[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/iqSfS3U.png[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/vC25bML.png[/img]
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[color=4C93C2]Location:[/color] Ballroom
[color=4C93C2]Time:[/color] Evening
[color=4C93C2]Interaction:[/color] [@FunnyGuy] Lorenzo [/color]
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[color=gray]For a moment, Calbert only looked at him.

There were certain words a man was allowed to say in grief. Awful little things. Unfair things. Calbert understood that better than most as a man who had spent a lifetime watching people play the game of nobility that he himself had come to master.

So when Lorenzo called him parasite, tumor, leech, beast-master, blackmailer, jailer, Calbert had endured it with the quiet patience of a man allowing another to exhaust himself against a solid door. A locked door, at that. 

But then Lorenzo spoke of his family… And something very old and very dangerous opened its eyes inside him.

It was not anger, though he was angry. It was not hate, though he was a man who carried hate. It was not contempt, though of all men he was the best at contempt.

This was the soft click of a drawer sliding open in a dark study on an even darker day, and inside that drawer was a stack of letters Lily had the children write him for a birthday one year. This was Violet’s laugh from behind a fan when she convinced him to sit with her and take part in a tea party all those years ago, this was the feeling of Crystal’s hand in his sleeve when she was small and scared to walk home in the dark, it was the look in Cassius’s eyes when Calbert realized he had a son, the mournful sounds of grief that erupted from his Liliane the night they thought they had lost a daughter for good.

Lorenzo had brought a threat to all of those things, the very ones he held dearest above all else. 

Calbert’s expression did not change. That was the mercy of his mastery. The blessing of being born into rooms where a man learned young that a twitch of the brow might as well have been a full-blown confession. He did not clench his fist. He did not square his shoulders. He did not step closer and strike out like the coiled serpent of the man in front of him would have. Instead, he gave Lorenzo [b]nothing[/b]. Not a single reaction to undo the perception of those who just saw him quite literally save the man’s life. He gave the rodent nothing to frighten Charlotte with, nothing to feed whatever starving thing in the duke was begging for a war. 

Instead, Count Damien smiled with the faintest little curve of his lips. 

[color=4C93C2]“Of course.”[/color]

The words were mild. Almost…kind.

He adjusted one of his cuffs, smoothing away a crease that had appeared during their interaction. His gaze flicked once, only once, over Lorenzo’s face as though he were taking inventory.

A duke, shaking with grief. A father, cornered. A man who had nearly struck his king and then, given the chance to be grateful for his own salvation, had chosen instead to threaten children in kind.

[i]How unfortunate.[/i]

Calbert bowed his head, the motion polished enough to pass for respect and shallow enough to be insulting only to those fluent in such things.

[color=4C93C2]“Enjoy the rest of your evening, Duke Vikena.”[/color]

And that was all.

Calbert turned from him then, unhurried, each step carrying him back toward the music, the candlelight, the watchful mouths of court. His face had already softened by the time he rejoined the glittering edge of the ballroom, all composed regret and gentlemanly restraint.

Behind his blue eyes, however, the drawer remained open.

And inside it, all the way to the back and far away from those letters and memories he cherished, Lorenzo Vikena’s name had found its place upon a singular piece of paper along with others, and like the others… Lorenzo’s name had been written in blood.[/color]