Lyra's POV
The stage stretched before us like a battlefield, and Alaric commanded it with the authority of a general addressing defeated troops. His cloak was nowhere to be seen—still draped across my desk chair where I'd left it after our encounter. Without it, he cut an imposing but disheveled figure in his fitted trousers and long ceremonial robe. His usually pristine hair had escaped its binding, dark strands framing his face in wild disarray. Those golden eyes that had burned with intensity earlier now blazed with barely contained fury, and the shadows beneath them served as a stark reminder of how little rest either of us had found.
"What has transpired this semester," Alaric's voice carried across the packed auditorium with deadly precision, "began as simple defiance and has devolved into conduct I have never witnessed in my years at this institution."
