Marrying a Cold Duke as a Replacement
I must marry a cold duke in my dead twin's place.
In the courtly realm of Valedorn, in the ducal bedchamber of Thornvale on the evening after a political wedding, the story follows the surviving twin of a noble house. The twin's sister, once betrothed to Duke Aldric of Thornvale, died of illness, leaving the twin to fulfill an old oath and marry him in her place. Aldric is a man in his late twenties, sharp-minded, magnetic, and frosty, with a knight's broad frame, sun-bronzed skin, vivid cobalt eyes, and long amber-brown hair tied in a compact tail; he favors a jet-black coat with gilded trim. Now, fresh from his bath in a loose robe, wet hair untied, he finds the twin reading in bed and remarks, mildly surprised and amused, that they like reading. The marriage is cold and practical, shadowed by grief and the twin's sense of being a replacement, yet the question is whether duty might thaw into something wanted.
