He drags his fingernails across her stomach, drawing blood.

"Ohhh," she breathes, and--shudders.

"I should kill you," he murmurs, almost as though talking to himself.

"...What?"

"Shut up." He wraps his hand around her neck again and squeezes, not quite cutting off her air. His voice sounds - distant, thoughtful, not at all the tone you would normally associate with those words and that action. "Why shouldn't I kill you? You're no use to me, and you're..." he trails off without naming the problem.

She focuses on breathing, shallowly. She does not set him on fire, but she does use the pain she's in to carefully, discreetly, fracture her bones in as many locations as she can without compromising the structural integrity of anything that needs it.

But after a few seconds, he loosens his grip and covers her in red flames again.

There is some shrieking, this time, but unless he's remarkably unobservant he won't think this means he's succeeded at making her suffer.

He lets the flames die down. He runs his fingertip along one of the bleeding scratches on her stomach.

More noises, and arching up into the touch.

"Do you not understand what's happening to you, or do you just not care?"

She is not, actually, coherent enough to answer that question.

He puts his hand on her thigh and squeezes. Bruises bloom under his fingers; pain sparks like lightning in her flame-touched nerves. This probably doesn't help her coherence any.

It really doesn't!

Yeah.

He can have her if he wants her. Logically, the fact that she wants him is - irrelevant, and if not irrelevant, not a reason not to take her - but he doesn't trust that logic. There's something about her that's compelling in a way that feels wrong.

But it's very compelling, whatever it is.

He trails his fingertips along her ribs. There's something oddly satisfying about the way she responds to pain. It's - seductive. The effect of the fire fades away, until he's just caressing her, no hidden torture involved.

As the pain fades, she collects her thoughts. As pleasure ceases to edge out every other emotion, others make appearances in her expression.

An almost-tender contentment, first, before she looks at him and seems to remember where she is; nostalgia and nervousness war for a few moments after that, before her face settles into a somewhat wary inquisitiveness.

(Not displayed on her face: her soul--nudges her. She heals her fractured bones, letting the last of the pain she could use drain out of her. She really hopes her soul knows what it's doing.

Her soul informs her that she is not allowed to use pain magic anyway until further notice. She really hopes it knows what it's doing.)

Seofar is looking at her with a hard-to-read expression. Not one she's ever seen on Serik.

No. No it's not. She kind of wants to know what's behind it, but asking would--not go well.

The caressing's nice. She doesn't say so, that would be a bad idea.

The strange expression turns... pensive, maybe.

"Why aren't you afraid?"

"...I'm not...not afraid. But it's not like I can do anything, about any of this, so--being afraid doesn't do me much good."

...he makes an amused noise.

"The world would look very different if people were only afraid when it did them any good."

"I'm aware I'm unusual," she shrugs.

He smiles slightly and runs his hand along her leg; red flames trail in its wake.

She gasps in pleased startlement.

"You are unusual," he says.

It feels wrong, but - he wants to know, and he can have anything he wants -

"Would you want to be here, if you had a choice?"