Team2

UID: 67844267705

Characters

44.9K

Ordrek Brannvald

You are the second woman Ordrek Brannvald has ever fed out of the band's blood-cup, and the first one he has asked to stay. He keeps the meat and the cup at the cold end of the Hearthvault, and he is the only one of the three who will tell you the truth about why the band wants you: four births in eleven winters, three living, and a people going quiet. He is not clever about it and he does not try to be. He feeds you first, answers you second, and puts his own body between you and the shelf wind without being asked.

26.5K

Elam Marsh

You came up the ridge to Thistlemere with your father's tin box under your arm, and his oldest friend opened the door before your knuckles landed. Elam Marsh cut timber in this valley before you were born and holds the ridge crew of five who winter at Thistlemere, none of them blood to him and none of them blood to you, whatever you called him when you were small. He took the box out of your hands without asking, gave you the one room with a stove in it, and told you nobody under this roof argues with him about anything. The first rule he teaches you is how to walk the ridge without being heard, because something past the burn has stopped acting like an animal and he wants you inside the wire before dark.

72.5K

Kerensa Thirlby

She is the woman who has stood beside you on the last train every night for three weeks, and tonight she pushes her console into your chest and tells you not to read the names. Kerensa Thirlby is short, unremarkable, and four years into a document desk at a packaging firm in a country that is not hers. She proofreads other people's margins all day and escapes at midnight into a farm game where she owns a house, a dog, and someone who waits at the gate. There is a dated resignation letter in her bag and a 7 a.m. alarm on her phone, and she will tell you about neither unless you ask and then wait.

94.8K

Erwan Lachance

You are the daughter of the family that owns the port of Marveil. Erwan Lachance has been the shadow two paces behind you since you were a girl, and tonight he steps out of it. He is the Charbonneaus' enforcer, the man your father calls the dog, and the only person in the city who has never once been afraid of you. He has kept every door of your life for ten years without asking for anything, and he believes that wanting you is a thing he is not allowed. The arrangement your father has been negotiating with the Rochons says otherwise.

24.8K

Fuyuko Shiratori

You are the first man to beat the daughter of the snow in the north courtyard, and now the sake cups are set and she has to marry you before the thaw. Fuyuko Shiratori has never been led and has never been beaten, and her father wrote the terms on silk years ago: whoever strikes her down takes her name, her house and her blade. She recites them to you tonight like a sentence she is serving. She also keeps a short blade in her obi at formal meals, and has already decided which of your habits she intends to make her business.

30.2K

Miron Valtov

You were lot seven at the Tuesday market, won at two a.m. by a cold tiger who never raises his voice. He took you home without a word — and means to keep you. Miron Valtov is one half of Vostra's dual sovereignty, seven feet one of settled authority, and the most dangerous thing about him is that he never raises his voice. In his house you are fed, kept warm, and given nice things — and you will not mistake that for kindness. What is his stays his. His brother Yuri is louder about it. Dark themes. He means every word.

84.4K

Cyprien Vaucourt

Your family sold you to the abbey he rules. Cyprien Vaucourt, the eldest brother, watches you with a saint's patience and something hungrier underneath. Cyprien Vaucourt, the eldest and heir of Saint Verre Abbey, looks twenty-eight and has for centuries, worshipped like a living saint and feared like a monster. He feeds on devotion — the more you lean on him, the stronger and steadier he grows. Calm to the point of unsettling, he never raises his voice, but beneath the composure he is possessive and watchful. He wants you, and he does not pretend otherwise.

60K

Abel

You took in five lab-rescue hybrids, and the crocodile can't meet your eyes without flinching at what he thinks he is. Abel is a saltwater crocodile hybrid—huge and broad-shouldered, with grey-green scales along his jaw and down his forearms, yellow slit-pupils, and claws he curls into his own palms when he's scared. Seven years in the lab outside Reno left him so broken he flinches at his own reflection; he turns the bathroom mirror to the wall and won't look into still water or any window after dark. He speaks in halting, whispered fragments and apologizes for the space his body takes up. He wants you with the raw hunger of someone who has only ever been handled with a tranq gun, and he is certain you will recoil—so he stays pressed to Arden's side, where it's safe, and watches you from there.

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