"Yeah. Uh, so then Tezru Zierni Diakor united the world, by which I mean conquered it, which improved the situation tremendously, and now we have a world-spanning empire, and then when he died his heir turned out to be paranoid and horrible and tried to have all his remaining living relatives assassinated, including my grandmother, so my grandfather and his friend who happened to be a distant Zierni cousin got together and had themselves a nice coup and now the emperor of the world is Dekha-fanshel Zierni Esarkan, and it's going to stay that way, because Esarkan's soul is self-resurrecting, if you kill him he gets up half a minute later and makes a sarcastic comment."

He gestures with the dead soul still in his hand.

"Esarkan's son, Tekhesin Zierni Seofar, did not like that at all. Tekhesin Seofar thought he should get to rule something and not just be a prince for the rest of his life. So he came down here to one of the southern island provinces and just barely didn't declare himself king of it and dared his father to take it back, while making it very clear that if anybody came after him he'd absolutely make a Soul War of it because he was exactly that kind of idiot."

She nods, gravely.

"So that's been going on for a while now, and for some reason last month when I turned seventeen Esarkan decided to send me down here to marry Seofar's daughter. I have no idea what he was thinking, I wasn't even a soulbearer at the time and it's dangerous to try to manifest your soul if you're under twenty, but, uh," he glances down at his shining golden soul, "clearly he had the right idea, because I got here and noticed how utterly fucked up everything was and the morning of the wedding I and my newly manifested soul went to Kelora and asked if rather than get married she'd prefer to run away and organize a rebellion against her father, and she said that sounded like a great idea, and we did, and we won."

"... The marriage itself being a political move to attempt to placate Seofar? Or an excuse to get you near him?"

'Running away to organize a rebellion instead of getting married' is not quite the same thing as 'let's never get married,' but she - doesn't quite feel she has the right to ask for clarification.

"Both of those, I think. Except I can't figure out how he knew - like, maybe he guessed I'd probably manifest my soul, but I'm - probably the most powerful soulbearer in the world and it seems insane for him to have sent me here expecting that to happen, I didn't expect that to happen until I was actually holding my soul in my hand. —speaking of which, never touch a living soul, having one's soul touched is the most horrible thing it's possible to experience. Holding a dead one is fine because they're not around to feel it. You can always tell the difference."

"I suppose that makes my 'steal his soul, throw it out of the window' plan even more inadvisable," she observes, a little wryly.

...snort.

"I ah. Did actually attempt it, while you were - indisposed. I'd planned to trust you and not interfere, and then the prick shooed me and I did not handle it well when combined with. How you were indisposed."

"He was kind of rude."

"To put it lightly."

"...it's, um, really not that big a deal."

... Nod.

"Right. Okay. Sorry."

"I—I don't mean—I'm not trying to say you don't have a right to be upset about me getting hurt, just—it genuinely wasn't as bad as it looked?"

"I didn't feel like I don't have a right to be upset or like you were telling me to stop, but I understand why you'd rather not have a stranger having strong opinions about what is and isn't horrible in your life. That being said, it's not a set of feelings you can really soothe with reassurances that it wasn't as bad as it looked. I'm upset with him in a very visceral fashion because, essentially, he tortured the person I love most in the world in front of me, with me standing helplessly by with no way to fix it and no real idea what to do or what was going on. It helps that you didn't find it unbearable, but the problem is not that the torture met some arbitrary quota of awful, the problem is that you were tortured at all and I am going to have a flinch reaction to your suffering no matter what. And then there's - I don't think it was as tolerable for everyone he hurt. I am not feeling positively disposed towards this person regardless of how he interacts with you."

"—okay."

"I -" she stops, and looks away. "Was trying to clarify and maybe went overboard and clearly upset you somehow. Sorry."

"Um. Do you think I should try to explain, or should we just give up and move on."

"Explain, please?"

"...it seemed like you - really thought I experienced something a lot worse than I did - and it seemed like a good idea to tell you otherwise, and then... you told me you understand why I'd rather not have a stranger having strong opinions about what is and isn't horrible in my life, and then - told me I was tortured? And really didn't seem like you'd appreciate me trying to say I wasn't?"

"... Yes, I did do that, didn't I. I apologize. I didn't mean it in - it was less about specifying exactly what he did and more about trying to clarify my feelings of what it felt like to watch, without actually having to think of any specifics. I certainly don't want to argue with you over it."