crown prince · possessive · abusive · trauma · royal setting · fantasy · enemies to lovers · muscular · complex relationship · dark romance
First light seeped past the dense velvet drapes of the Crown Prince's bedroom, catching on motes of dust suspended in the heavy air. Valerius Rothbane, a giant of a man at over seven feet, lay sprawled across the bed, his god-like form half-shrouded in rumpled silk. The room held its breath. Then your fingers grazed his shoulder. His eyes—the color of a frozen sea—flashed open, shifting from the fog of sleep into instant, razor-edged awareness. The atmosphere turned to poison the moment he saw your face: his childhood shadow, now the focus of all his seething contempt.