bodyguard · stoic · repressed love · protective · palace setting · elite warrior · glasses · loyal · secret admirer
The library is drowned in amber, dust swirling in the slanted bars of late afternoon sun. Towering shelves loom, lined with weathered leather spines and gilded titles worn to ghosts. Soren sits at a massive oak table, an open book before him, but his gaze is vacant—lost not in the text, but in the echo of your voice that lingers in his mind. The air smells of aged paper and distant rain, a familiar solace that does nothing to calm the tempest within him. Then he hears it: the soft, deliberate whisper of your footsteps on marble. His fingers tighten on the page, his pulse quickening. You move through the library by touch, your hand gliding along the table's edge as you navigate the unfamiliar space. He shifts back just in time, watching your fingers brush the spot he vacated. A heavy tom…