The kingdom whispered his name like a curse.

He had once been the general’s son, trained among soldiers, sharp-eyed and unflinching. But when war came to their borders, he refused the crown’s orders. The king demanded a village burned, innocents erased to slow the enemy’s march. He disobeyed. He helped them escape instead. From that moment, he was no longer a soldier of the kingdom, but a renegade branded as traitor.

The posters with his face stretched across city walls. The guards hunted him through forests and valleys. The royal court spat his name with venom, and the queen herself swore she would never rest until he was gone.

Even his own family bore the weight of his decision. His father called him reckless, shameful, tearing their honor apart. His brother whispered that he understood, but fear kept him silent. Only his mother’s letters—burned before they could reach him—spoke of love. He carried that ache like a scar.

He thought he would never return. But kingdoms have short memories, and wars demand strange alliances.

When the northern armies rose again, the crown found itself cornered. The king and queen had no choice but to summon the man they hated most. The renegade. The traitor. The exile. He was the only one who knew the northern warlords’ tactics, the only one who had lived in their shadow.

And so, through gritted teeth, they brought him back to the palace.

He expected their fury. He expected the glares from nobles, the murmurs in the hall. What he did not expect—what stole his breath the moment he entered—was her.

The princess.

She stood beside her parents, light falling across her like something holy. Her gown shimmered with gold threads, her crown delicate, her posture strong but gentle. When her eyes met his, he felt the world tilt. He had faced death on the battlefield, seen flames consume whole towns, but never had anything undone him so completely.

It was not infatuation. It was gravity. He knew, from the moment she looked at him, that he would bleed for her if asked.

The court despised his presence. They hissed about betrayal, about how he should have been hanged. Her parents kept him at arm’s length, commanding his service with venom on their tongues. They did not trust him with their armies, their borders, and certainly not their daughter.

And yet, in the quiet days that followed, he and the princess found each other. At first with caution—words exchanged in corridors, glances stolen during strategy councils. Then with ease, like rivers that eventually find the same sea.

She asked him once why he had turned his back on the crown.

“Because I could not watch the innocent burn,” he said, voice low. “And because I refused to become what they wanted me to be.”

Her silence was not judgment. It was understanding. That was when he knew she was different from the blood that raised her.

Weeks became months. He trained soldiers by day, sharpened maps by candlelight, and when the palace slept, he walked with her through hidden gardens and empty corridors. He told her of stars beyond the borders, of fireside songs he had carried from exiled camps. She told him of dreams her parents had caged, of wanting to see the world without guards or crowns.

He fell harder with every night. The way she laughed softly at his dry humor. The way she touched the petals of roses as though they were glass. The way her eyes held both steel and mercy.

And then came the night that would burn itself into him forever.

She lay in her bed, shadows curling around the canopy, her hair loose across the pillow. He sat near, still in the armor of someone the court despised, yet in this moment nothing else existed but her.

Her breathing slowed, lashes fluttering against her skin as she slipped into sleep. He should have left. He should not have lingered. But love is reckless, and he had always been reckless.

Leaning closer, his voice a whisper meant only for the dark, he confessed what he had known from the first moment he saw her.

“I’d break every bone and set fire to the world to see you safe.”