"That sounds like an excellent way to avoid getting vengefully incinerated!"

...She giggles. "Just don't piss off Anlei."

"Oh? And who's Anlei?"

"She's another pain mage. My boyfriend tried to kidnap her so she set him on fire, twice."

Snort.

"And then they made up and she introduced him to her girlfriend who is, like, wayyyyy more extreme a masochist than I am."

"...really," he says, intrigued.

"Yyyyep. As in, if he can figure out how to inflict enough pain without killing her, my boyfriend could run the whole castle off her without bothering her."

"The castle takes maintenance?"

"Yeah, if he doesn't keep feeding it it'll blow up, taking a decent chunk of Nathureme with it. Pain magic's pretty volatile."

"Huh."

"It's also tricky to control, the first few times I tried doing anything with it it blew up in my face. Fire is basically what pain magic does if you don't tell it to do something else instead."

He laughs softly. "Sounds like my kind of magic."

"Well, it would, considering."

He finds that he is petting her hair. This seems like a good thing to be doing. He continues.

It is a good thing to be doing. She approves. ...She considers something. She asks: "Can I kiss you?"

...he blinks, then smiles. "All right."

She brings one hand up to his cheek and then leans in and kisses him.

This is not an activity he has a huge amount of experience with, but he enjoys it anyway.

His lack of experience isn't deterring her from enjoying it either. She makes a sort of pleased sighing noise.

That is a good noise. He wants more of that noise.

Mm, he can have it, then.

Good! He likes getting things that he wants!

And Siva likes giving people she likes things that they want! What a convenient arrangement this is.

Mmhmmmm.

After a little more kissing, he waves a hand and casually incinerates Nahira's body. Her soul rolls under the bed.