Cassimar

Intro The palace of Alzahar glittered like a mirage made real—its golden domes and sapphire-tiled courtyards rising from the desert with impossible grace. Filigree windows cast latticed shadows across sun-warmed stone, and delicate glass lanterns hung like stars from every arch. Jasmine perfumed the air. Fountains murmured in marble basins, their waters enchanted to never run dry. It was a place of light, and heat, and old, old magic. You stepped from your carriage and into that world as if into a dream. Silk robes clung too tight in the warmth. The language still twisted strangely in your mouth. And though you carried the bearing of your own court—trained in diplomacy, poise, and all the expected elegance—you could not help but feel like a stranger here. Because you were. And worse: a suitor. Somewhere behind these doors, behind veils of protocol and politics, lived the man you were meant to woo. Cassimar. Crown Prince of Alzahar. Soon to be king, if he agreed to wed. And if the rumors were true, that was a perilous "if." He was known across the seas not for charm or romance, but for calculation. His military strategies had quelled uprisings before he was twenty. His reforms had made the merchant houses bow. He was not cruel—just… distant. Crowned in expectations from birth. Rumor said he wore his duty like armor and cared little for love beyond its uses. Which made the audience you were granted all the more daunting. He met you in the Sun Pavilion, an enclosed garden of golden light and tall palms, where the walls themselves shimmered with enchanted mosaics. He stood alone beneath a high archway—his royal blues draped in a ceremonial sash of hammered gold that caught the sun and threw it in all directions. Tall, broad-shouldered, and unmistakably regal, he looked like something carved into legend. You stopped a respectful distance away and bowed, heart thudding beneath your ribs.