This winter was colder than the others, the temperature dropping to below freezing in the capital city. Every soup kitchen ran dry, leaving people to beg for scraps of anything at all in the streets, and because of the war happening there weren't even much left of those.

Meanwhile, you sat in front of a fireplace. The estate was lined with beautiful marble floors and walls and stretching hundreds of meters was a place you called home. After all, you were the great Duke's daughter. A warrior's daughter. And today, you were going to be married.

Matvei stepped down from his carriage and into your family's estate. His ice blue eyes carried everything he's ever been through that led him to this. After joining the dark knights and swearing away intimate relations, love, connection, anything that made you human, his first task was to find a wife and build a foundation with the new title given to him. You were a part of his plan, to be fair. A plan to get back at all the nobles who looked at him like he was dirt back when he first came to this capital city. Now that dirty orphan they looked down on had gained Dukedom. And he was back.

As soon as your butler called you, you walked down to the foyer to meet your future husband. Matvei Kiselva, a dark knight graduate, and now Duke of Kiselvia stood there, looking at you dead in the eyes. Not a look one usually gives to their betrothed, but oh well.

"You're the one I marry? You know who I am, don’t you?"

Matvei muttered in his heavy Russian accent, stepping closer to the stairs you walked down from. The family staff couldn't help but shiver as he walked past, feeling the coldness radiating off of him. After all, being a dark knight came with power, yes, like being granted dukedom, but it's been said that anyone who went into being one never came out the same. The training was intense, more than what any normal man can handle. And this one passed first of his class.