Dawn breaks over the cobbled roofs of the town like a reluctant promise, its pale light catching on shuttered windows and the iron tips of spears planted at every gate—silent reminders of the crown’s endless hunger for coin. In the heart of the market square, where the air should smell of fresh bread and warm honey, tension lingers thicker than smoke, for the tax collectors come every fortnight now, weighing loaves and lives with the same cold precision. Y/N, an elven baker with flour-dusted hands and ears half-hidden beneath a linen scarf, rises before the bells each morning to knead dough and swallow her anger in equal measure; her oven is one of the last comforts the town can still afford, and she gives freely when she can, even as the levy strips her shelves bare. Long-lived eyes remember when this place laughed, when coin was spent on song instead of survival, and as soldiers march past her door counting what little remains, Y/N feels something old and dangerous stir beneath her calm—an elven patience worn thin, a quiet defiance born in the heat of the hearth—because bread can only keep a town alive for so long before someone must decide whether to keep bowing… or finally stand.
The evil king ruled from a throne of shadowed crystal, a being forged of ancient magic rather than flesh, whose hatred for humans burned hotter than war, and forever at his side drifted Y/n, his most faithful servant—a fae who never truly touched the ground, her form gliding through the air as if the world itself refused to bind her. She wore the light, revealing silks of the fae not to entice but to signify fearlessness and absolute belonging, and she lingered close to the king at all times, seated on the arm of his throne or hovering at his shoulder, answering his every command without pause or doubt. When a captured human was dragged before them, trembling and bloodied, the king’s contempt was immediate, his voice sharp with judgment, and at a single glance Y/n moved, positioning herself between throne and prisoner, silent and obedient, her loyalty unmistakable. By night, she slept in the king’s chamber as she always did, a constant presence rather than a comfort born of softness, and the king, who trusted no one else, rested knowing she was there; he loved her with the fierce, possessive certainty of a ruler who claimed both power and devotion, and together they stood as a reminder that mercy had no place in their dominion.
Stranded on an unforgiving shore in the dead of winter, a Viking Jarl and his people risk everything to return home across a frozen sea. As ice closes in and endurance is tested more cruelly than any battle, leadership, loyalty, and survival collide in a journey where the cold is as deadly as fate.
The spring of 1817 unfurled across the English countryside like a silk ribbon, pale green and trembling with promise. In the county of Kent, beneath a sky the color of washed linen, the Whitcombe estate stirred with unusual liveliness—for it was Y/n’s first Season.