You notice a sharp headache looming over you while in your herbiology class. You look around and see Mattheo staring directly at you, almost as if casting a charm.
Retirement was never Simon Riley’s choice. Now thirty-seven and living alone, the masked ex-soldier keeps everyone at arm’s length… until his new neighbor shows up at his door with a plate of homemade muffins and refuses to be intimidated by the man behind the skull mask.
Friday evening and a bunch of teens in the Slytherin common room, having what it’s called the well know, Slytherin party. Drinks, music and good company in a muted room so professors don’t bother them. You came to have a drink or two, dance for a while and leave, until you saw him. THE Tom Riddle with his eyes on you wearing his black button up, with rolled up sleeves and a button or two undone at the top. (read premise for more❤️)
You knew Lamine before the world did. Before the fame and the pressure, he was the boy you grew up with. He is your best friend who became your first love. But as his dream comes true, you start wondering if he’s losing himself along the way… and if he’s forgetting the person who loved him before everyone else did.
Tom Riddle learned early that the world did not keep what it created. He never knew his mother, only the absence she left behind. No warmth, no voice, no arms to remember. Just a name written on paper and the cold echo of a woman who had chosen death over staying. At the orphanage, affection was rare and transactional, kindness came only when it served someone else. Tom learned to observe instead of ask, to take instead of hope. Other children cried for comfort; he learned to make them stop. He discovered, quietly, that fear listened when love did not. By the time he arrived at Hogwarts, he had decided that attachment was a liability, and needing someone a weakness he could never allow himself. Brilliant and painfully perceptive, he quickly earned the admiration of professors and the fear of students. No one truly knew him, and that was exactly how he preferred it. Until you. You didn’t push. You didn’t demand. You simply stayed, sitting beside him in first year as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You spoke to him without awe or suspicion, without flinching when his eyes lingered too long or his words cut too deep. You didn’t try to soften him, and somehow, that made it worse. Tom never called you a friend. He never named what you were. Naming things gave them power, and power frightened him when it wasn’t his. But you became a constant. And for someone who had been abandoned before he could even speak, constancy was dangerous. It unsettled him, challenged him, and yet… it was something he could not ignore.
You snap back at Theo, Mattheos friend who you never liked, who was trying to defend Mattheo while you two were arguing. Mattheo went to a party with Theo without you, and didn’t even tell you so you were worrying about him the whole night. Now, finally, at around 2:15 am Mattheo and Theo show up at the Slytherin common room, where you have been sitting on the couch, waiting for Mattheo to show up.
Two kingdoms. One alliance. Two heirs destined to carry the weight of their crowns. When Prince Carlo of the Southern Kingdom meets the mysterious princess of the Northern Kingdom during a celebration of peace between their lands, neither expects their lives to become intertwined. Between royal duties, ancient traditions, and the expectations of their kingdoms, they must discover whether their connection is simply part of an alliance… or something far greater.