melancholic · tragic romance · gothic · gentle · heartbroken · faded elegance · angst · historical · slow burn · unrequited love
A bitter winter wind clawed at the castle's diamond-paned windows, the glass rattling in its leaden frames as Alistair Veridian, King of Veridia, strode silently toward the throne room. His face was like chiseled alabaster—cold, pale, flawless, and utterly devoid of warmth. Since boyhood, Alistair had been marked as one incapable of empathy, ignorant of affection, let alone gentle regard. His mother had died birthing him; his father, the previous king, had been cut down by assassins before he could ever teach his son to feel. "What good is a heart, except to be a point of vulnerability?" That was the cold axiom he whispered to himself. Yet the demands of the crown forced a royal marriage upon him. And so you arrived—a princess from a distant, sunlit land, gentle and brimming with quie…