It really isn't!

Sairu happily snuggles his Anaseverina.

Such good snuggles.

So good.

Things are good for a while.

But--

Apprentices are very much not allowed to kill each other without permission, and there are measures in place to prevent most common forms of suicide. That doesn't mean apprentices never die. An apprentice is an investment, but sometimes it's time to realize that you're not getting your money's worth. Sometimes a less-than-talented apprentice goes to a lesson and doesn't come back.

One day Anaseverina goes to a lesson and doesn't come back.

He searches the tower for her, very methodically.

She is not there.

So this is not someone else fucking with him, and Savaross did in fact kill her.

Well, he's hardly going to take it out on Savaross, but he is very, very tempted to take it out on someone.

Most of the other apprentices are smart enough to avoid him! A few, however, make snide remarks.

The first such unwise individual gets a five-minute pain spell.

Anyone else?

...No one who was in the room at the time, but the gossip network is not so swift that everyone inclined to be snide gets warning that this is a Bad Idea.

The second one gets set on fire and then pain-spelled for five minutes!

Ow.

No one else says a word to him for the rest of the day.

Good.

He finds Kaseo shortly after dinner.

"Heard you were in a mood," she says.

He sets her on fire.

She douses it and snorts.

"All right, let's go back to your room and fuck, I bet you'll feel better after."

They do that.

He isn't quite trying to break her again, but he definitely has a lot of feelings to express.

Yeah, wow.

And then he kicks her out of his room and curls up in his empty bed and cries for half the night.

The next day, his mood is only slightly improved.

The next day he has a lesson.

He attends his lesson.

It is a perfectly ordinary lesson. Anaseverina does not come up at all, directly or indirectly.

That is probably best for everyone involved.

Tassairen continues to be in a very bad mood. People who annoy him can generally count on being pain-spelled for at least a minute. If anyone gives him cause to come up with worse things to do to them, they will find he is more than capable. He takes Kaseo to his room almost every night, which helps some.

Savaross finishes reviewing him on things learned years ago and less practicable on a day-to-day basis than healing, and moves him on to a theory-heavier section; less novel practical effects and more efficiency tricks and so on.

At one of these lessons, a short while after Tassairen's sixteenth birthday, he brings in a terrified young woman, and instructs Tassairen to rip her; humans are better for that than most kinds of animals.

He does that.

She dies with a look of exquisite agony on her face.

It's kind of glorious.