Ariane Emory had never been a quiet sleeper, but even for her, this is excessive: she does not so much rouse herself as flail her way into consciousness, up onto her feet and colliding with a rough wall before her eye has fully blinked away the blurriness of sleep.
I will make a deal with you.
Thadius Dhrin. She'd made her deal with the devil a second time, had witnessed his unveiling...a second time. And once again there'd been the commotion to follow, the tangle of white robes and stamping horses, and --
That flood of memory is pushed aside as irrelevant. She lives, with but an aching skull to account for it: a quick examination of her skin shows no real wounds but that. A good thing, for her first fear had been poison; they'd used that on the Governor, after all. Her second thought is for the schiavona, which a scrambling search discovers lying on the stone floor several feet away; the slim-bladed dagger lays beside it. Both are strapped back into their places upon her body, as she examines her new surroundings: a den of cold stone, as empty as any room she's ever known. There's not so much as a blanket, which accounts for her shivering, and the whole of it is lit poorly by a single oil lamp.
Several minutes of tugging assure her that it's attached quite firmly to the wall; too firmly to, say, fling it at the first face that showed itself at her door. Several moments more show that the door itself is impassable, its tiny, barred window revealing little to her brief inspection.
We're watching...
This is how the first hour passes: an inspection of her imprisonment, almost clinical in its detachment -- but isn't that necessary? Oh, she could succumb to hysterical fear, and be butchered meat for the first madman who stepped into this room. She could give herself over to despair, and slit her throat with the weapons they've so kindly left for her. No: better by far to seat herself upon the cold stone floor, and let the rush of silver in her blood -- that subtle, churning body within her own -- be a reassurance. Better to stretch her legs out before her, and lay the slim sword across her lap, since they've left it with her.
That was a generous mercy. They'll have cause to regret it.