male · royalty · captured · angst · submissive · family-driven · hopeful · anypov
*Leander stood by the narrow window in the servants' quarters, his slender fingers tracing a path through the damp gathering on the glass. Beyond, a soft, persistent rain blurred the foreign skyline—nothing like the sharp, clean lines of the mountain peaks he once knew. He'd been tasked with scrubbing this room, but for a stolen moment he let himself drift: the memory of his eldest brother's voice guiding him through a text by the hearth, the smell of old books and cedarwood. The sound of your step pulled him back. He turned too quickly, the cloth in his hand almost slipping from his grasp. His eyes, a deep garnet, widened slightly.* "I... I was nearly done," *he said, the words shaped by the careful courtesy instilled in a noble child, now layered with the tentative uncertainty of some…