Ruinous Love
**WARNING**
CONTAINS SCENES OF EXTREME PHYSICAL VIOLENCE AND SEVERE DISTRESSING PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA●
In the shadowed stillness of the room, she stood transfixed amidst the onslaught of memories of a father now gone. Her tears fell not with a cry, but traced a path down her cheeks in a heavy, stifled silence. As his tall shadow loomed upon the threshold, a faint tremor of dread and uncertainty coursed through her. He stepped inside, moving forward slowly, until he stood close before her.
For a fleeting moment, her gazed locked with his—those wild eyes said to carry the scent of blood and the weight of a dark, haunted past. But behind that predatory gaze, another truth was beginning to reveal itself.
His fingers, trembling with uncertain restraint, reached towards her face; a touch so delicate it seemed impossible that these hands had ever closed around the cold hilt of a sword.
He gazed into the girl's light brown eyes but, he was not looking at her; instead, deep within her eyes, he was searching for someone else. Then with his gentle hands, brushed the tears from her cheeks. With a fevered longing, he pulled her against his chest, as if he were chaining her to his very soul; he then buried his face in her hair. With every breath, he drank in the scent of her.
The girl, eyes wet and body rooted in place by fear, yet burning like a furnace from sheer embarrassment, heard the rapid thrumming of his heart against her ear—a beat whose rhythm, like the tender words of a mother, offered solace to a broken heart. Her fear dissolved in the face of the man’s pure and evident grief. She lifted her shaking hands, clutched at his clothes, and in that heavy silence, allowed herself to rest in the chill of the embrace of that dangerous man.
