//CLARA//
The cold had sunk into my bones so thoroughly I couldn't feel my own skin. The small fire crackled somewhere to my left, blurry at the edges. The warmth didn't reach me. Nothing reached me.
"Clara." Gary crouched beside me, his hand on my shoulder. "What is it? You're scaring me."
I couldn't speak. I couldn't even feel the draft cutting through the broken windowpane behind me, though it whistled its low, miserable tune right into the small tenement room.
I was aware, distantly, that my body should be shivering. That the blood still wet and tacky on my collar from the guard's knife and should be stinging like hell. But my body had gone completely numb.
"Miss Eleanor? You're soaked through."
Hattie's voice cut through the fog settling over my brain. She's back and had gathered wood from somewhere and piled it high. The flames leaped higher now, casting jagged shadows across the grey wall.
