"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
***
She came back the next evening.
The window slid open without a sound, and Lyra dropped into my chamber like she'd done it a hundred times before. Maybe in her head, she had.
"Master." Down on one knee again, head bowed, hands clasped. Same position as yesterday. But everything else about her had changed. Her shoulders were straighter. Her voice carried a new edge. She practically vibrated with the need to tell me something.
Pride. That's what I was looking at. Raw, barely contained pride.
Interesting.
"Go ahead." I kept my face neutral. Let's see what my little project had accomplished in twenty-four hours.
And then she started talking.
Look, I've read a lot of isekai novels. Seen a lot of "competent subordinate" characters do their thing. But Lyra's report? This girl had tracked Blue Cloak through three different districts. She'd mapped out his entire daily schedule. She knew which taverns he frequented, who he talked to, when he took breaks. She'd even identified his handler, some boring clerk in the merchant quarter who apparently ran a side business in selling information.
All of that in one day.
But here's the part that actually made me sit up straighter. She hadn't just collected data. She understood what it meant. She'd connected the dots between seemingly random meetings, figured out the broader game these people were playing, and predicted their next several moves.
This wasn't luck. This was talent.
Years of watching noble families scheme against each other from the servant's quarters had given her an education no academy could provide. She'd learned to read people the way hunters read animal tracks. And now that someone had actually pointed her in a direction and said "go"...
Yeah. I might have stumbled onto something special here.
"Good work." I leaned forward and reached out to touch her hair. The strands were soft, dark as ink. I let my fingers trail from the top of her head down to her shoulder, slow and deliberate.
"Hnnngh~"
Her eyes slid shut. A small sound escaped her throat. Not quite a moan, not quite a sigh. Something in between that hit me harder than I expected.
Oh no.
This is how it starts, isn't it? This is exactly how every dark lord origin story begins. One corrupted minion at a time. Next thing you know, you're sitting on a skull throne wondering where it all went wrong.
"You want another job." I didn't phrase it as a question because it obviously wasn't one. The hunger in her expression could've been seen from space. She wanted another mission, another secret to chase, another chance to prove herself. Another moment of... this. Whatever this was between us.
"Please, Master."
I pulled my hand back. She actually leaned toward me when I did, chasing the contact like a cat following a laser pointer. The mark I'd drawn on her collarbone last night was gone. Water and time had washed away the ink. But something told me it hadn't really disappeared. It had just moved somewhere deeper.
No red flags here at all.
"Fine. Time for something harder." I opened my desk drawer and pulled out a letter I'd lifted from Lucius's things a few days ago. The seal on the front showed a serpent eating its own tail. Fancy stuff. The kind of fancy that suggested my idiot brother had friends in high places.
Or handlers, more likely. Lucius wasn't smart enough to have friends.
"My dear older brother thinks he's the rightful heir to House Leone." I held the letter up so the candlelight caught the wax seal. "Someone's been encouraging that delusion. Feeding it. These letters are the proof, but there's a problem."
Lyra's eyes locked onto the envelope like a hawk spotting a rabbit.
"The seal is warded. Old magic. Break it, and whoever sent this knows immediately." I set the letter on the desk between us. "But there are other ways to read a sealed letter. Ways that require patience and a light touch."
"You want me to read it without opening it." Not a question. She was already working through the problem in her head.
"I want you to become someone I can't replace. Not just as a spy. As an artist." I tapped the letter with one finger. "This is trust, Lyra. The dangerous kind. I'm handing you something that could destroy me if you made one wrong move. One word to the wrong person, and we both die."
She reached for the letter like it was made of glass. Her fingers closed around the parchment, and she looked up at me with an expression that made my stomach drop.
Devotion. Hunger. And something else.
Something that looked way too much like love.
Not the normal kind. Not the "you're nice to me so I like you" kind. This was the kind of feeling that builds empires or burns them down.
"Teach me." Her voice came out thick, heavy with emotion. "I'll learn whatever you need. Become whatever you need. Just let me stay useful to you."
Our eyes met in the dim light, and I watched something fundamental shift inside her. Right there in real time. She was becoming exactly what I needed. A weapon made of loyalty and skill. A blade that would never turn against the hand that forged it.
But as I watched her hold that letter like it was the most precious thing she'd ever touched, just because I'd given it to her...
A thought crossed my mind. An uncomfortable one.
What happens when the weapon decides it knows what's best for you?
The girl who'd scrubbed floors and lived in corners was gone. In her place sat something else entirely. A creature of terrible devotion who grew more capable by the hour.
I'd taught her how to watch.
Now I had to teach her how to see.
And hope to whatever gods existed in this world that I wasn't building the thing that would eventually kill me.