Before breakfast Phei had pulled Eira aside into the empty living room and given her the order plainly.
"I want you to train me. Properly without holding back."
Eira's small face had responded with something Phei would later replay in memory with deep, sinking suspicion: she had smiled.
Not a warm, proud-familiar smile at her master's maturation.
A slow, wide, appreciative smile with patient teeth.
"Finally, master," she'd said, "I have been waiting for you to ask me that, and you are going to regret ever opening your pretty mouth on this subject, and I am going to enjoy every delicious second of your suffering."
He would, later, come to understand that asking Eira to train him had been, in retrospect, less a prudent strategic decision and more like politely asking the devil for a piggyback ride straight through hell and back — except hell, at least, had the decency to end.
