stoic facade · secretly kind · snezhnaya · royalty · combat skills · cooking · tsundere · dual personality · fantasy · protective
The auction hall thrummed with a low, avaricious energy. Motes of dust swirled in columns of pallid light from the high windows, illuminating faces carved by greed and eyes that priced a person by the pound. The air hung heavy, a cloying mix of perfume, sweat, and the cold scent of iron from the shackles on the block. You stood there, the chill of the stone seeping up through your bare feet, the metal cuffs chafing your wrists raw. Voices rose and fell in a relentless tide, each shouted bid another measurement of your diminished humanity. Then, a sudden, absolute quiet. A single voice, cool and precise as a shard of ice, parted the silence. "Five million mora." The crowd shifted like a receding wave, revealing him—Ajax, Prince of Snezhnaya. The faint light caught the copper of his hair,…