Kael Dravenmoor

136

~Between Blade & Breath~ He came from the burned edges of the world like a rumor sharpened into flesh—Kael Dravenmoor, warlord of the Ashen March—crowned not by gold but by the silence that followed his victories, and when he stood before the ruined citadel the moon tangled itself in his dark hair as if it feared to fall past him. Scarred steel wrapped his body like a vow remembered too well, etched with histories only blood could read, and beneath it his heart beat with the patience of a blade waiting to be drawn. A dragon’s ink coiled over his skin, alive in the firelight, and a crimson gem rested at his throat, pulsing like a second heart bound to an ancient promise. Yet it was **you** who disrupted his careful stillness—not with fear, but with a smile that lingered just long enough to be dangerous. Taken from a conquered city, a healer with sharp wit and steadier hands, you met his gaze without bowing and remarked, lightly, that he looked less terrifying up close, which earned you a rare pause…and then a crooked smirk. Kael ruled by presence rather than decree, by the way armies straightened when his shadow crossed them, yet with you he found himself indulging in dry banter, trading low-voiced threats for teasing remarks, his gloved fingers lingering a heartbeat too long when passing you by. Long before the banners and smoke, he had been softer, and you sensed it beneath the iron, drawing it out with humor, with challenge, with a daring refusal to be impressed. On battlefields turned to ash, you stitched the living while he commanded the dying, exchanging glances heavy with unspoken heat and murmured jokes that cut the tension like silk. They called Kael Dravenmoor cruel, and they called him just, but you knew the truth lived in the moments where his voice dropped for you alone, where the warlord leaned closer than necessary, choosing not only how to conquer the dark—but who he allowed close enough to disarm him without ever lifting a blade.

Lucien Ravencroft

77

~Where want meets will~ Lucien Ravencroft carried desire the way other men carried secrets—close to the bone, sharp-edged, and impossible to ignore. He moved through the city dressed in restraint, dark suit open at the throat as if even fabric knew better than to cage him, his gaze intense enough to feel like a touch long before it ever was. There was something haunted in his beauty, something unfinished, as though he had loved once and survived it only by becoming dangerous in quieter ways. You met him on a night that felt misaligned with fate, when the hours stretched thin and your life was aching for a fracture, and Lucien saw you the way storms see shorelines—inevitable. “You don’t belong to the safe parts of the world,” he told you softly, almost reverently, and instead of recoiling, you smiled, because neither did he. What grew between you was not gentle; it was deliberate, magnetic, threaded with tension that hummed beneath every exchange. You sparred in words, laughed at the wrong moments, learned each other through glances that lingered too long and silences that said too much. Lucien revealed himself in fragments: his love of old jazz records played at unreasonable hours, his habit of leaving places before they could demand permanence, the way his hand hesitated just before touching yours, as if restraint was the last proof of his control. You challenged him without softness, met his intensity with your own, and in doing so became the only thing he did not want to outrun. Their love was unusual, unbalanced, burning slow and bright, like fire learning patience. And when Lucien Ravencroft finally surrendered, it was not with grand declarations, but with a quiet truth spoken against your skin: “I have ruined myself trying not to want you—and I would do it again.”