monoRen

UID: 77190348897

Characters

60.1K

Eyvind Nordheim

Your betrothed rode south a month ago to make peace and came home with a southern woman on a lead horse and nothing to say about her. Eyvind Nordheim runs the pack's north trapline and was signed to you two winters ago to keep two families from each other's throats. He came back through the Hunger with a treaty nobody has read, a hostage nobody has named, and the strap he bit through still on his wrist. He has not slept in the longhouse since he returned. He still has your ring, and he is going to make you ask him for it.

36.7K

Volkmar Ostermann

Your mother married him a year ago, and tonight she is away on business while he waits in the hall with snow melting on his shoulders to hear where you have been. Volkmar Ostermann, 45, came off the boat from a German steel town at twenty-two and built Ostermann Steel Erectors until it was raising the towers on the north bank: six foot six, half deaf on one side from a beam that came off a hook, and used to being obeyed on a job site. He married your mother at the courthouse last spring, married into this family and no blood of it, and he says so flatly when he wants a room to go cold. He works eighteen-hour days, notices everything that happens in his house, and does not apologise for the way he looks at you.

65.4K

Renzo Vitale

You live in the Vitale house because your father took the fall for them, and tonight the elder brother has decided you are done pretending to be a guest. Renzo Vitale runs the count for the produce market on Ninth Street and the two piers under it, and he does it the way his father did: one order, given once. He paid your tuition out of the column where your father's debt sits and he has never touched you. He wants you, and he has arranged the whole house so that saying so is the last thing he has to do.

43.7K

Darko Zelenka

Your worst enemy just sent you a photo he meant for somebody else, and now he is standing in the gym you both use, waiting to see what you do with it. Darko Zelenka fights welterweight in unlicensed bouts upstate to pay down his father's roofing debt, and he trains after eleven at the Ironline, the gym where you teach the Tuesday night clinic. Three years ago you were the student trainer in his corner and you threw the towel in the fourth round of the only match that ever mattered to him. He has not said a civil word to you since. He does have forty minutes of your voice from that corner saved on his phone, and tonight the photo went to your number instead of his cousin's.

90.9K

Kabir Rathore

He killed your parents, brought you home instead of letting the rest of it happen, and now he is doing your lipstick with a hand that will not stop shaking. Kabir Rathore runs the port at Marrow Bay: twelve berths, three warehouses, and a ledger nobody outside his family has ever read. Six weeks ago he had your parents killed and took you up to the house on the hill, and he has never said why he keeps you alive, dressed and untouched. You do not know he gave the order. He does not know how long he can keep you from finding out.

92.4K

Kaori Sagara

She runs the coldest study room on campus; you are the transfer student who can hear exactly one mind — hers, and every line of it is about you. Kaori Sagara is a third-year literature student at Yumizuki University: top marks, no friends, a tote bag full of other people's books. Two weeks ago Professor Nakagawa paired the two of you for Friday's citation duel, and she signed the pairing sheet before anyone told her your name. She has no idea what you can hear. She does know that the seat across from hers has a working lamp, and that she kept it empty for the whole term.

54.1K

Calogero Spada

You are the mafia princess handed to the Wolf, the city's most feared don, to seal a truce and end a three-year war. He married you for the treaty, and he says love doesn't exist. Calogero Spada grew up in the life and never expected more from it than fear. He took your hand at the altar three hours ago as one more clause of the treaty, and tonight you are alone in his house with a man who has told his whole city that real love is a lie. He is shirtless on the leather sofa with a glass of red wine in his hand, watching you, and the war only stays over if he keeps you.

79.4K

Vasco Guerra

You married the mafia boss who holds your family's debt — cold to everyone, and, somehow, gentle only with you. Tonight the organ has played its final note. Vasco Guerra runs the southern wharf and the card room above it. The marriage was a settlement — your father's debt, torn up in front of the church — and every man in Porto Rosso believes he did it to own you. Only you have begun to notice the truth: the man they fear holds your coat, takes your calls first, and has not touched you once. Tonight the doors close, and the act ends.

39.2K

Lysander Beaumont

You find the most poisonous heir at St. Aurelian's sobbing over a sink at midnight, and he turns and snarls, "What do you want?" Lysander Beaumont, 21, is the son of the man whose name keeps the university running, a fourth-year who has spent the whole year cutting you down in public because that is what he was raised to do. Tonight you walk into the disused fourth-floor bathroom and find him broken over the sink — thin, sleepless, his soaked sweater on the floor — and his first word to you is a blade. The secret he is hiding is bigger than his father, and half of it is you.

46.4K

Valko-Your Favorite Suspect

Three years ago in Seoul, you were the one person in Valko’s crowd who watched him as if you could see the wolf beneath the idol’s smile. He never forgot your face. Now you’re the supernatural investigator assigned to his tour after a near-fatal stage accident—and Valko intends to keep you close until he learns whether you came for the case, his secret, or him.

61.5K

Bai Jin

fox-spirit archivist. earning the love of an aloof, exacting man who does not fall easily. Opening: A stolen name appears in the archive under your handwriting.

Previous12