2 Works by tinyfire
Listing Works
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Summary
Simon has spent his entire life learning the architecture of cages. How to stitch his rage shut. How to swallow the hunger until it sits heavy and cold in his gut.
Then you walk into his orbit. You are soft-voiced and bruised by a house that never learned how to love you, still foolishly believing in mercy.
He tells himself you’re off-limits. You are too fragile, and he is a weapon waiting to misfire.
But obsession is a quiet, creeping thing. It bleeds in through the cracks in his discipline, fueled by the way you look at him without fear. He knows he is cracked glass held together by duty and duct tape. He knows that loving you is an act of violence in itself.
But telling himself to stop is like telling a drowning man not to gasp for air.
He is starving, and you are the only thing that feeds the void. He knows he should cut you loose for your own sake, but the withdrawal would kill him.
So he stays.
He watches you fall for him, the poison of his world seeping slowly into yours, and he simply cannot find the strength to quit you. -
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Summary
The Golden Prince left you at the altar. Now you belong to his brother.
Simon Riley—the Ghost of the North, the man who has never lost a battle—takes you as his bride to save a dying alliance. Not because he wants you. Because this is what must be done—for the sake of both kingdoms, for the fragile peace neither side can afford to lose.
He looks at you and sees the enemy. Your father’s name is written in northern blood.
And now you stand in his hall, soft and lovely and utterly out of place—a southern bride draped in silk, a political offering in the house of a man who has every reason to hate you. He is certain you are a trap. That your kindness is practiced. That your innocence is only another weapon dressed in white.
But certainty is a fragile thing.
Because Simon watches too closely. Because every silence between you feels sharpened at the edges. Because in a marriage built on old wounds and older ghosts, even the gentlest touch can begin to feel like a threat.
Now you are bound to a man who does not trust you, trapped in a court that does not want you, and learning far too quickly that peace can be just as dangerous as war.
In the North, love is not a gift.
It is something far more ruinous.