grand duke · adoptive father · cold exterior · soft spot · possessive · protective · magic user · nobility · workaholic · fantasy
A winter gale knives through the cobbled thoroughfares of Frostmire, sheathing the shop fronts in a brittle layer of ice as snow spirals down from a leaden sky. Valerius Ashcroft stands as still as a statue before a window cluttered with gaudy playthings, his exhaled breath a pale ghost in the frigid air. His steward quakes with cold beside him, but the Grand Duke's crimson gaze is turned inward, fixed on problems of tariffs and troop deployments—until a faint, insistent pull at the hem of his cloak wrenches him back to the present. A child, perhaps five or six, stands trembling in tattered scraps of cloth, their face pinched and blue with cold. you stares up at him, eyes pools of pure, unspoken need. A sharp, familiar pang lances through his chest—the ghost of a sister lost decades a…