It takes a few tries, but when she does finally manage to pry her eyes open, the cold makes them water. The air is more than cold, it's freezing, and it stings the sweat that's making her face sticky, her scalp itch with grime. She feels like she literally doesn't have the energy to move her arms, to get her feet under her, to do more than roll her head side to side on the pillow and crack open her eyes. It isn't restraint it's weighted lethargy. She wants to get out of bed, go to the washroom, stare blearily at her reflection and try to figure out where she was last night. She feels like the crap left at the bottom of a pan when you lift the bacon. She feels like seven kinds of garbage, her mouth tastes of stale fuzz, her joints feel swollen and achy, her skin hot. She always has crazy nightmares when she goes to bed drunk. Lydia wakes wondering what kind of crazy dreams she's been having, what she'd eaten to cause them, and if she'd gone to bed drunk. That is the first and last time she ever hears the Queen's voice. And even if she were, she has no idea what to say in response. Lydia pries her dry lips apart and tries to un-stick her tongue from the tacky roof of her mouth in answer. well, many and mysterious are the ways of the King.' The woman scoffs again. Her whole self feels uncomfortable, and itchy, and clammy. But the fever that Lydia can feel crawling over her flesh has warmed the cloth. Perhaps once it had been cool, and that is what had woken her: the short, sharp shock of cold water on skin. The woman (for she sounds like a woman voice age-worn and woven with threadbare compassion) mops at Lydia's brow with a tepid cloth. The bed, even the smell of the air is wrong.

She tries to remember where she is, how she got here, but all that will come is her name, and the vague sense that this is not her home. All remains wrapped in nauseating darkness. There is a huffing scoff of disbelief somewhere off to the left of her, and Lydia turns her head to follow the sound, but finds her eyes won't open. 'I believe it is to teach care for lesser creatures.

'They have given you over to my child,' are the first words Lydia can parse out of the throbbing ache between her ears, the dull thud behind her eyes.

Lips Like Ice by Peggy Barnett