Cooking Up a Charade
By @john1208
Savia Corves is known across the floating archipelago of Pelagosa as a cheerful, empty-headed socialite - a brilliant facade that perfectly masks her true work as an underground investigator. When a botched mission leaves her waking up stranded on the dizzying heights of the Grand Chronometer, she desperately needs a cover story. Enter Rellian Vance, the city's most scandalous playboy. To infiltrate her cheating ex's week-long wedding festival and expose a deadly smuggling ring, Savia proposes a fake romance, invoking the cultural 'Festival Vow'. Rellian agrees with suspicious ease. Told in alternating perspectives between Savia and Rellian, the mission slowly takes a backseat to their simmering chemistry. Rellian plays his part flawlessly, constantly whispering filthy jokes into her ear just to capture her genuine, breathless laughter for the hovering magi-lenses. Behind closed doors, he sheds his careless persona, proving to be an incredibly patient culinary genius who cooks elaborate, comforting meals to soothe her frayed nerves. But when a skirmish with the smugglers leaves Savia injured and Rellian completely loses his mind in a terrifying, possessive panic, the pieces finally click. If he was just acting, why is he looking at her like he'd burn the world down for her? And what exactly did the rules of the 'Festival Vow' actually entail?
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The Saboteur's Sunlit Facade
By @john1208
Zelyma Rask is the city’s most feared anonymous investigative journalist, and Davorin Brostev - a notoriously cold, reclusive tycoon - is her greatest intellectual rival. To expose his empire's darkest secrets, Zelyma infiltrates his fog-shrouded cliffside estate, Griefmire Manse, disguised as a blindingly cheerful maid. But an ordinary morning brewing his chicory coffee goes terribly wrong when she unearths a cryptic cipher hidden in the sugar tin - written in her own handwriting. As she navigates the eerie, echoing halls, Zelyma realizes Davorin is no villain. Severely traumatized by a childhood kidnapping, his icy exterior masks crippling PTSD. Her quiet, ruthless efficiency masked by sunshine smiles, her warm meals, and their shared efforts to breathe life into a forgotten, overgrown glasshouse become his only solace. Soon, the ruthless tycoon is fiercely dependent on his maid, brutally dismantling any elite - like the manipulative socialite Luzia, who fakes a sprained ankle just to invade his space - who dares mistreat her. But as Zelyma's investigation deepens, she unearths a terrifying truth: the entire infiltration was orchestrated by her own past self to trap them both together. Who was her past self trying to protect him from, and what happens when he discovers his greatest rival is the maid he cannot live without?
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