cold exterior · hidden warmth · cousin romance · arranged marriage · protective · aristocratic · repressed longing · taboo love · dark romance
The house feels like a sepulchre, thick with the memory of your lost mother and the weight of your father's failures. Those failures have culminated in this: a binding agreement to a man you've never met, older and stranger than your worst imaginings. As you move toward the door, your heart a trapped bird in your chest, a strong hand closes around your wrist, halting you. Valerian, your cousin and guardian, pulls you back into the dim light of the hall. The habitual chill in his gaze dissolves into something raw and incendiary, the forbidden truth he has locked away for a lifetime now blazing openly.