Ryan had been given time to rest while the rest of the men continued to work. His hands were already free from the shackles.
He didn't fully understand why he had saved her, but by doing so, he had unlocked a mission.
'Should I have let her die?'
But he would have been taken by the orc enforcer anyway. Luka, who had led him to this camp, had been amazed by the cunning he showed earlier.
Mira's personal quarters were just beyond a narrow passage on the far side.
The System message pulsed in his mind, an obscene yet pragmatic roadmap to survival.
'Pleasure the Commander.'
He wasn't a lover, but he could prove to be useful. A useful person would not be discarded easily.
He could hear her through the rock—sharp, pained breaths, the shaking of a bowl, a hissed curse.
The fight had taken its toll. Karg's grip had cracked ribs, at least. His Insight had flagged her as Physically Vulnerable.
This was it.
He stood, took a deep breath, pushed aside the screen, and entered her den.
Mira was on a low stone pallet, half out of her leather armor. She'd managed to remove the chest piece, revealing a torso mottled with dark, painful-looking bruises.
One hand was pressed to her side, her face pale with strain. A basin of water sat beside her. Her daggers, however, were within easy reach on the floor.
Suddenly, she heard him approach.
Her head snapped up, eyes flashing with instant fury. "I said you should not—"
"You're bleeding internally," Ryan interrupted, his voice calm and low.
He kept his hands visible, indicating he was not threatening in any way.
"The bruising is deep. You can't just bind it and hope it will heal later."
Her anger wavered, replaced by doubt. "What do you know of it, human?"
"In my world," he said, taking a single, careful step forward, "I knew things. I studied medicine."
It was a lie.
Everyone knew a cracked rib could puncture a lung. But here, it sounded like unexplored wisdom.
[Insight: Suspicion 70% | Pain 90% | Curiosity 45%]
"You're a healer?" she sneered, but the sneer was weak, undercut by pain.
"I am… a surgeon," he corrected softly. "And I owe you a debt. You removed my chains."
He gestured to the basin. "The water is dirty. It will cause infection. Let me fetch clean water and show you."
He saw the calculation in her eyes.
A commander who died of a festering wound was a joke. Her authority was already shaken by Karg's invasion.
"Fine," she gritted out, leaning back with a suppressed groan. "Fetch it. But one wrong move…"
"I know," Ryan said, meeting her gaze. "My life is already yours."
He returned with a jug of clean, cool water from a runoff stream that Luka had shown him.
He knelt by her pallet, not on it, maintaining a subordinate's space, and tore a relatively clean strip from the bottom of his own clothes.
"This will be cold," he warned, his voice a murmur.
He focused entirely on the task, his touch clinical yet undeniably careful. His fingers, despite the grime, were slender and human—alien in their gentleness against her tough, green skin.
Mira stiffened, then slowly exhaled. The coolness was a relief against the fiery pain.
[Insight: Suspicion 50% | Pain 85% | Curiosity 60%]
He worked in silence, cleaning the visible wounds. His movements were slow, deliberate. His fingers brushed against the unbruised skin slowly.
A fleeting, non-threatening contact.
"The deep pain," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
He didn't look at her face, keeping his eyes lowered to his work.
"You need to ease the muscles around it, or they'll seize and make it worse." He finally glanced up, his red eyes meeting her yellow ones.
"With your permission, Commander. I can… help. Just pressure. No magic."
It was the ultimate gamble. To touch the epicenter of her injury. To move from servant to intimate.
She studied him for a long, silent moment. The only sound was their breathing.
The Hidden Quest prompt seemed to burn in the air between them.
"Do it," she finally breathed, the words more a sigh of surrender to the pain than an order.
Ryan's hands, now clean from the water, hovered over her bruised side.
He placed them not directly on the worst of the bruising, but on the tense, aching skin of her flank and lower back.
His touch was firm, steady, unyielding, but not cruel. He began to apply a slow, deep pressure, more about presence and controlled warmth than any real massage.
A sharp gasp escaped her lips. Not of pain, but of shock at the strange, soothing heat of human skin, at the foreign sensation of careful touch in a world of blows.
[Insight: Suspicion 30% | Pain 70% | Curiosity 80% | Agitation (Non-Hostile) 40%]
"The orc was a brute," Ryan murmured, his lips now dangerously close to the pointed curve of her ear.
His thumbs circled slowly. "All strength, no manners."
He let the implication hang: I have subtlety, this is easy.
He saw her yellow pupils dilate, her throat work as she swallowed.
Her hand, which had been resting near her dagger, unclenched, her fingers curling slightly into the furs of her pallet.
The dynamic had shifted.
He was seducing her weakness, weaving a spell of relief and illicit sensation. He was, as the System had coldly outlined, pleasuring the Commander.
Feeling the control he had over her, he focused his intent while his hands slowly slid down.