She thought she’d known pain then, as though it were the most she could feel.

She’d been wrong.

Anji lay in the cathedral’s nave, wind howling through the cracked wall at her back. She curled in on herself, nursing the cauterized wound, the skin shriveled and warped and blackened. The burn stank of roasting meat. The pain came in endless, sickly waves. She’d cried out what felt like all the moisture in her body, and when she couldn’t cry anymore she moaned and writhed on the cold stone.

At first she’d drifted in and out, the fire and its light dimming, the shapes on the ceiling sliding out of focus above, then the brief release of oblivion before the agony returned.

The Bear and the Ox held a hushed conversation until eventually the cathedral doors crashed open and the Goat’s voice joined in. He’d issued a barking laugh when his steps came close to where Anji lay, then he left her alone.

The idea of escape had fled her mind entirely. She knew now the depth of her use, of her ability. She needed the Menagerie for the food and water they’d give her, if she could even bring herself to eat. Could she let herself die of starvation? Was she close already?

These thoughts tumbled through her, the pain a constant companion to the whirring blur of emotions and grief for her lost fingers, the fingers she’d taken for granted up until now. She lay on her back, felt something pinch her skin as she rolled to her side. Carefully, she untucked her shirt, took out the sliver of rock she’d found, and slipped it into her boot. She whimpered, embarrassed at her plan to somehow use a bit of broken stone to escape, at how foolish it all felt now, how small she really was. Then she drifted out of consciousness again, the black swirling to cover the heart-rending agony where her hand had been whole.

She woke to pain, of course. It wouldn’t ever leave. It was hers now. She owned this pain more than she owned anything else in this world. Fresh tears blurred her vision, and she moved her arm to wipe them away, but stopped short as the bloodied, scarred lump of flesh came up to her cheek. She loosed another silent sob and rolled to her good side, searching for the dark.