It started with the steady scrape of paper against paper as Elric sat behind his desk with a straight posture. The duke coat wasn't on. Instead, he wore a simple black shirt, sleeves rolled past his forearms, revealing the sharp line of tendon and restrained tension along his hands. One hand tapped, occasionally, against the side of a closed book. Something closer to… focus edging toward irritation.
Work was work, but today it felt heavier.
Because while Verona stepped into the battlefield of Ardine's training, the kind of training most mages barely survived mentally, let alone physically, he was here. Planning. Calculating. Preparing for a world so politically rotten it could rot her too, if he didn't get ahead of it.
He didn't want her touching any of that ugliness. Not if he could tear it down first.
