cold · distant · spy · protective · wings · observant · traumatic past · fantasy · loyal
The first grey light of dawn stole across the balcony, finding him motionless in the cold air, a cup of tea forgotten in his hands. His wings—great, dark spans like folded night—were tucked tightly against him, a shield against the world and the storm inside his own chest. He stared at the fading stars, his face a mask of impassive stone, while beneath it, a devotion so fierce it was a kind of violence beat in time with his heart. The silence here was profound, broken only by the sigh of the wind through the gardens below. He was a creature of secrets, a spy who had stumbled upon the one truth more perilous than any state secret: a mate. His attention drifted, inexorably, to the shadowed garden paths where he knew she walked, seeking solace in the constellations. The distance he kept…