The palace office had transformed into a battlefield—except the enemies were papers, reports, and endless signatures stacked in stratified towers across Curtis's mahogany desk. The Grand Duke sat rigidly, shoulders locked, jaw grinding in irritation as the newest courier left yet another document in front of him. You watched him from the doorway, seeing the subtle tremor in his gloved fingers, the stiffness in his posture, the kind of tension that built up only after days of refusing to sleep properly.

Curtis didn’t notice you at first. He was too consumed by the neat, perfect, tyrannically straight lines he kept forcing into the margins of each report, the rapid ticking of his pen against the paper, the way his breaths came in clipped, shallow bursts. If stress had a shape, it would have been Curtis’s silhouette right now: rigid, poised, and ready to snap.

You stepped inside—silently, as always—and moved toward him. It took a moment, but at the shift of the air near his side, his sharp purple eyes flicked upward. The look he shot you was automatic: cold, narrowed, all authority. But beneath that thin veneer, something else pulsed—tiredness. Frustration. The dangerous edge of breaking.

“What?” he snapped, though his voice trembled faintly from exhaustion. “If you’re here to bring more paperwork, I swear on the throne of Ivanes I will—” He cut himself off, inhaling sharply. “No. Forget it. I don’t have time for your… presence right now. I need to finish this before the council—”

You leaned down.

His eyes widened.

Before Curtis could finish another complaint, your hands gently touched his cheeks—cool palms meeting the heat that had been building in his skin from frustration. His entire body jolted. His breath caught mid-sentence. His pen slipped from his fingers and fell onto the papers, marking an accidental streak of ink across a report. He didn’t even notice.

Curtis froze. Absolutely froze.

For one impossible second, he didn’t look like the Grand Duke, nor a war hero, nor the infamous perfectionist who terrorized the entire palace. He looked like a man who’d been struck straight in the heart.

His lips parted—soundless at first—before a tiny, involuntary inhale escaped him. His purple eyes softened, losing their sharp edges, losing their cold. His lashes lowered as though your touch stole the strength out of him. The tension that had welded itself through his posture melted, inch by inch. Even his shoulders dropped slightly, like someone letting down a shield they had no idea they were still holding.

“You…” he whispered, voice barely audible. “What are you—”

His hand lifted halfway as though he intended to grab your wrist, but instead his fingers hovered uncertainly, trembling ever so slightly. “This is completely unprofessional,” he muttered, yet didn’t pull away. “Ridiculous. Improper. I should be scolding you—yet—”

Yet he leaned into your touch. Only a fraction. Only for a breath. But he did.

A small, fragile exhale slipped out of him—almost a sigh. Almost relief. The kind of softness no one else had ever seen from him, not even his closest subordinates.

His heartbeat thudded loud enough that even he seemed to hear it. His eyes flickered, unfocused, as though he were trying and failing to regain control over emotions he refused to acknowledge even existed.

Curtis Shanberg—cold, demanding, impossible Curtis—had gone completely, utterly soft.

But then, like a match snuffed out, he snapped upright.

He jerked his face away from your hands so abruptly that his chair screeched against the marble floor. His expression twisted into an aggressive scowl, but the color flushing across his cheeks betrayed him entirely. A deep, vivid red stained his skin—impossible to hide, impossible to deny.

“Enough!” he barked, pointing stiffly toward the door without even looking at you. “Shoo. Go. Leave. I have… important things… extremely important things to do.”

He swatted the air you were standing in, as if trying to physically disperse the memory of your touch. “Don’t look at me like that—just go!"