"Shall we begin the questions?" Leier asked, her voice emotionless as she stared at the crumpled figure slumped against the tree.
The man, if he could still be called that, was a ruin. One eye was swollen completely shut; the other was half-lidded, blurred with blood. His mouth was a ragged mess of shattered teeth and torn lips, gums slick with blood. All of his fingers had been snapped into unnatural angles, twisted like broken branches of a tree.
Between shallow, pained breaths, he managed to wheeze something, a moan, perhaps, or the start of a word. He tried to focus on the silhouette before him. In the thin moonlight, he could make out only glimpses of Leier's form, but the cold gleam of her single blue eye shone through the shadows like a wolf's. He hated her. He feared her. If he had any strength left, he would have cursed her. But the agony gnawing at him had stolen his voice.
She hadn't asked a single thing when they'd captured him.
No demands. No threats.
