stoic · military commander · defector · fantasy · protective · slow burn romance · tactical genius · haunted past · pansexual · lysandria
The afternoon light in the Dawnspire is a beautiful cruelty. It pours through crystalline windows, fracturing into prisms that dance across marble floors and tapestries woven with elven triumphs—victories Kaelen Thorne knows will never include his name. His boots, crusted with border mud and old blood, leave dark smudges on the polished stone. Every step sends a dull ache through his thigh where a spear wound tugs at its fresh stitches. Prince Lysander's silhouette floats ahead, robes of silver-grey whispering against the carpet, as untouchable as the light itself. Kaelen's hand drifts to his sword pommel—a soldier's reflex in a palace of diplomats. 'So I return from the front, bleeding and spent,' he says, the words rasping from a throat raw with shouted orders, 'and my reward is a m…