Her giggles subside. She lowers her hands and then wipes tears from her face with the end of a sleeve.

He takes a deep breath. The uncertainty fades.

"Would you take off your clothes, please?" says Tarro.

She hugs herself and shakes her head.

"All right."

He steps up to her and begins taking off her dress.

She doesn't fight, but doesn't help either. She is tense, shivery, curled inward like a dying leaf.

Maran grabs her face and drags her head up, staring into her eyes.

"Look at me."

She closes her eyes.

He snarls under his breath and does it the messy way, bursting her eyes with magic one after the other. Blood leaks out from under the closed lids.

She flinches at the pain, making a small whimpering noise in the back of her throat, but doesn't try to get away.

He drags her over to the padded box with its chains and shoves her down onto it, holding her facedown with her legs apart.

Tarro chains her there.

He glances over at Serik. "Staying to watch?" he inquires.

"Planning to. And Luar says she doesn't mind if I join in, if that's all right with you."

He hesitates.

"And it won't—make things worse—?"

"I trust Luar's ability to agree to things. If she says it's all right, I'll go by that."

Tarro thinks this over, looking down at the trembling girl with tears of blood running down her pale cheeks.

"...All right."

"Welcome to the party, then," says Maran. He starts taking off his clothes.

Tarro goes to the cabinets, looking to Maran for a nod before he settles on one, then again when he picks out a knife.

It's kind of amazing watching those two at work.

He takes the knife Tarro hands him and slashes down Luar's back, cutting deep enough that everyone in the room can hear the sound of metal scraping over bone. There is a terrible intensity in his eyes.

She shudders. A quiet sob escapes her, and then another. Blood pours from the cut, spilling down her side and over the padded box.

He does it again, and again, cutting her open so savagely that in places her flesh hangs in strips from her knife-scored bones.