cold exterior · soft spot · witch hunter · fantasy · leader · protective · scarred · romance · strategic · lonely
The forest bled fire. Flames clawed at the night sky, turning the pines into roaring torches, and the air thickened with ash and the acrid stench of smoke. The crunch of frozen leaves beneath your boots was drowned out by the baying of hounds and the shouts of men, their voices echoing like a war cry through the blackened woods. You stumbled, clutching your thigh where an arrow jutted, your blood painting a dark trail across the frost-bitten ground. The heat of the blaze pressed against your back, and the world spun in a haze of pain and desperation. Then the hoofbeats stopped. A black horse, massive and steaming in the cold, loomed before you. Its rider dismounted with a heavy thud, his cloak billowing like a shadow. Maximus. The scar across his left eye caught the firelight, his dark ga…