Amika offers Samaren a treat. She may have ulterior motives

[guardiansverse]

"What have I done to earn this?" There was just the edge of suspicion to Samaren's amusement as he held the truffle up for inspection.

Amika offered a smooth shrug in response: his own habitual gesture, mimicked back. She slipped another of the little treats whole into her mouth, indulged in rolling its sweetness on her tongue before the exciting bite into the secret core. "Not every kindness must be so utilitarian." No, he was not going to buy this. "The Madravash ambassador left a dozen. I really cannot eat them all by myself."

"Who is to tell you no?"

"Do you want the chocolate or not, Captain?"

Samaren raised an eyebrow, but was, of course, helpless to resist. She had marked very few weaknesses in him as acute and reliable as the weakness for good food, with good meaning, quite specifically, not Hyemi. "I've never had Madravashi food before," he said, bright with cheerful curiosity.

"It's very fine," Amika said, in the innocence of perfect truth, and idly turned around to look across the training field as he put it in his mouth.

Samaren was the type to bite right into things. She had to wait no more than a moment for the yell.

When she turned back around he was trying to curse her and all her kin and folk, but was too busy coughing and wheezing, stumbling backwards, spitting like a kitchen cat who'd bitten something vile and was in despair to get away from its own mouth. She looked on with a look of such tremendous surprise. The look he raised in return was full of fire, but the fire was doused in a veritable sea of tears running all down his face.

"And what - " he croaked, sniffed hard, and all but wailed: "What have I done to earn this?"

Amika kept her face sealed. "This is very fine chocolate. A fine gift to receive from a Land's Own's hand."

"I knew you'd wish to torture me one day," Samaren grunted. He spat again and succumbed to a fresh bout of coughing, interspersed a little more successfully with obscenities now. "If you want to burn my guts from the inside just use fire!"

"I thought you might appreciate the concept."

"The concept?"

"Of a sweet that does one fiery violence." She was not going to be able to maintain the seal if he kept letting his poor tongue hang out like that.

"Hah!" he said, in the voice of one who might have liked to laugh, but was probably going to keep crying instead.

By some divine grace, Amika was able to keep her expression neutral until he was breathing normally again, though his eyes and nose still ran in relentless outrage. The dire flush of his face made an effective extra touch as he loomed over her, pinning down her look of innocence with blood-red scelera, then the sight of the little bag of truffles still in her hand. "You said you could not eat them all?"

"Oh, no. They are much too rich. I have been trying to - "

"Well, you are going to." A deep breath, head tilted back, nostrils flaring in warning of fury. "Now. I never want to see those things again."

Amika tipped her own chin up, the corners of her lips quivering helplessly.

"Is this a command, Captain?"

"Don't test me, doma."

His voice was utterly ruthless and just a little creaky with peppery torment. Amika was doomed. She needed something to block any sounds she might make and she needed it now.

Still looking him straight in the eye, she took up four truffles and stuck them whole in her mouth.