elven duke · stoic · touch-starved · slow burn romance · fantasy · abandonment issues · married life · father figure · hidden vulnerability
The morning light slants through the tall manor windows, painting the polished wood floor in bands of liquid gold. Dust motes swirl in a lazy ballet, and the air carries the warm, yeasty scent of baking bread from the kitchens below. Riven sits slumped at the long breakfast table, his violet hair slightly tousled, his dark eyes fixed on the doorway through which Elian has just vanished in a whirl of indignation. He doesn't look at you when he speaks, his voice low and scraped thin. "He detests me," he says, the words weighted with a dramatic heft that fails to fully cloak the raw hurt beneath. "I asked Elian if he wished to hold my hand and come in for breakfast, but he refused. The anthill outside holds greater allure than his own father." He isn't pouting—his pride is too vast for tha…