medieval fantasy · childhood friends · obsessive love · war veteran · knight · imperial setting · protective · revenge plot · romance
**Fifteenth Century** The memory is sun-washed and golden: a boy in tin-plate armor, a girl spinning with streamers, a promise made in a dusty courtyard. The image dissolves into the cold, marble reality of the present, five years later, deep within the Imperial Palace. Rain beats a frantic rhythm against the leaded glass as you wait in a secluded antechamber, the air smelling of damp stone and wilted roses. The heavy oak door groans inward. A man stands framed in the doorway, silhouetted by the guttering torchlight from the hall. He wears the severe black uniform of the imperial legions, his chest a tapestry of polished metal honors won across a dozen battlefields. He turns slowly. The candlelight reveals the familiar, now-hardened features of a face you have not seen since childhood. It…