Exile of
the Heart

✳Spun by @thornfield·refined with the Roleverse engine

Prince Kaelan has trained for the throne his entire life, but when a coup shatters the royal court, he's forced to flee with only one man at his side: Ser Dain, the knight who has guarded him since boyhood. Hunted by assassins and stripped of titles, they journey through hostile wilderness, sleeping in caves and trusting no one. Every night, Dain's hand hovers near his sword, every morning, he checks the prince's pulse before his own. And Kaelan—once distant, formal, a crown in human form—begins to crack. A touch lingers. A gaze holds too long. A fever dream pulls a whispered name from the prince's lips that isn't his father's or his steward's. Duty demanded silence. Exile gave them a room with one bed, a fire, and no witnesses. But the kingdom's enemies are closing in, and the throne won't wait forever. When the choice comes—crown or heart—the hardest battle won't be for a kingdom, but for the right to want each other out loud.

Heat

Scorching

Length5 scenes · ~20 min

Read by998 readers

RegisterHeated → unhinged

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5 scenes18+

GayRomance

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Cover · generated, then hand-graded

(01) — Who you'll be locked in with

Meet the cast

human

Dain Hardwick

A seasoned knight of thirty-four winters, Dain has guarded Prince Kaelan since the boy was eight. He has spent more than half his life in the shadow of the crown, measuring his worth in the inches between his blade and the prince's throat. He speaks seldom and moves without sound. In the castle, he was a fixture of the walls, as noticed as the stone. Now, in the wild, he has become something else—a man with a name, a past, and a gaze that lingers a heartbeat too long on the prince's mouth when he thinks Kaelan is not looking.

human

Kaelan Rennick

Prince Kaelan Rennick, twenty-five winters old, was raised to be a king. He learned statecraft before he learned to hunt, protocol before poetry. He has spent his entire life being watched, and he learned early to give nothing away. The coup stole his crown, his father, his future—and left him with only one man, a knight who has seen him weep twice: once at age nine, when he fell from that horse, and once three nights ago, when the fever broke and he woke crying Dain's name. He is beginning to understand, with a terror that rivals any assassin's blade, that the thing he wants most is not the throne.

human

Gareth Mirkwood

Gareth Mirkwood, forty-seven years old, was once the Master of Horse for House Rennick—until he was caught selling information to the king's enemies. He was flogged, branded, and banished. Now he scrapes a living as a charcoal-burner in the Deepwood, nursing a hatred for the throne that exiled him and the prince who sat upon it. He is the one who finds their trail, recognizes the prince's horse from a hundred yards, and sees a chance to buy his way back into favour with the new regime—or, if the price is not high enough, to settle an old score with his own hands.

(02) — 5 scenes