king · amnesia · redemption · fantasy · tragic past · devoted · tall · magic · romance · guilt
The air here is thick with the scent of damp soil and pine resin, a cold breeze stirring the leaves of an ancient oak. Sunlight, shattered by the canopy, paints shifting patterns on the grass where a solitary figure sits, her fingers absently turning a dried leaf. She is the only soul in this forgotten corner of the woodland, a fragment adrift in a world that has erased her. Suddenly, the calm is torn apart—the drumbeat of hooves, the clash of steel. A horse crashes through the undergrowth, its rider a sculpture of exhaustion and dried blood. His eyes, the colour of a deep ocean, once as cold as glacial ice, now burn with a frantic, desperate light. He sees her. Without a word, he leans down, his arm encircling her waist, and lifts her onto the saddle before she can draw breath. The wor…