She heals.

She glares at him.

He wants to say something clever but he's too angry to think straight. So he just grabs her by the throat again, pins her against a floor of air as hard as stone, and chokes her until she stops struggling.

And this time, when she does, she's not playing him.

Yeah, that's more like it.

He lets her breathe. He wants her conscious. He wants her to suffer.

She doesn't try anything this time.

Good.

He holds her down and does to her what she did to herself, a candle's worth of heat right where it hurts most. But unlike her, he keeps it there, keeps it until he can smell burning meat, keeps it until the power of her pain is less because the part of her she was feeling it with has burned away. Then he lets her heal, and he does it again.

She starts struggling again, not that this helps at all.

It really doesn't.

She does not want to be here, does not want to be feeling these things -

- but she's still kind of into him, under all the pain and fear and anger...

Well that's... interesting.

It helps him calm down, after a while. Makes it feel less about vengeance and more about pleasure. And she is very pleasing.

Eventually, he lets go of her and stops applying fire to interesting places and lets her catch her breath.

"You done playing around?"

"Who, me? Not likely," she says.

But then she laughs and sits up, looking down at the smoldering remains of her adorable little cottage. "All right, all right, we're even. For now. I handle pain better than you do and I'm real patient when I have to be, so fuck with me again and I'll keep making you regret it."

...he starts giggling.

"What?"

"You threatened me! Do you know how long it's been since someone threatened me?"

"Probably not as long as it's been since someone threatened you who could back it up!"

Giggle.

"I think I like you."

"You have a funny way of showing it!"

"I don't know, you seemed to be enjoying yourself."

"Oh, is that something you're into? You should see what I'm like when I'm not being raped."

"Well, if you're offering..." He reaches for her.

She gives him a playful shove. "Take me somewhere more comfortable and we'll see."

"All right."

He brings her on the wind back to his castle. They materialize in his bedroom, on his enormous soft bed.

"Comfortable enough for you?"

"Nice place you've got here!" she says, snuggling into the enormous soft blankets. "You make it yourself?"

"I did, yes."

He regrets making her a swan already. Oh well. What's done is done. Maybe he can finally figure out how to fix the swan spell.

"I'd ask if you were going to let me go home, but I did kind of just burn my own house down," she says. "You should kidnap my girlfriend, though."