continued @flamesofavernus
tw: mentions of sexual abuse, violence, scarring, nudity
She didn’t answer him, just remained in place and watched. Her eyes traced him slowly—like a spell being drawn, studying him. The slope of his shoulders. The faint tension that never left his stance, even now. The way his legs spread when he sat, like he was still bracing for an impact that didn’t come.
Her expression didn’t falter, but something behind it tensed. A sense of recognition, sudden and unwelcome. Her hand dropped, brushing lightly against her own hip as she took a step back, her body was all contrast here—sharp shoulders under a soaked coat, the soft curve of her waist showing where the fabric clung, damp from the long hours in the greenhouse. A thin trail of water traced down her collarbone and into the low cut of her shirt beneath the fabrics.
She blinked, once—slowly. Just enough for silver lashes to catch the amber light that filtered through the broken glass above. Then, quiet and deliberate, crossed the space between them with the same slow certainty she used when handling a blade or something fragile. Her boots didn’t make a sound over the moss-choked tiles.
Each step brought her closer into the heat of him. Her breath was steady, but deeper now, controlled. The kind that stirred just beneath the skin. She stopped in front of him, closer than courtesy allowed, and tilted her head just enough for the bruised twilight of her iris to meet the fused bronze in his. She was close enough that the scent of her reached him. Smoke and wet leaves. Bloodroot. Rosewater. Her skirt whispered as she moved, hips shifting under dark, weather-dampened fabric. She tilted her chin just a little, and her braid slid forward over one shoulder, catching the light in its silvered length. Her mouth didn’t move.
Then something slipped and uncoiled again.
A flicker—not from her body, but through the bond. A rush, quiet and sudden, like breath against the nape of the neck. A vision not deliberate, not controlled.
She was showing him.
Half-formed images passing between them: his hands, rough and certain, ghosting along the curve of her waist; the heat of her body pressed to his chest, her breath caught between a gasp and something lower. It was a pulse, slow and warm—then sharper, brighter. Not even a full picture. Skin against skin. Heat under her palms. Her mouth near his ear, breath hitting the shell of it before teeth grazed the edge. His name, unspoken, hummed in her throat like a thread pulled too tight. The sensation of her body wanting—her thighs parting under his hands, the tension in her stomach, the softness of her chest pressed flush against muscle. A rhythm beginning. The wet heat of her mouth just before a kiss, real and sharp as steel in sunlight.
A half beat under her ribcage and she pulled back cutting the thread.
Serenei had long unlearned the lie that wanting made her weak. She didn’t flinch from her own hunger, didn’t hide behind feign innocence—she was a woman who knew the pull of desire in her marrow and let it bloom hot beneath her skin without shame. Yet that was entirely different; why would one ever take what was not freely given? Take and devour and indulge from one shackled, even loosely. Not when she herself knew too well the silence that followed a stolen act—the hollow that opened inside when the body was claimed without the soul. The Bhaalyn had taught her what power and control looked like, sanctified under the guise of devotion.
She didn't utter a single word. Then, without breaking the gaze, hands moved slowly undoing the ties of her blouse without ceremony, her fingers moving with a kind of grim resolve. Practical. As if she were revealing something medical, not intimate.
The fabric parted enough to expose the damage underneath. Scars over the breastbone; jagged, ugly things, some faded into pale ridges, others still a mottled red as if they’d only just healed. Long cuts where blades had been dragged too slow. There were bite marks too and burns, like brands, in circular patterns down the sides of her breasts, her stomach, her hips. Symbols carved into skin without consent, meant to wake whatever power they believed slept inside her. None of it random. Every wound had been placed with a purpose by the cleric who said her magic needed opening. Pain would bring her closer to divinity. Father would be proud, she would be ready.
Her voice, when it came, was low but steady. “He thought pain would make the power come faster.” No embellishment. No tearful story. Just the shape of a memory, flattened into a statement.
He'd use her body like a ritual book in those salt-iron caverns, carving, hurting, forcing himself on her—then said it would make her more potent as the weight pressed against her frame. At the time she didn’t even know what that meant, not really. But he kept going. Praying while he did it. She’d fix her gaze on the ceiling of the chantry’s sanctum—on the stone stalactites that hung like crooked teeth above the altar—and count them in silence. One. Two. Three. A hundred times over. Some days she imagined them falling, sharp and fast, cleaving through the man’s skull mid-prayer. Other days she just let herself drift, dull and distant, until even the burning between her legs felt like it belonged to someone else.
Serenei reached for the open edges of the fabric with the same care one might use to close the lid of a reliquary. Her fingers moved with practiced precision, looping the ties one by one. The linen, still damp, clung faintly to her skin as she pulled it snug across her chest, brushing over old scar tissue now half-exposed to the air. The movement wasn’t rushed, but there was a subtle tension in her jaw, like she was reminding herself to breathe through it. Her collarbone rose with each breath, steady now, and when the last knot was secured, she smoothed the front flat with her palm — not to hide, but to contain. Like something sealed shut after being witnessed.
“I don't take anything from men in chains. Won't pull you out of whatever grave they built around you to push you into mine.”