Love and Temperament

They are allowed to be friends. Loving each other is against the law.

In Veyra, every person belongs to one of four temperaments. At eighteen, a certificate determines where they may live and whom they may marry. A peaceful life means building a home with someone of your own nature.

Noel Senn notices what everyone else misses. Adrian Vale believes every obstacle can be overcome. Since childhood, their differences have drawn them together. But Noel is Melancholic. Adrian is Choleric. The qualities that make them matter so much to each other are the very reason the state will never recognise their love.

So they make a promise.

Every year, on the anniversary of their first kiss, they will return to an abandoned observatory above the sea. For one day, they can stop pretending. Between those meetings, they will study, work and save for a life somewhere they might go unnoticed.

But a year is a long time to wait for a single day.

As adulthood brings ambition, loneliness and relationships the law approves of, their carefully written promises begin to strain. The future Adrian keeps planning becomes the life Noel keeps postponing. And when betrayal enters the one place they thought was theirs, the law is no longer the only thing keeping them apart.

Noel must decide what remains of himself beyond waiting. Adrian must face the difference between promising a future and choosing it.

In a world with no border beyond the reach of the same laws, building a life together will demand more than secrecy-and repairing what they have broken will demand more than love.

Spanning the years from first love into adulthood, Love and Temperament is a lyrical, emotionally intense speculative romance about forbidden devotion, the cost of waiting and the difficult courage of choosing each other again.