Back to Basic
(scenes and snippets of everyone’s favourite grumpy vampyr, Baelor Targaryen, from Blood Rites)
Basically a compilation of Baelor Targaryen’s finest roasts from Chapters I–IV of Blood Rites. Enjoy!
Summary: Professor Baelor Targaryen is an academic at Summerhall University. He also happens to be a four hundred year old vampyr, permanently cranky, and possesses absolutely no patience for anyone’s foolishness—least of all the quietly aggravating habits of the university’s newest arrival, Claryse Evrynn, who is, inconveniently enough, a witch.
Pairing: Baelor Targaryen x ofc Content Warnings/Contains: modern akotsk; fantasy; baelor targaryen; original female character; dark academia; gothic romance; vampire/witch romance; vampyr; witch; demon; old blood rite magic; sexual tension; eventual smut; explicit sexual themes; angst/fluff; mutual pining; falling in love.
Chapter I
Professor Targaryen stepped away from the lectern and began to walk the length of the dais, slow, deliberate. When he passed her bench, he did not so much as glance down. Only his voice shifted, dropping just enough for her alone to catch the low, measured vibration of those syllables.
“Punctuality,” he murmured, “is considered rather fashionable in academic circles.”
Claryse froze, her pen stilling in her hand.
He had already moved on before she could even draw a breath to respond.
Her cheeks burned—not from the jagged heat of a common insult, but from the agonising exactness of his words. The remark had not been cruel and unjustified; she had been late. Yet she still felt the blow, like a surgical strike that stung far more than any blunt reprimand could have.
Chapter II
At the far end of the passage stood Baelor Targaryen.
He was dressed in dark, sombre tones again—a high-necked sweater, ink black in colour, beneath a tailored blazer so severe it seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. He stood, one shoulder braced idly against the wooden shelving, the weight of a heavy volume balanced in one hand while the other turned a page with slow, unhurried precision. He looked relaxed, yet even in his repose, there was a coiled, predatory stillness to him.
As she entered the aisle, his head lifted, attention flickering toward the movement. His mismatched eyes found hers for a fraction of a second—a brief, chilling acknowledgment—before they dropped back to his reading without a word.
No nod. No greeting.
Claryse forced down a nervous swallow. Some small, undignified part of her was grateful for the lack of interaction.
Silence, at least, could not humiliate her.
✧
His attention dropped to the fallen manuscript that sat between them. It was face-down upon the stone, its old leather boards thrown sideways, a spill of yellowed pages splayed like broken wings against the cold floor. Then he looked back at her, a faint, mirthless curve touching the corner of his mouth.
“I had assumed,” he began, his tone balanced, “that your regard for rare texts might outweigh your disregard for the hour. It seems I was mistaken. Though it is useful to know that your habits, at least, remain consistent.”
Claryse felt herself go taut. His words struck cleanly. Heat surged through her at once, sudden and defensive, burning hot enough to cut through the last of her panic.
The book had slipped, she thought. But his words alone suggested she’d flung the volume down in a fit of childish temper.
Her eyes narrowed. For one wild instant, she wanted to tell him exactly what he could do with his consistency and that cool, cultivated disdain of his.
She did not offer him a reply.
✧
Baelor examined the volume in silence, his long, sun-kissed fingers moving over the title with quiet familiarity that made her stomach tighten.
“The Rites of the Shadow-Born,” he read, his voice dropping into a low murmur. He lifted his eyes to hers, his tall silhouette eclipsing what remained of the dying afternoon light. “An ambitious pursuit, wouldn’t you say, Ms Evrynn? Wading into waters that have drowned scholars far more experienced and far less mortal than yourself…”
A pulse beat hard in her throat.
“My pursuits are no concern of yours,” she replied, her words now hard and sharp, her pride at last burning hotter than caution.
Baelor did not blink. He only held her there, his eyes fixed upon her with such quiet, unnerving steadiness that she had the skin-prickling impression of being laid bare beneath them, her thoughts spread out like something pinned upon a scholar’s table. It was as if she were made of glass, and he could see straight through to whatever lay beneath.
“When those pursuits threaten to scorch the skin from your bones in the middle of my library,” he said, his voice sinking into a silken, dangerous quiet, “they become very much my concern.”
Claryse’s hand flexed against her leg, fingers curling hard into the fabric of her skirt, drawing it tight beneath her hand until her knuckles ached.
He knew.
He extended his hand, holding the volume toward her.
She considered it carefully, her eyes lingering on its worn shape between them, remembering too clearly how it had seared her palm only moments before. And yet he held it without effort, untouched by any such heat. After the briefest hesitation, she reached for it. She did not break his stare as she lifted her hand and closed her fingers around the worn leather.
“I would advise greater care in the future,” Baelor said, his tone poised somewhere between dry reproach and something far less benign. His stare flicked one last time to the tome between them before returning to hold in her eyes. “Some of these bindings are older than I am, and far less inclined to forgive such careless mishandling.”
The rebuke landed neatly, all the sharper for how calmly he had delivered it.
He knew he was right, and worse still, some part of her knew it too.
✧
“Enough, Illyan.”
Baelor Targaryen did not rise. He did not raise his voice. He didn't need to. The words stepped between the two scholars like a cold, obsidian wall. They possessed the same surgical precision Claryse had felt in the library—a measured finality that made even the demon go still.
He turned in his seat at last. One hand rested near his untouched glass, the other was laid lightly upon the table. There was no temper in him, only an impossible, cool composure.
“With respect—” Blackwater began, straightening.
“I did not ask for your respect,” Baelor said. The words were quiet, almost flat, but they landed harder than a shout.
His attention shifted to Reed briefly before his eyes settled on Blackwater. One eye caught the candlelight like a frozen sea; the other remained a lightless void.
“You forget where you stand,” Baelor continued. “Summerhall is a sanctuary of study, not a pit for ancestral grievances. If you continue to pursue this path against our human colleagues, you will find the university’s protection retracted.”
The warning was absolute.
“Choose your path more carefully, Master Blackwater. The one you are speaking from now leads only to arrogance, and arrogance has ruined finer minds than your own.”
It was not a threat. It was a fact, and that is precisely why it worked.
Blackwater held Baelor’s stare for a heartbeat, the silence so taut Claryse could hear the embers shift in the hearth. Then, slowly, Blackwater inclined his head.
“As you wish,” he said.
“No,” Baelor cut sharply, his expression hard and unwavering. “As this house requires.”
Chapter III
The collision was absolute. The texts flew from her arms and struck the floor in a heavy, scattered thunder of leather and paper. Claryse reeled backward, breath catching sharp in her throat, but before she could fall, firm hands closed around her forearms. They were cool—steady—strong enough that, for one suspended heartbeat, she felt entirely anchored by them.
She looked up.
Baelor stood over her, his face composed into that same unreadable stillness, as if nothing in him had moved at all. He did not release her at once. She could feel the firm, deliberate press of his thumbs through the sleeve of her blouse, grounding and chilling her all at once, pinning her to the present with unnerving certainty. Then, just as abruptly as he had caught her, he let her go.
“Professor Targaryen,” Claryse stammered, stepping back as though his touch had left a physical brand on her skin. “My apologies. I—I didn’t see you.”
Baelor said nothing. The silence between them opened wide, a void-like presence in itself, until his attention dropped from her face to her right hand—the one she had, again, instinctively hidden into in the folds of her skirt. He did not ask to see it this time. He only tracked the movement with the unnerving focus of a man to whom concealment was merely another form of confession.
Unable to hold his attention any longer, Claryse dropped to the floor to gather the scattered tomes, her movements frantic and graceless. Baelor crouched with her, his own descent a slower display of his own polished grace. He reached for the glossary first, his long fingers steadying the spine, before he brushed the dust and dirt from its cover.
Then, he stopped
His eyes fixed on the gilt-stamped spine of the Qartheen volume—the one she’d accidentally swiped from Willem’s pile. He turned it slightly, catching the standing corridor light, and read the title in a silence that felt heavier than the stone walls around them.
When he looked up, the wintry grey of his left eye sharpened and she felt the little concealments of her day crumbling.
“This text is restricted to the High Faculty,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “It examines the transference of trauma through somatic resonance and…”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
He began to rise, the book held between them like a challenge. He opened his mouth to speak—to question, or perhaps to flay her with a warning—but the timing was cruel.
The fire in her hand didn't just flare; it screamed. A spike of white-hot agony shot from her palm to her shoulder, so violent her vision blurred at the edges. A small, involuntary gasp escaped her.
“I might ask—”
“Excuse me, Professor,” she choked out, her face pale as bone. She didn't wait for him to hand her the book. She didn't wait for his permission to leave. “I—I am needed elsewhere.”
She turned and hurried away, her boots loud against the stone, leaving Baelor Targaryen standing in the slanting light and the lingering scent of her burning magic.
✧
Baelor sat behind a broad desk of petrified wood, its grain fossil-dark and gleaming faintly like submerged stone. Thick books and ledgers lay open around him, one beneath his hand, another stacked neatly to his right. Ink, paper, and restraint seemed arranged with military precision. Even the shadows in the room felt disciplined.
He did not look up as she entered. He was writing, the scratch of his pen rhythmic and deliberate against the pages of a large, open ledger.
“Close the door,” he commanded softly. “We have much to discuss.”
Claryse did as she was told.
The latch fell softly into place behind her, and as the heavy iron clicked shut, he rose, walking around the desk with slow, steady grace to stand before her. He was immaculately dressed—a tailored three-piece suit of dark grey herringbone tweed that seemed to drink the dim light of the study. A dark, woven tie was knotted tightly at his throat, its subdued texture sharp and striking against the pristine, starched white of his collar.
“Your hand,” he acknowledge, just as he had in the library.
It wasn’t a question, but rather a directive—and that forced her body stiffen.
Straight to the point, then.
“It’s perfectly fine—”
He didn't wait for her to finish. He reached out and took her wrist, his long, sun-kissed fingers curling gently around her slighter bones—a stark, warm contrast to her own fair skin. His grip was surprisingly firm, but something in it seemed more intimate than it ought to have been.
“My hand is fine,” she snapped, pride surging instantly. She tried to pull free, wrenching her arm back, but his hold only tightened, dragging her closer toward him. It wasn’t painful, but enough to make resistance useless. He held her hand up, turning it toward the light to examine it with a clinical, challenging intensity. He unwrapped the linen, exposing the palm beneath. His eyes travelled over the skin in silence, searching for what was visible and, she suspected, for what was not.
Claryse could not read his face but found herself instinctively cataloging the hard lines of it instead. He was so very close, and at this proximity, there was no denying he was undeniably handsome—in a refined, almost austere sort of way. He was all sharp angles and high cheekbones, his thick beard, dark and heavily salted with grey. She couldn’t help but notice the rogue strands of dark hair that had fallen across his brow, but the most arresting feature, however, were still his eyes.
“You’ve used a numbing tincture and a cooling salve,” he said, finally lifting those mismatched eyes to hers. The wintry grey and the fathomless dark pinned her in place; his focus was absolute, leaving her feeling utterly exposed. “Common hemlock and valerian. It hasn’t worked, has it? I can feel it—your nerves still burning…”
Colour rose hot in her face, and her heart began to rise, now a frantic pulsing thump in her neck. “How did you—?”
“I am four hundred years old, Ms Evrynn. I know the scent of a healer’s kit—and when a witch is attempting to shroud a magical resonance with domestic remedies.”
✧
“Summerhall is a sanctuary. It is a fragile ecosystem of preserved history,” he said, the academic authority slipping back into his tone. “I have spent many years guarding it from those who would turn it to ash.” His eyes lifted to hers. “If you are a ‘living conduit’ for blood-bound magic, then you represent a danger to that ecosystem.”
The words were so calm they took a heartbeat to land.
When they did, Claryse felt heat rise in her face all over again.
Claryse stared at him.
He did not blink.
“I have no intention,” he continued, “of allowing you to wander through these archives until you accidentally set fire to something because pride prevented you from admitting you were out of your depth.”
A dozen furious replies rose in her at once—most of which would only prove him right.
Instead, she said through her teeth, “I see.”
“No,” he replied coldly. “I don’t think you do, and that is why you are here.”
He turned his attention, gesturing with a sharp, dismissing motion toward the heavy stack of literature on his desk.
“I believe you have been given quite enough to read from Professor Thane without blundering through additional texts you do not understand with Santagar,” he murmured, his tone dryly reproachful. “These are from my own private collection.”
That, if anything, was more startling than the rest.
Claryse examined the stack of bindings for a moment longer before looking back to the vampyr that seemed to now examine her, so openly, with his frost-ink stare. His attention anchored her to the floor.
“You will read them,” he continued. “You will determine the nature of this affliction. And you will do so under my supervision.”
The room seemed suddenly very still.
“Why?” She asked, the question slipping out before she could stop it. “Why are you helping me?”
“Help?” Baelor repeated softly, the syllable tasting foreign and inadequate on his tongue. He picked up his pen, his attention returning to the ledger with an almost dismissive finality. “No, Ms Evrynn. Consider this a containment strategy. I am merely neutralising a threat.”
The clinical coldness of his answer stung. Her pride bristled again at being categorised as a threat, a hazard, rather than a person. And yet, beneath the affront, beneath the humiliation of standing before him with her magic failing and her secrets exposed, there was another feeling. One too fragile and unwise to name.
Relief.
Because he had seen it—sensed it.
Because he had believed it without asking her to prove it was real.
Because, for all his insufferable, glacial severity, he had not dismissed her as hysterical or overworked or weak. He had looked at the impossible burning in her marrow and recognised it as fact.
Claryse returned her eyes to the heavy stack of manuscripts. She didn’t hesitate this time. She stepped forward, her left hand reaching out to trace the cracked, dust-softened leather of the top binding before gathering the volumes into her arms, pulling the solid weight of them against her chest.
For the first time since the smoke had filled her lungs in the dark, the terror that had kept her awake for days suddenly lost its shapelessness and morphed into something older, and perhaps, with enough patience, knowable.
She turned toward the heavy iron door, the silence of the room pressing against her ears. Pausing with her hand on the cold iron latch, she looked back over her shoulder.
“Thank you, Professor Targaryen,” she said quietly.
Baelor didn't look up. The only answer he gave was a curt nod and the rhythmic scratch of his silver pen continuing across the page.
Chapter IV
By the time Claryse reached his door, her breathing had turned into something shallow and unsteady. She clutched the volume too tightly against her chest, its leather edge biting into her palm. Her pulse thundered behind her ears. She lingered there for one long, fraught second, staring at the dark grain of the wood as though it might spare her the indignity of what she was about to do.
Then she knocked.
Claryse half-expected nothing to happen. A locked silence that would force her to slink back to her room—or worse, that he would open the door only to dismiss her with a cold, bitter remark about the lateness of the hour and her recurring inability to respect it.
And for one stretched moment, nothing did happen.
Then, the internal latch shifted and the door swung inward.
Baelor stood framed in the amber glow of his study, a crystal tumbler of whiskey in one hand and a look upon his face that might have passed for surprise, had it not been strangled into neutrality so instantly.
“Ms Evrynn,” he acknowledged flatly.
He had shed the formal severity of the day. No charcoal blazer, no heavy overcoat. He wore a white linen shirt, both sleeves rolled carelessly—if anything about him could ever truly be called careless—to his elbows, exposing the sun-kissed, corded strength of his forearms. His waistcoat hung open, and the first two buttons at his throat were undone, revealing the shadowed line of hair at his chest.
The silence stretched, a brief, awkward stillness passing between them.
“You’re letting in a draft,” he said finally, as if to prompt a response from her.
At first glance, everything in him appeared to be composed, yet there was a clear irritation in the set of his shoulders. The silver signet on his middle finger caught the light as his hand tightened around the glass, his knuckles paling with a brief, unmistakable impatience.
“I wasn’t sure you’d answer…” Claryse mumbled, a breathless release of tension and nerves that she’d clearly been holding on to since she’d left her own room. “In truth, I half expected you to shut the door in my face.”
That got his attention.
For the first time that evening, his eyes sharpened and moved over her with unnerving swiftness—the chestnut curls that had worked loose from their ribbon, the strand caught against the corner of her mouth, the rise and fall of her breathing, too quick to disguise.
“And yet,” he said, leaning backwards lightly against the frame, “Here we are.”
Claryse did not wait for him to admit her. She stepped forward, the soles of her boots striking the floorboards firmly as she pushed past him in the doorway. The study was far warmer than the corridor, lit by low lamps and the steady glow from the crackling hearth. She felt the heat of it at once against her face. Shelves lined the walls in severe abundance, tomes ordered with precise neatness, broken only by the occasional stacked volume or sheaf of papers laid aside in ordered disarray.
Behind her, the door clicked shut.
“By all means,” he murmured, his tone dry with sarcasm, “Please, do come in.”
She turned on him before the sentence had fully left his mouth.
“This book,” she said, holding the volume up between them, “your book—with its endless appendices and your infuriating tendency to hide catastrophic revelations in the margins—”
She faltered when the silvered scar that cut through his left eyebrow tightened almost imperceptibly, the smallest shift in his expression twitching as he took her in.
“It contains information you might have thought to share before now. Information you already knew, and still let me waste the better part of a week digging up for myself. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
Baelor regarded her in a silence so heavy it seemed to hum. Then he crossed the room with that same unhurried, liquid grace that always made Claryse feel clumsy by comparison. He set the whiskey down on the desk before he turned to answer her.
“I’ve not opened half those volumes in decades, Ms Evrynn” he said, his voice a low vibration in the small space.
“Then allow me to refresh your memory,” she began, taking a step toward him, “This particular volume speaks of residual imprint, vampyric apprehension and bloodlett—”
“Spare me your recitation,” he cut in, with a slight shake of his head. “I recall the section perfectly well.”
✧
For a long moment, he only looked at her, his bi-coloured eyes settling on her face as if he were already peeling back the layers of her skin to see the fire beneath. Then, with a deliberation that made her blood run cold, he finally spoke.
“You want me to bleed you.”
Claryse stopped breathing.
Again—straight to the point. Was he always so direct?
He spoke of the act as if naming it made it at once simpler and infinitely more dangerous. The room seemed to shrink, the shadows of the bookshelves leaning in to catch his next breath.
“If that is the only way to get answers—”
“No.”
The refusal was flat, devoid of hesitation.
He reached for the whiskey again, taking a slow, punishing taste before leaning one hip against the front of his desk. The fire at his back traced long, bronze edges over the stark white of his shirt. He held the glass loosely, his posture radiating a maddeningly casual air.
“No?” Claryse echoed, the word broken on her tongue. “What do you mean, no?”
“No,” he repeated with a calm that felt like an insult. “You do not know what you ask.”
Something in her gave way at that. It wasn't her pride—that had been worn thin weeks ago by her own nightmarish dreams. It was something more fragile, a final thread of hope that he might actually be the exit sign she had been searching for in the dark.
✧
For a long moment, the only sound between them was the crackling fire and her own ragged breathing. Then, the soft ‘clink’ of glass as he set his tumbler aside.
“If we do this,” he began, his voice low and laced with heavy warning, “There is a profound risk for us both. Not to mention the judgment—”
She turned back to him, eyes widening in disbelief.
“Seven hells,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face in a rare, unguarded gesture of agitation.
“It is consensual—”
“That is beside the point,” he cut her off, his tone now sharp. “A vampyr bloodletting a witch is not unheard of, but it is a very dangerous act—and a scandalous one at that. If it is discovered that I have bled a witch, even with her blessing, people will begin to ask questions. Questions I have no desire to entertain, and questions you are in no position to answer.”
His jaw tightened slightly, as though the thought alone vexed him.
“They will not hear a word from me,” Claryse said.
The silence that followed seemed to gather around him, heavy with thought and resistance. His expression did not soften, but some hard interior calculation turned over behind his eyes.
“Your silence might not be enough,” he said at last, quieter now. “These things have a way of declaring themselves, whether we wish them to or not.”
“Then you’ll do it?” she asked softly, taking a single tentative step towards him, her voice fraying into a plea she could no longer disguise. “You’ll help me?”
The agreement, when it finally surfaced, was a ghost of a gesture—nothing more than a slight, grave inclination of his head. A silent pact. Yet the room seemed to shift and darken around it all the same, the air growing heavy with the gravity of what they were about to do.
✧
Her fingers moved to the neck of her cardigan, drawing the soft fabric lower until the pale slope of her shoulder showed and the fragile hollow where throat met clavicle caught the light.
Baelor gave a dry, humourless laugh and shook his head.
“You witches are all the same,” he said, pushing away from the desk. “Always such a flair for the dramatic. Sit.”
Claryse blinked at him, confused. “Excuse me?”
“Sit,” he repeated, with greater clarity and no greater warmth. He gestured toward the chaise beside the hearth, its velvet worn smooth in places, dark as old wine. “Your wrist will do.”
Claryse looked from the chaise to him. “My wrist—?”
One dark brow lifted.
“Unless, you would prefer I take your throat like some lovesick fledgling?”
His words landed low between them.
Heat surged into her face so quickly it felt like betrayal. Her cheeks burned, and she hated that he’d caught it at once—that faint, knowing change in his expression making it plain he had seen her embarrassment for exactly what it was.
“I didn’t think so.”
He turned from her then and tipped back the last of his whisky in one clean swallow, the movement exposing the strong line of his throat as amber light slid across the open collar of his shirt.
At first, Claryse stood frozen. There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t sound either foolish or afraid, and she was too tired to endure either. So, she crossed the room without argument and lowered herself onto the edge of the chaise. The cushions gave beneath her weight with a muted sigh, but her spine remained rigid. Her pulse had become intolerably loud, each beat seeming to ring in the narrow space between her ribs and throat.
A moment later, his scent closed around her—woodsmoke, spiced soap, and the cold, base note of old leather. The hem of his waistcoat brushed the bare line of her shin as he knelt before her, settling with a predator’s grace between her knees. Firelight caught in the silver threaded through his beard and turned one eye pale, while the other remained a dark, unreadable and fixed wholly upon her.
“Your hand,” he said. The request was quiet, but it held the gravity of a command.
She hesitated—only for the space of a heartbeat—before finally surrendering her right arm to him.
His fingers closed around her wrist, his touch stark and cool against her own heat. Then, he turned her hand with agonising gentleness, exposing the fragile blue tracery of veins beneath her pale skin. When his thumb pressed once to the inside of her wrist, just above the heel of the palm, she felt her pulse leap and hammer beneath his touch.
Too quick. Too loud. Too honest.
Baelor felt it too. Of course he did; he was measuring the very rhythm of her life. His attention dropped to the blood moving beneath her skin, his expression one of pure concentration as he decided where best to begin his reading.
The room had gone deathly quiet. Claryse forced a breath into her lungs as his thumb shifted, tracing the soft, exposed beat of her heart as if reading a line of braille.
It was almost tender.
Almost.
✧
The resonance struck her then, a blinding bolt of pure sensation. Her spine arched, her body locking in a state of exquisite paralysis as the breath was stolen from her lungs. The blood in her veins turned to liquid gold, rendering every inch of her skin tight and hyper-sensitive. She could feel him completely now—Baelor. His mind pressed against hers, his hunger a living, coiled serpent, desperate and waiting to strike. And beneath that hunger, something older, something deeply carnal. It recognised the deep binding of old, ancient magic in her blood, and it wanted.
It wanted her.
His free hand slid up her bare thigh, fingers sprawling across the flushed skin in an act of absolute, unapologetic possession. His thumb pressed into her flesh—a slow, deliberate friction that built until a broken, pleading sound tore from her throat. She was slick and aching, her entire body thrumming as the wet heat of his bite burnt a permanent brand into her veins.
Then, abruptly, he pulled back.
The connection snapped.
Claryse’s eyes flew open, her vision swimming as the room bled back into focus. Baelor was already on his feet several paces away, and she felt the loss of him at once. It was a sharp, wrenching vacuum in her chest, as though something vital had been severed too quickly.
His mouth was stained red, his pupils blown so wide that an empty black darkness swallowed all colour from both irises. There was nothing scholarly left in his face, and whatever mask of discipline he had previously worn had been stripped away entirely.
She dropped her arm into her lap, her wrist throbbing where his teeth had been. The air between them was charged with a suffocating static, and beneath the copper tang of blood lingered the musky trace of her own arousal.
“You need to leave,” he said, his voice dangerously low.
Claryse looked up at him, “What—?”
“Now.”
The word was a whip crack.
She wanted to argue with him—to demand answers, to know what in the seven hells had just happened, why her blood had answered him like that, why he had stopped—but the look on his face silenced her before a single word could rise. There was something lethal in it now, something strained and dangerous enough to calm even her outrage.
She watched him drag the back of his hand across the crimson remains on his mouth as she forced herself onto unsteady legs and made for the door. When she reached the threshold, she faltered and turned back to look at him. Baelor had not moved. He stood exactly where she’d left him, watching her from his position beside the crackling hearth, hands clenched so tightly at his sides that his knuckles had gone bone-white.
Both of his eyes were black, obsidian voids.
“Was it the resonance?” she asked, her question barely above a whisper. “Or was it me?”
She swallowed nervously, unsure whether he’d actually answer her.
“Does it matter?” He finally said, his voice rough like stone.
Claryse could see he was struggling—fighting to keep hold of anything measured or restrained or remotely under control. She did not wait to see what might happen if that control failed. She slipped from his study, the heavy door clicking shut behind her, but the cool draught of the corridor did nothing to quench the fire he had left burning in her veins.