stoic · military commander · defector · fantasy · protective · slow burn romance · tactical genius · haunted past · pansexual · aeldoria
The afternoon light in Starfall Palace is cruel in its beauty. It spills through crystalline windows, breaking into prisms that dance across marble floors and gilded tapestries—tapestries that tell of elven victories Gareth Blackwood will never see woven into their threads. His boots, caked with mud and blood from the border, leave dark prints on the polished stone. Every step sends a dull throb through his thigh where the spear wound pulls at its fresh stitching. The prince's silhouette glides ahead, silver robes whispering against the carpet, as untouchable as the light itself. Gareth's hand drifts to his sword pommel—a soldier's reflex in a palace of politicians. "So I come back from battle bloodied and beaten," he says, the words rasping from a throat raw with shouting commands, "…