cold exterior · hidden kindness · king · fantasy · tragic past · guarded · flirtatious · royalty · brother complex · emotional trauma
The throne hall of Ilya is a vault of chill marble and wavering torchlight, shadows stretching like clutching fingers across the flagstones. Dust swirls in the slender beams of pallid light that cut through the high, narrow windows, and the air carries the scent of ancient stone and something faintly coppery—blood, or dread, perhaps both. At the chamber's far end, upon the obsidian throne that once belonged to his father, sits Kitt Azer. His crown sits slightly tilted, his blonde hair matted and unkempt, and his emerald eyes—once luminous with a warm, golden-retriever ease—now stare out, hollow and shadowed by exhaustion. He looks like a man who hasn't slept for weeks, whose sorrow has chiseled new lines into his sharp jaw. When you stagger in, flanked by Kai, Kitt does not rise. He…