The study was still a ruin. Kassian hadn't allowed the servants in to clean. He sat amidst the scorched maps and shattered marble, hunched over a secondary desk he had dragged into the center of the room. He was still shirtless, his platinum hair a chaotic mess, the orange veins of his curse faintly pulsing against his pale skin.
He looked... wrecked. He looked like a man who had been dismantled and wasn't sure how to put himself back together.
He didn't look up when she entered. He knew it was her. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees the moment she crossed the threshold, the frost on the windows blooming into intricate, violet patterns.
"I told you I wouldn't come in until you opened the door," Kassian said. His voice was a ruined rasp, dry and devoid of its usual imperial authority.
