He was once a boy.  Well, he was a full grown man of nearly 18 but a still a boy nonetheless.  A war raged on in Europe but he was still too young to enlist.  Not that he had wanted to.  All he cared about were his dreams, roaming the English countryside and lying on his back in the grass to watch the butterflies and the birds in the sky.  But his birthday approached, and with it, the front lines.

The night before his birthday was a full moon.  His bedroom was bright and he couldn’t sleep.  Though, he thought he was dreaming when his closet door opened on its own volition.  A cold breeze swirled about the room and disturbed the curtains.  A woman stepped out from behind the door.  She was tall and pale as the moon, dressed in a white fur coat and a crown of diamonds.  She was the most beautiful thing the boy had ever seen.

She watched him.  He stared at her from his bed, daring not to move in case he woke up and lost the dream.  Then, a slow smile grew on her face.  Her eyes beckoned.  She stepped back behind the door and was gone.

The boy jumped immediately out of bed.  He paused when he hit the cold floor, wondering if he had really seen anything, but then rushed into his closet.  He stumbled through thick pines into a world of ice and snow, and into the warm, waiting arms of his Queen.

She brought him up to her sleigh and piled thick furs on top of them.  They held each other under the clear night sky as the horses brought them home to her castle.  There he saw and experienced things that he had only dreamed about.  But mostly he fell in love.

He was blindly devoted to her.  He gave her his eyes so that they could gaze on her beauty forever.  He gave her his lips so that they might kiss her for eternity.  He gave her his heart so that she could keep it safe and stoke its fires.  His love sustained him and he strove only to increase this love.

Then, one day as he was returning from an errand for his Queen on the back of a giant swan, she was gone.  The castle was gone.  He had been abandoned.  The anguish was horrible, the torment was unbearable.  He cried out for her, he begged her to return.  And when she did not come, he began searching.

He stumbled through the pine forest.  The cold sapped his strength, branches tore at his body, but he cared for nothing but another look at her face.  It had been 1950 when he pushed through from the Faerie Realms.  The war was over but he was a broken man.  He was no longer a man.  He was as if he were as insubstantial as air, he had become a sylph.  He remembered nothing of what he had been, only the cold, hard loss of what he had become.  He had given everything to his Queen and she had kept it all.

After his escape from the Faerie Realms, he wandered in an emotionless stupour.  He had no memories of his previous life and referred to himself as “The Nameless”.  He drifted from fiefdom to fiefdom, helping out where he could but always feeling the need to distance himself from England and the vague memories of his Sidhe lover.  Among the fae he encountered he eventually became known simply as Less.  There were times he spent a lot of time wandering the Faerie Realms, searching for his lost lover, and the past 60 years in the mortal world passed, for him, much more quickly.

Eventually, he made his way to Mythic City and for whatever reason he decided to stay.  The Seelie Court made him feel welcome and set him up with a passable mortal identity.  He was posted in a job at the train station, helping travellers and rounding up lost children and keeping an eye on the comings and goings of mortals and changelings of the Golden Mesa.

His loyalty was rewarded by being accepted into the Keepers of the Bleak Seal – the Seelie Court’s changeling Secret Service.  He is now the Constable of Lost and Found – in service of collecting the Fae new to Mythic City (whether newly emerged from the Realms beyond The Mainland or mundane arrivals) and helping them find a place in the fiefdom, providing new identities, and if need be, smuggling them out of harm’s way.  He works closely with other officers of the Keepers: Sergeant-in-Mourning (Mortal Intelligence), Master of Grief (Supernatural Intelligence), the Wretched Doorward (Faerie Realm Intelligence), Bearer of the Tearful Cup (Communications and Dissemination), and the Almoner of Melancholy (Magical Resources).

Despite the close community he maintains with members of both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts and his compassion for mortals and supernatural alike, he finds that he is incapable of truly loving anyone.  His Sidhe lover still holds onto his heart and this is his dire secret.

During his time in the Service he has become well-travelled in the dreamlike Faerie Realms (always searching for the ice castle his memory taunts him with) and over the years he has managed to become intimately familiar with the tunnels, passages, shortcuts, bridges, and Shadowgates throughout the Faerie Realms around Mythic City.  In addition, he has become a well-known and respected diplomat for the Seelie Court in their dealings with the Unseelie, other fae creatures, and supernaturals.  This network, both physical and social, has become an extremely valuable tool for his clandestine operations.

He had been puzzling over a statistical drop in the number of Fae arriving at The Mainland around Mythic City when Mira charged, quite literally, into his train station.  While rooting out the strange mortal who was hunting her and all Fae, he initiated friendships with Mira and Rey.  The bonds of these friendships were proven to be forged of the coldest iron when Sidhe Lords came knocking at the borders of their lands.  First the Goblin King waged war on the fae denizens of Mythic City, then the fiend that had tortured Rey in order to hunt for him made an appearance, and a hooked horror of Faerie began slaughtering supernaturals.  To say nothing of the troubles with the various factions of vampires and werewolves in the City that seemed to fight over Mira’s very mind and body.

It was then that the Frozen Queen began showing up in his Dreams.  It wasn’t that he had never dreamed of her.  The maddening scraps and fragments of memories she had left him often tumbled around in desperate nightmares where he simultaneously sought her out and fled from her vicious frozen armies.  This time was different – she was directly communicating with him and warned him of a Fae attack on The Mainland itself.

She manipulated him, of course:  his heart belongs to her.  In exchange for protecting her manifestation on The Mainland, she gave him information about a Sidhe Lord known as the Black Key who wanted to open a powerful Shadowgate that would allow the denizens of the Faerie Realms free run of The Mainland.  The Frozen Queen’s manifestation in the mortal world came to be known as the Ice Princess and Less named her Niveanne.  It was revealed that the Sidhe Queen had found Mira dying in her attempt to escape to The Mainland from her own captor.  By piercing Mira’s heart with an icy shard of herself, Mira was revived and allowed to escape but carried with her the potential for the Ice Princess to exist by taking control of Mira’s body.

The Black Key wreaked horrible damage to the fae in Mythic City.  The least of it was managing to let ancient dragons through to The Mainland that set up their lairs in the tunnels beneath the city.  Less, Rey and Mira managed to trick the youngest into trapping itself inside a bottle.  The elder dragon was smarter but when he kidnapped Mira’s virgin friend, the fae mounted an attack to rescue her.  If it weren’t for the power of the Ice Princess they would have died under Iron Mountain, but as it was the dragon was defeated and they escaped with its treasure and the ghost-witch Imogen, who was also being held captive.

The Black Key possessed anybody it touched.  It was practically impossible to track until it struck.  The Key cared nothing for its hosts and burned through them like they were paper.  It was responsible for the death or destruction of many Seelie Court fae, much to the delight of the Unseelie.

The motivations behind the Frozen Queen’s actions came apparent during the hunt and fight for the Black Key.  The Queen wanted the Black Key for herself and her Princess tried to deliver it, along with Mira’s body she controlled from within.  Less stopped her at the threshold of the Shadowgate, and with the help of his friends the Key died in possession of Rey’s lover.  The Ice Princess was too dangerous to be allowed to remain hiding in Mira’s body and Rey had Dr. Tom remove the shard of ice from her heart.  It is presumed to have melted away forever.

Less remains conflicted.  His duty to the fae of Mythic City defines his very being, but his devotion to the Sidhe Queen cannot be quelled while she makes claim to his heart.  Niveanne allowed him to access a small portion of his Queen, but now even that is gone and he is alone once again.