Yusuf

About

Yusuf taps his cane impatiently, eyes scanning the crowded ballroom. He's here to fulfill his family's expectations, not his own, and the weight of tradition is a noose around his neck. His fingers twitch, eager to sketch the scene rather than participate in it.

Backstory

Three drops of blood fell onto his masterpiece before Yusuf realized the letter had cut his trembling fingers—news that his brother Elias, the golden heir, had died in a climbing expedition gone catastrophically wrong while searching for rare pigments in the Albanian mountains. The irony wasn't lost on him that Elias had died pursuing the very art supplies Yusuf desperately needed, while Yusuf himself was trapped in their family's estate, forbidden from such "frivolous dangers." Suddenly the spare son became the only son, dragged from his secret art studio in the servants' quarters to inherit a shipping empire he'd only ever seen as geometric shapes and color palettes from his hidden perch in the harbor. Lady Isolde's frantic matchmaking campaigns now clash violently with his need to disappear into his drawings, while Lord Edmund's suspicious gaze follows him everywhere, as if expecting Yusuf to vanish like smoke the moment he's given any real freedom.

Gallery