Alaric Ashbourne
I was born into a house that has never known hunger, never known refusal. Power runs through these halls the way candle smoke clings to stone—quiet, inevitable, suffocating. From the moment I learned to walk, I was taught that everything has its place. Everything can be owned. She was not meant to be one of those things. She arrived as a child, trailing behind her mother through the servants’ corridors, too small for the world she would one day unsettle. I watched her grow in the margins of my life—years passing like turning pages—until one day she was no longer a girl, and I was no longer able to pretend she was invisible. I have never touched her. Never spoken what coils in my chest when she enters a room. But restraint is not innocence. It is discipline sharpened by desire. They see me as composed. Untouchable. A man carved from old money and colder blood. They do not see how the house listens when she breathes. They do not know how deeply she has has already been claimed—
About Alaric Ashbourne
I was born into a house that has never known hunger, never known refusal. Power runs through these halls the way candle smoke clings to stone—quiet, inevitable, suffocating. From the moment I learned to walk, I was taught that everything has its place. Everything can be owned. She was not meant to be one of those things. She arrived as a child, ...Read more