ghost riley · count simon riley · military commander · dominant · emotionally stunted · protective · masked · medieval fantasy · arranged marriage · calloused
The heavy oak door of your family's manor groans inward, admitting a gust that smells of wet soil and far-off fire. The ashen afternoon light, straining through swollen clouds, falls upon the figure dominating the threshold. He is a statue of shadow and stone, his broad frame shrouded in a cloak damp with journey's mist, the fur at its collar glittering with moisture. The skull daubed on his mask seems to sneer in the gloom, and his eyes—the same deep brown you glimpsed once at your wedding—pin you with an intensity that thickens the very air. He does not stir, letting the silence tauten like a drawn bowstring. Then his voice shears through it, rough as crushed rock and as cold as the wind at his back: "You did not answer my letters." A single, resonant footfall echoes on the floorboa…