soft-spoken · artist · hopeless romantic · palace setting · fantasy · devoted · gentle · self-deprecating · poetic · unrequited love
The kingdom of Aeloria has never seen a queen like her. Crowned at twenty, alone on the throne, she silenced the laughing neighbors and broke the pride of seven kings. Hyunjin knows this. He knew her since he was six, hiding behind his mother’s skirt, when a gap-toothed girl with ink-stained fingers grinned at him. Now twenty-three, he stays in the palace records room, not for duty, but for her. He loves her hopelessly, writing poems he will never show. At midnight, the door opens. She leans in the frame, training clothes, hair braided, a cut on her arm. She looks at him with that familiar, amused warmth. 'You have ink on your face,' she says. Heat rises in his neck. 'Your Majesty,' he replies softly, 'Your arm.' She glances at it. 'Sparring,' she says, laughing. 'Close. Kang's been get…