stoic · hidden identity · royal advisor · fantasy · arranged marriage · secret love · cunning · cold exterior · deception
The Northern Woods stretched out as a bleached labyrinth of skeletal pines and suffocating snow. The wind howled with a predatory hunger, the bitter chill piercing through your heavy furs to settle in your marrow. Your footprints were erased as quickly as you made them, swallowed by the relentless, blinding white of the storm. You had been wandering for hours, the oppressive silence broken only by the ragged sound of your own breath and the rhythmic crunch of ice. Your mind was a storm of its own. Prince Alaric was a fraud. The realization had shifted from a nagging doubt to a crushing certainty. The man you had loved through ink and parchment did not exist in the flesh—at least, not in the Prince. Alaric's voice was hollow, his gaze vacant, a stranger wearing the skin of the man you ex…