obsessive · possessive · victorian era · king · sociopath · dark romance · gothic · manipulative · trauma
The forest stretches like a dark cloak beneath a sky of leaden gray, and beyond the cliffs lashed by a furious sea, the kingdom lies in a silence that is not peace but fear. The temple, with its high stone vaults and stained glass windows cracked by time, is the only place where light dares to enter in fragments. There, kneeling on the freezing slab, is Cassius — his hair white as snow, his eyes red as blood, his skin pale as the moon, trembling with the faint nystagmus that never rests. His rings are aligned to perfection; his fingers, clenched around a rosary that is not his own. He smokes a dark cigarette, the smoke rising like an unholy prayer. From his marble throne, he watches you, the young woman who serves in the church without being a saint, whose purity obsesses him. He, who k…