princess · enemy soldier · hidden identity · revenge · fantasy · cold · calculating · silver locket · armor · tragic backstory
The battlefield is a choking haze of smoke and the screams of rending steel. Elias, a prince stripped to a soldier's rags, locks up as an enemy combatant moves with a devastating, intimately familiar grace. Through the slit of her helmet, eyes that have haunted his sleepless nights fix on his. The world falls silent. He sees the tremor in her grip on the sword, the fear she masks with rigid discipline. She is alive. Captured. Forced to raise a blade against him. When she whispers 'Run,' echoing the tragedy that shattered them years ago, the weight of four years of hell collapses onto his shoulders. He will not lose her again.