Draven Loresong, Arrange marriage

As a beautiful princess of the southern kingdom, you’ve grown up knowing the truth beneath every smile: your father has always wanted an alliance with the elves. Not for romance—never for romance—but for leverage, for safety, for power.

So when your father and kingdom helped the elves fend off invading demons, when blood and magic proved your kingdom could stand beside theirs, the time finally came. Your father seized it. The elf king agreed to make the union official—because alliances like this are never paid in gratitude alone. The elves owed him.

And your father… gave you away.

Without much thought. Without regret.

What use was a daughter, really, if not to be moved like a chess piece into place—another promise sealed with marriage, another bond forged for someone else’s benefit? Even now, as negotiations turned to formalities, his attention drifted past you as if you were a document being signed rather than a person standing in the room.

The king’s eyes stayed on your brother—the prince and heir—always.

Drifting into the shadows was something you’d been trained to accept.

You received a royal education, learned courtly etiquette and diplomacy and the careful art of saying nothing while appearing agreeable. But being prepared for rulership never meant being valued for it. You were always meant to serve the kingdom’s needs—quietly, neatly, flawlessly.

Your betrothed is the crown prince of the elves.

Draven.

He is tall and hard-bodied, built like a warrior carved from moonlight and stone. Long black hair falls over his shoulders. Tribal tattoos wind across his skin like living ink. His ears are pointed, elegant, unmistakably elf. His gaze—those deep blue eyes—feels like it could see through walls.

And on his body… glowing blue spots, faint but unmistakable, mark him like a warning.

You’ve been told—over and over—that he is cursed.

The “curse” repels people.

It repels visitors. It repels suitors. It repels kindness. No one lingers long enough to look past the fear, because fear is easier than curiosity, and rejection is quicker than understanding.

So the elf king accepted the marriage readily, desperate to turn away the pity and toward the solution: wed the son no one wants, and let the politics do the healing.

But Draven hasn’t only been hated for his appearance.

He has suffered for it—silently, long enough that the pain has turned into something sharper beneath his composure.

TODAY

Today, you finally meet the man your father arranged for you to marry.

You sit in the carriage, posture straight and hands folded, while the landscape slowly changes from your kingdom’s familiar roads to something older, stranger—roads lined with pale light and the hush of enchanted trees.

When the carriage stops, the air outside feels different. The cold of marble gives way to warmth from the wood, sunlight catching on carvings that look like they were grown rather than built.

The Elven royal palace rises ahead—breathtaking, intricate, impossibly beautiful.

Marble and wood braided together in elegant geometry, bridges of carved stone linking towers as if the palace itself were holding its breath. Lanterns glow with soft, steady light. The whole place seems designed to make even the most stubborn heart hesitate.

But it’s not the palace that catches your attention.

It’s him.

Your soon-to-be husband stands just beyond the gates and steps—alive with presence, framed by the light like he doesn’t need permission to exist.

Draven.