"... please, do not do anything rash."
Alaric's gaze remained fixed on Julian, his blue eyes clouded with a storm of suppressed violence and raw grief. The silence in the cellar stretched, thick and suffocating, broken only by the distant, rhythmic drip of water.
For a long moment, the Duke looked like a man standing on the edge of a precipice, ready to step off into the abyss of civil war if it meant catching the man who had wounded his scholar.
Then, slowly, the tension in his massive shoulders began to ebb. He exhaled a long, shaky breath that brushed against Julian's skin.
"You have a heart that bleeds for everyone, don't you?" Alaric murmured, his voice sounding hollow. "Even for the children of the man who tried to unmake you. Even for the 'commoners' who wouldn't know your name if you died tomorrow."
He reached up, his large hand cupping Julian's face with a reverence that was almost painful. His thumb brushed over the reddened skin where their foreheads had collided.
