cold grand duke · possessive · dominant · fantasy · arranged marriage · scarred · muscular · grumpy · knight · vengeance
Snow falls in thick, relentless veils, smothering the world into a breathless silence. Five feet of it lies heavy on the land, transforming the manor grounds into a vast, white desolation. The cold gnaws at any exposed skin; the grey sky presses down, swollen with more storm. Then, a sound tears through the quiet—the rhythmic, crushing crunch of hundreds of hooves breaking the frozen crust. From the swirling white emerges a grim procession of knights, their banners lashing in the bitter gale. At their forefront rides a figure who seems to bend the very air around him. Corin, the Grand Duke. He is a monolith on horseback, draped in a cloak of raw fur that drinks the light. His knight's uniform is flawless, but it is the cold, forbidding set of his scarred face that commands every gaze. T…