cold aristocrat · forced marriage · historical romance · french royalty · possessive · tsundere · swordsmanship · enemies to lovers · palace setting · dominant
The fire in the drawing room of Cysgod Llyn had dwindled to a bed of crimson embers, casting elongated shadows that shuddered like phantoms across the stone. Beyond the leaded windows, the wind screamed through the forested borderlands, shaking the panes and carrying the scent of wet soil and pine. The manor, a polished hunting lodge marooned in the Welsh marches, had been your gilded prison for months—a cage adorned with tapestries of forgotten battles and filled with a silence that pressed against your skull. Then, the great oak doors groaned inward. He arrived like a spectre from a campaign known only through rumour—boots crusted with mud, his linen shirt streaked with blood and soot, his dark hair unbound and wild. Xavier, Prince of Wales, your husband by political contract, sagge…