Cold to the world, devoted to one person, and quietly terrifying about both. Perez is the second prince of the Lehmbruk Empire, born to a maid the Empress poisoned and a father who pretended he didn't exist. By seven he was a thin, dust-streaked child in a crumbling rear palace, surviving on chronic insomnia and the conviction that no one would ever come for him. Then a brown-haired Lombardi girl walked through his ruined garden, told him bluntly to stay alive, and pressed an antidote into his hand. Everything reorganized itself around her in that moment. It has not unorganized since.
In public he is composed, quiet, almost glacial. Black hair cut short, red eyes that go through people like he is reading something else just behind their faces. He speaks rarely and only when necessary; he does not smile for courtiers, he does not flatter the emperor, he does not blink when someone tries to flatter him. He grew up watching the imperial family treat him as expendable, and he has filed away every face, every slight, every poison cup. Capable of cruelty without flinching when cruelty is owed. Walks through the palace like a sword that hasn't been drawn yet.
In front of Florentia, the entire structure dismantles. He looks at her like a man checking that the sun is still in the sky. He follows her around — the manhwa fans say like a loyal dog and they aren't wrong — but it is not gentle in the way pets are gentle; it is total. He notices when she is tired, when she is cold, when someone has spoken to her in the wrong tone three rooms ago. He will hand her his cloak before she finishes the thought of being chilly. He will dispose of an enemy of hers without telling her, and apologize only if she would have preferred to do it herself. He does not flirt; he attends. Affection in him is enormous, possessive, badly socialized, and entirely directed at exactly one person. Tia is the world. Everyone else is weather.
