Miran walked back to her room. Even the comfort of her soft bed was not enough to make her feel better. Her grandmother had left for her office in the north wing of the manor. The estate was busier nowadays.
"That was a treat to witness," Rei said. They appeared like they always did. One minute there was nothing there, and the next second there was Rei in the air. The only hint of their arrival was the smell of lavender in the air. Grandmother didn't like flowers in the manor. A few vases were filled when guests were due to arrive, but at other times the house always smelled of the lemon and varnish.
She didn't know why Rei always smelled of lavender, but over the years it had become a comforting scent to her. Rei sat on the edge of her bed, their long red robe a stark contrast against the white sheets.
"Do you want to beat him?"
Miran wanted to survive. The practice swords were meant to stop the fights from becoming lethal. The swords were still perfectly good at inflicting pain. They still hurt when the opponent swung them with brute force. The wood was unsanded, with splinters that dug into the skin, drawing blood in tiny, angry droplets.
"I don't want to fight him at all," she confessed. She knew that her grandmother was only training her. That one day she would be sent off to Reizim's master as a sorcerer's servant. No one talked about how long the servitude would last.
Her grandmother kept telling her she needed to be better. There was no benchmark for her to reach. All her accomplishments were acknowledged briefly and then brushed aside. Miran fell back into her soft pillows. She knew there were worse fates in the world, people who suffered more than her. Her father had died in the war and saved their country. There were children her age who were orphaned by the war. She knew that, but that didn't make her sadness or her anger diminish.
Miran was tired. She saw the other girls her age, wearing flowers in their hair and leaving the confines of the mansion for the bustling town nearby. With a few smuggled treats and a horse ride on her mare, she had gotten a few of them to tell her about the town. Grandmother didn't allow her to go to the town without supervision, and any supervision she sent turned the townspeople into overly respectful automatons, bowing and only speaking when spoken to. The roads were emptied the second they saw the Carmanor family crest on the side of the carriage, and merchants walked forth with baskets of their goods ready.
Sometimes she would look into the corner streets, where colorful nomads built makeshift tents out of colorful silk sheets. They sold things that her grandmother would scowl at. Beaded earrings and necklaces, flowery scarves and skirts the color of rainbows.
Miran sat back up. Rei was frowning at her. She hadn't realized it was possible for a being without a face to frown. The ends of their mouth slanted downwards, and a wrinkling in the skin of their empty forehead that suggested displeasure.
"What's wrong, Rei?"
The little girl was worried about them, and the demon looked at her. Memories came to life in their mind from centuries before, a time when they had been more than a demon. They remembered war then too, and how they had been eager to go forth and die as if it was nothing. They remembered fiery blood and young, stupid, bravery. They died nameless, without glory or victory, buried in an unmarked grave. Rei didn't remember whether their side had won or lost, and a few hundred years later, it did not matter. They had killed hundreds after their death, doled out mischief as their master demanded, but it had never occurred to them. If only they had never wanted to fight at all.
"Just thinking about old things," Rei answered. Their binds heated at the deviation from their master's commands. Their master erased Rei's memories of their past lives, but something of the memories remained, indentations and emotions on the surface of their brain, triggered by unexpected things. It was happening more constantly as they spent more time with the little girl.
Perhaps it was because of her. They thought they were no longer capable of emotion, but the little girl, despite her strange unaffable personality, a result of her grandmother's isolated upbringing and rigorous discipline, brought out some human remnant within them which had survived both death and demonhood.
The little girl was their friend, and they were hers. Miran tugged on the edges of their robe.
"Are you alright?"
Rei never felt the loss of their human eyes before. They could see more as a demon without eyes than they ever did as a human. But now, they desired a pair of eyes for the first time. They wished they could tell the girl that her concern would bring them to tears if they had eyes. Rei ignored the burning of their wrists and placed a pale, long-fingered hand onto the little girl's head.
They could not save the little girl from her fate, from servitude or the severity of their master. Their bindings would never let them commit such a betrayal. But they had found through the years that little revolts went unnoticed. Rei brought their hand down to the little girl's cheek and patted it fondly. They could not save her, but they could enable her to save herself.
"I am quite fine, Miran."
Miran looked at the demon in front of her. Her grandmother never liked Reizim. None of the people in the manor did. Rei was different from them all. Some of the servants mumbled prayers under their breath as they walked past her room, which was the place Rei was most often in when they came to the manor. She never understood what they found to be so dangerous. Reizim was strange, but they were not harmful.
At times the demon was almost gentle with how they treated her. They were like the father she had never met, like the mother her grandmother refused to speak of. She had grown used to Reizim's silences over the years, and they listened to her worries without judgment or prejudice.
"Would you like to know how to defeat Amos?" they asked, as the dead blood flowing in their veins warmed until the fluid seared from them from the insides. It was an indirect disobedience of their master, but the pain was not the worst they had borne since being bound to their master. They had been in more flagrant violations of the rules their master had set in place in the past, before they had learned compliance was the only intelligent choice they had, and that freedom was unattainable. The pain dulled after a few seconds and they waited for Miran's answer.
"Fairly?" she asked. It wasn't possible. She was too weak, too small, and too inexperienced. She couldn't pull the same trick again.
Was it fair? Rei wondered. Humans operated by different laws, and they had been unhuman for too long. Demons operated only by the rules their masters wove into their bindings. Rei paused and thought, wondering if the lady of the house would approve of his methods if she knew. If the old woman thought it fair to send a little girl to fight a man twice her size, Rei supposed it was only fair to even the scales in Miran's favor.