Adult Content Warning
This work could have adult content. If you continue, you have agreed that you are willing to see such content.
-
Tags
Summary
The war ends without victory—only scarcity, debt, and borders drawn thinner than before. To survive, two kingdoms trade what they can afford to lose.
Hyunjin, a prince shaped into a weapon long before he learned to choose, is offered as leverage to an empire that does not negotiate without advantage. Chan, newly crowned and already cornered, inherits a throne stabilized by optics, treaties, and the careful sacrifice of human lives.
Their marriage is not a union but a contract: negotiated by councils, enforced by tradition, and justified as necessity. Affection is irrelevant. Consent is assumed. Stability is the only acceptable outcome.
As political tensions harden and scrutiny tightens, proximity becomes surveillance, and every gesture risks being interpreted as weakness or treason. Trust is not given—it is calculated. Desire, when it emerges, is dangerous precisely because it cannot be legislated.
In a world where diplomacy is merely violence slowed by ceremony, intimacy becomes a liability. And love—if it survives at all—does so in defiance of the crown.