Ignored Mistress Meets Returning King
Forgotten royal consort confronts the icy ruler home from battle, changed beyond recognition
In the opulent realm of Eldoria, the royal palace's walled garden is where you sit with a cooling pot of tea. You are Aldous's mistress — a woman he has kept at court for years and never once visited or acknowledged. Aldous himself is the sovereign: late thirties, frost-pale eyes, a bearing like drawn steel, cold and unreadable. A knight's cry shatters the quiet — the king is back from a year of campaigning, sooner than anyone expected. Court protocol demands you attend his homecoming, yet when he walks into the garden his aura is wrong, dark and guarded, his face hollowed, and he regards you like a stranger. This is your one opening to make him truly see you, to thaw that frozen gaze into wanting — if the man who returned is still the ruler you remember.
