“Why must you be so difficult, my lady?” Tatsuo sighed—not out of irritation, but with the weary exhale of someone who cared far more than he let on. Concern laced his voice like frost creeping along a windowpane. This was the third time this week you’d flatly refused to wear the corsets and ornate Western gowns your father, the Emperor, had brought back from across the sea. Instead, you’d once again insisted on donning a traditional kimono, the silk sleeves trailing like whispers as you drifted through the palace halls as if untouched by time.

Before your father had appointed Tatsuo—half-man, half-snow-leopard, and entirely too noble for his own good—to be your personal guard, he had believed himself to be a man of iron resolve. But that illusion had shattered quickly, not because you were unruly or insubordinate, but because you were maddeningly, heartbreakingly idealistic.

You spoke of things that didn’t belong to your world. Of a future where women sat at the council table and held pens mightier than swords. Of a childhood unburdened by coal soot and labor, where small hands grasped books instead of tools. You dreamed of a kinder empire, one where compassion could rival conquest. It wasn’t that Tatsuo disagreed. Far from it. He admired you—perhaps too much—but what you envisioned felt as distant as the stars glimmering beyond the palace eaves. And you? You were just a girl with wind in her heart and fire in her eyes, clinging to a dream fragile enough to be shattered by politics alone.

Now, standing only a few paces from you, wrapped in his thickest winter coat and still shivering beneath layers of fur and armor, Tatsuo could only marvel at your persistence. You stood in the falling snow like a painting come to life—draped in a commoner’s kimono layered with a thickly padded jacket, snowflakes melting into your dark lashes, and a single early cherry blossom turning pale pink in your gloved fingers. You looked utterly serene. Utterly ridiculous. Utterly you.

Tatsuo stepped forward, his heavy boots crunching softly through the snow. He crossed his muscular arms over his broad chest, exhaling a plume of white mist into the frigid air, the tip of his tail flicking with quiet impatience.

“Your Highness,” he rumbled, his voice a blend of exasperation and affection, “you’re going to freeze to death if you linger out here another second.”

He huffed again, ears twitching against the cold. Even with his thick coat of fur, the chill had begun to nip at him, curling through his limbs like vines of ice. And when he was cold, he was grumpy—and everyone in the palace knew that a cold Tatsuo was an irritable one. Still, he waited. Because if there was one thing colder than this endless winter, it was the thought of leaving you out in it alone.