It was incorrect of
her. That was a fact, a concrete statement, an absolute. She was
expected to perform on a level that held no regard for this variety
of petty, trivial emotion; her duties had ingrained that line of
thought into her psyche, reminding her constantly that her will could
never afford to falter. It had become immensely clear to her, in
time, that selecting him was a grave error in judgment, but
unfortunately there could be no reversing such a foolhardy decision.
She chose him in a

The
crisp, dry autumn air whipped the girl's hair behind her, the faint
musty scent of dead leaves mingling within the curl and sigh of the
breeze. Shards of sunlight peeked, demure and passionless, from
behind a thin veil of grey clouds, their luminescence obscured such
that they were rendered cold and pale, stripped of the heat and
warmth that ordinarily became them. She raised an arm to shield her
face from the wind's teeth, shifting her posture lower in the rickety
wagon she lay perched in;

This is what you
get, you know. For failing.
What
exactly was it that she had failed? Those were more or less the words
she had sputtered forth, each syllable infused with a sharp little
thread of terror that made her tone crack at the edges. Cold iron
clattered musically around her wrists, metal on metal, singing in
mockery of her plight-- and he just laughed, raucous and maleficent,
every trace of what once might have been human sympathy drained out
of his voice like a wet dishcloth wrung dry.