Fire.

Her back was on fire. Her arms were on fire. Her throat was so raw that with every breath she took it felt as if she was swallowing fire.

So how was it that she was also horribly, teeth-rattlingly, bone-achingly cold?

There was a reason, but she couldn't remember what it was. Her mind was as sluggish and numb as her body and no matter how she tried, she just couldn't get it to obey her. The true circumstances of her situation were there, on the edges of her consciousness – (her back was on fire because she'd been whipped; her arms were on fire because she was suspended by them; she was cold because it was night and her shirt – what little was left of it – was pasted to her body in bloody strips) – but her mind stubbornly skittered around the very outer periphery of this knowledge, flatly refusing to confront it straight on.

Then it was time to breathe again.

The scratching, scraping pain of inhaling the cold air made her head spin.

At least she was alone, though. At least, some time ago (she'd lost track of the passage of time in any meaningful sense, but she thought it had to have been an hour ago or more) the shouting, whistling, jeering crowd has dispersed. And rather quickly, too. There had been some sort of commotion and then they'd been running, all of them; as if something far more pressing had caught their collective interest.

So, there was that much to be thankful for. She was alone in her agony, at least.

And then she wasn't.

She smelled him as he sidled up to her, where she was suspended by her wrists from the iron ring that was embedded near the top of Edgar's weathered, blood-bathed whipping post. He smelled ten times more foul than Edgar himself; a feat she would not have previously thought possible. Then a thin but wiry arm was snaking around her, a hand clenching in her hair; jerking her head back and around until she and her new tormentor were practically nose-to-nose.

Jane's stomach twisted at the man's smell; rank sweat and rotten teeth and cheap liquor. She had to fight the urge to throw up.

"Well, here she is," he sneered, his face mere inches from her own. She thought she maybe recognized him as one of her erstwhile guards. "The little she-knight her very self. Did you know there is a dragon on the loose, she-knight?" Jane's breath caught as the man continued, "the same wretched beast that has been flying over us daily – finally decided to attack, it seems. Over on the other side of camp. Everyone has gone to try to fight the damned thing off, but I thought –" a slow, leering smile spread across his face – "I thought, why endanger myself fighting a dragon, when I can stay behind and get to know you a little better, eh? Maybe finish what the king started, even. He need not ever know. This can stay strictly between us, what do you say? Not going to knee me, are you, little girl? Got some sense whipped into you, hm?"

Jane yanked her head free; turned her face away from him, feeling sick on every level of her being. She couldn't stop him, not hurt and weak and restrained as she was. Couldn't even knee him with enough force to do anything other than royally piss him off. She'd never felt so utterly helpless in her life.

The man chuckled wetly, seeming to sense Jane's hopelessness; her resignation. He let go of her hair, but only so that he could have freer access to her body. As one hand slid down her side to rest with casual possessiveness on her hip, he dragged the fingers of his other hand slowly down her throat, over her collarbone, and then lower; his face nuzzling against her neck, burrowing into her, beginning to suck, to bite as his breathing quickened, quickened – and then, abruptly, caught.

His whole body jerked stiff against her for a second, and then with a low, wet groan he fell away from her, collapsing to the ground to lie twitching and gurgling with an arrow through his throat.

Jane stared down in disbelieving shock.

Somewhere nearby now, she made out the rhythmic pounding of footsteps approaching at a run. She thought she recognized the sound of them, just as she thought she recognized the shaft of the arrow that had killed her assailant.

But things were sliding out of focus now. The world seemed suddenly to be tilting alarmingly to one side, her body wracked by great, heaving shudders that had begun when the soldier's hands, his filthy rotted mouth, made contact with her skin, and then it seemed to Jane that she was falling, even though she knew that she was not.

OOOOO

"Jane, let go."

She struggled back toward awareness to the sound of a voice that she knew; a voice she'd never thought she would hear again.

It is a trick. It is not him. How could it be?

She shook her head. She couldn't let go. She'd fall if she did. It wasn't really Gunther and she'd fall if she did.

The voice was persistent though.

"Jane? Jane. You have to let go. Jane, you are safe. I have you. Let go."

"Leave… leave me… alo… hone," she managed between painful breaths and chattering teeth. Gunther could not be here; it simply wasn't possible, and she was not going to give in to hallucinations. She wasn't sure exactly when she had managed to actually grab hold of the iron ring to which she'd been secured, but holding onto it had helped her endure the lashing she'd taken, and she was not going to be tricked into letting go of it now. Solid and hard and freezing cold, it seemed like the only thing that was anchoring her to reality anymore. "Go… fall on… a sword."

"JANE!" Well, the exasperation in the voice seemed real enough. "We do not have time for this! Will you let the damn thing go!"

Somehow it was the very frustration and impatience in the voice that convinced her to trust it. She still didn't understand how Gunther could actually be here. But it honestly did sound like him. And if she were going to imagine herself a Gunther, after all, she rather thought she would imagine a kinder one.

So maybe that meant… could it really be?

With concentrated effort, she pried her frozen fingers off the metal of the ring.

He must have already undone the bindings, because she started to slip toward the ground.

And then he had her, just as he had promised. He didn't let her fall.

OOOOO

"Jane." The arms that were wrapped around her were solid, strong and warm. They felt like salvation. Even so, she registered dimly that he seemed to be shaking, almost as hard as she was herself.

"Jane?" She was being lowered then. A second later they were both on their knees, and he was turning her in his arms, turning her to face him. She blinked hard, even as she was struggling to keep herself upright; to keep from simply collapsing against him altogether. His face was swimming before her eyes, his expression appearing to be equal parts fury and fear.

"Gun… Gunther?" she whispered incredulously, still unable to quite credit her senses.

His grey eyes narrowed. It appeared that fury was winning out. His thumb skated over her lips, which were swollen and cracked; split from where Edgar had hit her… then followed the shape of the bruise that was spreading up her cheek. He hissed a breath in through his teeth when he caught sight of the cut on her neck where the guard's dagger had bitten into her. His mouth wrenched violently downward.

"They held a knife to you," he said flatly. She nodded slowly, feeling drugged and stupid with the cold and pain; drinking him in all the while with her eyes, hardly daring to believe that he was real. That he was here.

How could he have found her? How?

Gunther wasn't about to leave her alone with her thoughts, though. "What else did they do?" he demanded harshly. Another shudder ripped through her. She didn't want to think about what had been done, what had almost been done, what had been intended to be done. She didn't want to think about any of it. She wanted to go home. And sleep. And heal.

And then she wanted another chance to face off against Edgar, on a more even playing field this time. With her arms free of restraint, and her sword in her hand.

She wanted all of that, but what she did not want, at this precise moment in time, was to enter into a discussion with Gunther about everything she'd just been through. She didn't think she could so much as open her mouth without vomiting.

But he wasn't giving up.

"Jane, damn it, I need to know." He caught her under the chin, gently but implacably, turning her face up to his just as he had in the castle garden after her audience with the king. How long ago had that been? She was vaguely, weakly astonished to think that less than a day had passed since then. It felt like it had been a lifetime ago.

"Tell me. Jane, did – Edgar, did he –" he seemed to be having trouble forming his own words, and there was a feverish light in his grey eyes. Jane was having a hard time holding onto her thoughts, but it occurred to her to wonder whether he might not have been hurt somehow as well. That thought hurt her on a new, deep level. But before she could give voice to it, he finally choked out, "Did he force himself on you?"

Oh, God. So that was what he was asking. She finally understood, and the memory of that kiss – that horrible, rough, wet, humiliating, dirty kiss – exploded across her consciousness, overwhelming in its intensity.

It was meant for you. Oh Gunther, I am so sorry, I wanted to give it to YOU!

Then there was murder in his eyes, and she knew he had read her thoughts in the expression on her face. She opened her mouth to say – she knew not what, really – and then the nausea overwhelmed her, as she had feared that it might. She had just time to wrench herself away from him, to turn to the side before it swept her away completely and she was retching, retching, retching into the mud.

Her body heaved until she had nothing left to bring up, and still she couldn't seem to stop herself, doubling over as dry-heaves continued to wrack her, the whole slim length of her shaking with cold and hurt and exhaustion and shock, just barely aware of Gunther holding her up; one arm bracing her, keeping her from collapsing into her own sick as his other hand gathered her hair back, holding it out of her face and all the while he was saying her name, just her name, over and over again, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane.

When she was finally spent he pulled her against his chest, wrapping something soft and warm around her as he did so; she couldn't tell what it was because her eyes had fallen shut and she couldn't seem to summon the energy to open them again, but whatever it was, it smelled of him.

She was being lifted and carried then, carried like a child, and the last thing she remembered with any clarity was the sound of his voice speaking quietly in her ear.

"Jane, if you can hear me, then know this; he is mine. I swear to you, I swear to God, Jane, that bastard is mine."

It was, without question, the single most dangerous-sounding voice she'd ever heard.