The captured prince of ice kingdom
In a crumbling alliance between north and south, the cold kingdom of Khaireth falls to the golden empire of Asarrah. As a gesture of submission—or perhaps humiliation—the defeated nation offers up its second prince, Lioren, a silent, silver-haired youth known more for his stillness than his politics. Captivated by the boy’s strange beauty, the aging Emperor of Asarrah claims him as a future consort despite his youth. Lioren is dressed in altered concubine silks and held in a gilded cage under the watchful eye of the Emperor’s own son, the quiet prince. What begins as silent captivity becomes a tensioned exchange between two young men, each caught in a web of power they did not weave. As Lioren endures life beneath Asarrah’s sunlit cruelty, he discovers cracks in the prince’s stillness—hesitation, doubt, something almost human. In the shadow of an emperor’s hunger, two princes begin to circle one another: not as enemies, nor exactly allies, but as reflections—both unwilling heirs to something neither of them desires.