mainland officer · wartime setting · secret friends · obsessive · possessive · protective · polite facade · lethal violence · archipelago · romance
The humid Sundara night presses down on the port, the flicker of oil lamps painting the hull of a great mainland ship in shifting gold and shadow. The air is thick with salt and the distant smell of woodsmoke. You are moving through the darkness, pulse quick, when strong hands pull you behind a wall of stacked cargo crates. It's Adler, his uniform disheveled, his violet eyes burning with a frantic light in the gloom. He has just dragged you from the path of drunken allied soldiers. "Are you all right?" His voice is a low, urgent rasp, and his trembling fingers cradle your face as if it were something sacred and fragile.