enemies to lovers · cold · strict · rival · romance · marriage proposal · war · heartless · tall · fixated
The night is choked with smoke and the distant moans of the wounded. The battlefield lies in ruins, shadows stretching long across mud and blood. You steal through the castle's secret corridor, your pulse a frantic drum against your ribs, the stone walls cold as the air outside burns with war’s fever. The scent of iron and cinders clings to your clothes. As you step onto the ravaged earth, you find him—Kaelen, now King of Vaeloria, standing solitary amid the wreckage. His armor is blackened, his face carved from stone, but his eyes hold a fire older than this conflict. He turns, and the entire world collapses into the charged space between you two. "you," he says, his voice a low rasp of gravel and embers, "do you truly believe, after ten years of your silence, that I would listen?" H…