The first rays of the sun gleamed through the broken glass of the great clock above, Ezra reflected the white-orange light to a point Wretch couldn’t see. He continued until the clocks chimed eight. Then Wretch called back the blade, filling it with the last of his flame and dropping it into the murky water below. Slicing his own palm open to let the blood cloud the surface, just to be safe.

  Wretch leaned back in the cage, inspecting his hands. Both were dark, monstrous claws, and he moved the fingers as if playing piano. The nerves of his upper body ached and burned from the continuous use of his blessings, but slowly he was becoming inoculated to the physical torment.

  Despite the tiredness smothering him like a damp cloth, he forced himself to stay awake. The professor would come. When he did, Wretch had to be sharp enough to take control of the discussion and steer it away from suspicion.

  As the footsteps approached, he was ready.

  The door groaned open.

  “How do you know Grendel?” Wretch asked the professor as he and his entourage were halfway through the door-frame.

  The man’s expression brightened, “Oh, little Grendel? I know him well.”

  He slipped leather gloves over his unscarred hands, “But I must say I am infatuated with your curiosity. Despite your hardships, you always ask for more. You remind me of myself.”

  “I’ll trade you,” Wretch said with an even voice. “The information for both my arms.”

  The professor’s smile turned to a frown.

  “Alas, you miss the point again, Wretch. It is not in your right to refuse, when I humor that curiosity, I do it out of the goodness in my heart, see it as such.”

  Wretch thought quickly, deciding to play along. Keeping the visit short was in his best interest, and he didn’t want to anger the man. Even if Wretch had only seen its surface, he was sure the man was capable of cruelty and depravity unlike anything he could imagine, he knew it from just the way he looked at them.

  “I see, I get it. Take what you must and answer if you will,” Wretch said with a sigh.

  The professor’s frown changed back to the unsettling smile, more inhuman than the masks of his assistants.

  “A quick learner, and a good gauge of your situation, I would hate to see it go unrewarded. Very well.”

  “Grendel was a pupil of mine and he is also my dear son. He is quite a handful, hard to control, just as a child ought to be,” the professor said, his gaze drifting upwards.

  “I put a creation in a cage, then threw him in with it. That's how he became Blessed.”

  Jonah peeked up, watching the professor intently as he continued.

  “I myself became Blessed by capturing the neighborhood cats and sewing them together,” the professor said in a reminiscent tone.

  “Can you imagine they discharged me for that? The cruelty!” he chuckled. “Nowadays little Grendel runs around disrupting the Saint anyway he can, they go way back you see.”

  The professor was walking around the cages, fidgeting with his saw, but froze mid-step.

  “But here I go rambling again, my apologies. I am sure you want to get to the meat of the issue!”

  “And by that, I mean both your arms and eyes,” The professor said with a friendly smile.

  Wretch’s blood turned cold but he steeled his will.

  The assistants seized him. Metal tore through bone. He screamed, his voice echoing in the tower.

  That was only the beginning, then came a sharpened spoon-like instrument to gouge out his eyes. He wracked in his cage, his scream turned into a howl. They refilled his flame, and after making sure he stopped the bleeding. They left him broken and torn on the hard metal bars.

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  Silence replaced his screams, his entire body trembling and his teeth rattled.

  The Richter’s will come. Then you will be the one to beg, he thought, calming himself by imagining a thousand painful deaths in the blinding darkness.

  He grew his eyes back first, his flesh squirming in his sockets, knitting itself into bubbles before his sight returned. Then the arms.

  When nightfall came and Boris snored, he returned the Blinking blade to his hand from the reeking and murky basin below, thanking the Saint that it burned into existence clean. Victoria revealed the rope from her hair and swung the blade back up to Ezra, they whispered among themselves, speaking of unlikely futures while Jonah spun tall tales of his rowdy brothers, they even gave hushed laughs crammed into their cages.

  Strange, Wretch thought as sleep finally took him.

  They can laugh because of hope, perhaps the thought that someone could kick in the door, tear it all down and save them was enough.

  At seven he woke up, regrowing his left arm to its full size. Half an hour later, he recalled the blade and dropped it in the murky bucket. The days fell into a rhythm. Every morning, Ezra would reflect the light through the gap in the broken glass. The professor arrived, mutilation as the others watched. Flame. Regrowth.

  Each day, the same cycle.

  Each day, the pain dulled.

  Any day now, Wretch thought. Elenya will shatter the door, Edmund will rush in, shield raised high. Astrid behind, ready to heal.

  But the door never opened.

  He clung to that thought anyway, not believing for a moment that a single masked figure could take down Elenya and Edmund even without the backup from Astrid.

  So he waited.

  Days became weeks. Every morning his body was broken like the shattered glass of the clock above, every evening he repaired it. The clock ticked on despite the cracks, and so did he.

  One morning, he had to admit to himself that he’d lost count of the days.

  The others grew quiet, the whispers of the night replaced by silence.

  Victoria spoke less of her sister, Cynthia stopped mentioning her dream of a tailor’s store. Ezra grew mute once more, dull eyes reflected in the light of the crack.

  Everyone except Jonah. Telling tales as if they were in a pub of the Lows. By now, he knew every intricacy of Wretch’s blessings, he’d shared every Blessed secret. Jonah had a plan already, to explore the underbelly of the city until he too became Blessed, then race him to the rank of Fireling. He could do it, Wretch knew, how could the Old Flame not reward such lust for power, such unrelenting hope.

  Wretch tried to not let the saw rob him of his own hope, he had to. But the serrated edge took a sliver with it each time, still, he forced himself to believe in the Richters.

  They are alive, they will come. They were the first good thing to ever happen to me and it will happen again.

  He had to believe it, because the thought that he had squandered that gift. Thrown away his only true blessing. That thought would crush him.

  The others kept him sane. Encouraged him to endure the coming torture as the morning light streaked through the painted glass. When they escaped, he would make it up to them. That much he promised.

  But their power wasn’t endless. Slowly, but steadily he began to sink, down into a dark place weaved of pain and his own failures.

  One morning, the professor ordered a change, “give me eyes that can see in the dark.”

  He realized then that he didn’t mind, what little rage he had left was buried somewhere deep within. The only thing left in him, a tiny piece of broken smoldering hope, cradled deep inside him. He let the flame remake him in the image of the ratling, donning it's black pupil-less eyes.

  His sight vanished, then returned in shades of gray, sharp and colorless. He wondered what taunting nickname Elenya would have said if she saw him now.

  Days later, the professor asked for sharp teeth and to strengthen the tendons and muscles. He obliged. His old teeth popping out of their sockets, replaced by two jagged rows.

  The professor clapped his hands, then sawed off his lower jaw while humming a tune. He was sure the man tried to break him.

  But Wretch didn’t give. He still had that smoldering shard of hope.

  They will come.