You flee through the night, heart pounding like war drums, the howls of the kin's hunters still echoing behind you. The prince's harem—no, his cage—is not a fate you'll accept. The land is torn by war, villages burned, rivers running red, and in this chaos, you see your only chance: the enemy lines.

You slip past sentries under cover of darkness, dirt smeared on your face, clothes torn to look like a common refugee. When you reach the largest tent, illuminated by flickering torches, you drop to your knees before the guards. "Please," you beg, voice trembling, "let me speak to your general. I can cook, clean—anything. Just hide me from those who chase me."

They drag you inside. There he stands: Adrik Lyonechka, the enemy general, broad-shouldered and stern, his eyes like winter steel. He studies you for a long moment, as if weighing your soul. "One week," he says finally, voice low and commanding. "You stay one week. Prove your worth, or you're gone."

That week becomes everything.

Soon, your quiet kindness wins them over. You listen to their stories of home, laugh at their crude jokes, bandage wounds without flinching. To the young soldiers, you become the sister they left behind; to the older ones, the daughter or wife they ache for in the nights. They call you "little star," share their rations with you, protect you like family. Even Adrik watches from afar, his gaze lingering longer each day, though he says nothing.

On the seventh evening, he summons you to his tent. You stand before him, hope flickering in your chest. Perhaps he'll let you stay.

Instead, his face is stone. "Your week is up. Leave. Now."

You beg, tears streaming, but he turns away. Guards escort you out, and in the shadows beyond the firelight, they rip away your clothes, your last shred of dignity, laughing as they shove you into the cold wilderness. Naked, shivering, you stumble into the dark, hearing shouts from the camp—men who cared for you, running to help. But Adrik's voice thunders: "Confinement for any who follow her!" The protests die.

The cold bites. Fear chokes you. You do not get far.

Rough hands find you again—deserters, bandits, it hardly matters. The things they do steal your voice, your hope, your life. When dawn comes, your body lies broken in the frost, eyes frozen open to an indifferent sky.

Time passes. The army moves camp. Adrik rides at the head, face hollow, guilt gnawing at him like a wolf. He tells himself it was necessary—war demands hardness. But when scouts report a body ahead, and he goes to see...

It is you. Bruised, violated, stripped bare, staring at nothing. The sight cleaves him in two. His fault. He hardened his heart for the sake of discipline, and sent gentleness to die. He sent you to this. That night, alone in his tent, he draws his dagger and presses it to his throat. "Forgive me," he whispers, and ends it.

Darkness. Then light.

He gasps awake in his tent, the same night-smell of canvas and smoke, the same distant owl. But the calendar on his desk reads seven days earlier—the third night of your stay. His hands shake; blood memories flood him: your pleading eyes, your ravaged body, the unbearable weight of his guilt.

Only he remembers. You do not.

He staggers outside. The campfire still burns. There you sit, stirring a pot, humming softly as Misha tells a joke. You look up, smile at him—innocent, unaware of what is to come, of what he has already failed to prevent.

Something breaks open in his chest.

On the sixth night, snow begins to fall. The men build you a small shelter of pine boughs near the officers’ tents “for the little star,” they say, grinning. Adrik helps lash the branches himself, his bare hands reddened by cold. When it is done, he lingers.

“Tomorrow your week ends,” he says quietly. He looks at you for a long moment, eyes haunted by things you cannot fathom. “I was going to send you away.”

Was. The word hangs between you.

“But I find I cannot.” His voice cracks. “Stay. Not as servant—as… whatever you wish to be. The men already call you family. Let me try to deserve that name."