[???]
The air was different now.
It was heavier almost.
Not just from the pressure of the dragon looming behind Aelfric, not just from the suffocating aura that poured from it in waves, but from something else.
Aelfric could feel it, something had changed, Mikoto was still standing there, a figure so misleadingly fragile, so effortlessly beautiful, so eerily similar to—
His jaw clenched, he hated it.
That face.
Those eyes.
So much like hers yet twisted, different, sharper in ways that made his blood burn, that made the rage in his soul coil.
Even so, Aelfric exhaled slowly, "Do you understand now?"
Mikoto's eyes narrowed, he was searching for the best way to twist this moment to his favor, to turn this against him, to mold the conversation into something he could once again hold sway over.
