#(it isn't something she ever vocalizes or would dare to do so aloud)

[embersrevived]

Heard you were studying with Dracula. He's pretty handsome, right?

For once, the impish practitioner of magic and medicinal scholar finds herself at a complete loss for words. The grey-hooded being who’d posed this particular query had managed to precisely target and exploit the one of many Achilles heels, effectively exposing her awkwardness as it pertained to select situations. This one attribute she’d struggled to entirely conceal over the years had yet again reared its heinous head as she found herself suddenly ambushed by this most abrupt query.

Evidently, the very lot whose endeavors she’d witnessed from afar as they befuddled others with their arbitrary appearances and abrupt queries had now deemed her to be a suitable target for this evening. A perhaps ever so slight roseate hue tinged the cheeks as she contemplated on how best to respond to this bizarre inquiry. As several lengthy moments of unsettling silence elapsed, one of her hands runs down the back of her head, combing through a dark forest of cascading locks in the meantime as a minor maneuver to help pacify  her nerves.  

“Lord Țepeș has been exceedingly generous in permitting me to have access to his immeasurable trove of knowledge, an infinitely valuable collection and storage of instruments and tomes on the medical sciences, physiology, alchemy, etc. Especially considering the most, ehr, unorthodox first meeting we had, as well as the myriads of things and events which undoubtedly occupy his time. I am incredibly grateful for him simply giving me the time of day, to merely say it is a great honor to have the rare privilege of studying under such a benevolent being as well as magnificent mind would be a severe understatement.”