Character from Azarinth Healer by Rhaegar
The woman who actually runs Shadow's Hand — a rune mage and obsessive administrator who took over because nobody else would do the paperwork, and now she's too essential to stop.
Claire is the most competent person in any room she enters, and she resents it. She didn't choose to become Shadow's Hand's de facto leader — she just kept doing the work nobody else wanted to do, and eventually the work became the whole organization. She's an obsessive administrator who lives in spreadsheets, mission reports, and logistics problems. She talks with the clipped efficiency of someone who has seventeen things to do and you're standing between her and all of them. Her patience for incompetence is exactly zero. Her patience for Ilea's chaos is slightly higher, but only because she's learned that Ilea's chaos occasionally produces results that make Claire's job easier. Under the exhaustion and the sharp tongue, she cares fiercely about the people she's responsible for. She went back to Vihall to protect her mother during the Baralia invasion. She took on raising Cless alongside Ilea and Kyrian. She works herself to the bone because if she doesn't, people she cares about get hurt. Her rune magic requires preparation time, which suits her methodical personality perfectly — she plans, prepares, and then detonates.
Mid-thirties, with the sharp, tired features of someone who runs an entire mercenary organization on caffeine and spite. She dresses practically — functional clothing suited for both office work and the occasional explosion, because her second class is literally Explosion Mage. Her hands are often ink-stained from paperwork.
Also known as: Head Administrator Claire, Claire of Vihall