called Makin said.

Jorg laughed. "You like a girl who squeals, too," he said. "Hell, you'd like any girl."

"I've liked a lot of girls."

They smiled at each other.

"Ready to like one more?" Jorg gestured towards me.

"You always did know me best."

Revenge was the word on my silent lips, but Mary was screaming a different word, a useless one.

"Please!" she cried. And cried. And cried. "Please!"

And it was this, of all things, that made my cold blood begin to boil. I wanted to slap her. Didn't she see that they were enjoying this? That they enjoyed hearing her plead with them? Didn't she realize that she was giving them what they wanted?

Once the feelings began, I couldn't stop them. The pain came rushing in. The anger. The grief. The fear.

So, when it was Makin's turn to lower himself over me, my pride broke, and I couldn't stop the sobs.

He looked back at me then, did Jorg. I forced myself to ignore my cryings and meet his gaze.

"I killed your father, you know," he said. "Old Bovid Tor. Slit him open. He was fat, like your sister here. But don't grieve for him. Because he died easy. Grieve for yourself. Because you won't."

"Neither will you." I used the last little bit of my strength to spit that right at him.

He chuckled and turned away.

When all of him and his bandit brothers were done with Mary and me, Jorg came back and dragged us both off to the inn. It was the biggest thing in Mabberton, that inn. Mary and I used to play there with Ann and Tom and our other friends. I would pretend to make shapes in the fire, and they would watch and shriek and giggle. I had another friend then, one who lived in the fire, an imaginary one. But I was about to meet the fire for real, and would find that it was not so friendly as all that.

Yes, they brought us to the inn. That's where they put the survivors. The women, the children, the old, and the sick. The ones who hadn't fought back. There weren't many. Half of Mabberton was dead already, as I guessed it. We were the survivors.

But not for long we weren't.

When we were all in, Jorg closed the door, barred it.

I knew what was coming. I couldn't do anything to stop it. Jorg was gone, and I hadn't done anything to hurt him.

But, as the old Builder saying goes, revenge is best served cold. And it was about to get very hot.

I smelled the smoke before I saw it and closed my eyes then, as the screams started up again.

I held my breath. They say to breathe in quick if you're burning, so the smoke'll kill you afore the fire does. I didn't want either. Death was something that happened to other people. I wouldn't die here.

I wouldn't die here!

In seconds, I was clawing at the door with the rest of them.

It didn't help.

They were right, though. Most of my friends did die before the fire got to them. Or at least, they slept. I watched Mary just fall over backward and pounded at the wood all the harder for it.

I rationed my breathing. A little gulp of air here and there. So I lived till the fire hit us. The screaming got louder then, even though there were less people.

I backed into the farthest corner of the inn, and knelt on the floor, holding my head in my hands and rocking back and forth.

But nothing could stop the fire from touching my skin.

I gasped. It felt warm. Like sunlight.

All around me was the fire. I saw nothing else.

And then a face appeared. At first, I couldn't tell it different from the flames. I only saw when he opened his mouth. His eyes! His eyes were stars!

"You are mine." His voice was the cracking of sparks in a bonfire. "Fire-written girl."

And I knew him.

"Ferrakind," I said. My imaginary friend, the friend who lived in the fire.

"You are mine."

I felt a pulling on me. I wanted to walk towards him, take his hand, and follow him into the flames.

But something stopped me.

"No," I said. "No. I'm going to kill him. I can't die here."

Ferrakind laughed at that. "There is only one fire, girl," he said. "You used to know."

I shook my head.

"You will come, whether you wish it or not," he said. "Your path will lead you here. There is only one world to burn."

I sank to my knees again and hugged them to my chest. Jorg. I repeated the name to myself over and over again as my friends and family died around me. And when the fire burnt itself out, I looked past the ruins of the inn to the road he had ridden down. Jorg. I would find him.

And I would burn him.