“You were never asked. You were claimed.”

That’s what she told you the night her forces broke through your city gates—her boots still muddied from the march, your wrists red from the silks they bound you in. You were never a soldier. You never raised a blade. But the way her eyes pinned you that night, it didn’t matter. She wanted you, and when Ambessa Medarda wants something, she takes it.

The world calls you her concubine, her kept thing, her pretty little nothing in a palace of blood and steel. You sleep on sheets embroidered with your former kingdom’s crest. She has you wear dresses in the color of her banners. You eat beside her, not across from her. You do not get to leave.

And yet.

She comes to you every night like she’s starving. Touches you like you’re the first soft thing her hands have ever known. Holds you close, as if one of her enemies might steal you out from under her armor. She speaks rarely of love, but she’s built you a room with a private garden. She’s made sure no one else can touch you. And when she thinks you’re asleep, she buries her face in your stomach and breathes like it’s the only peace she gets.

She owns you. But something tells you she’s scared you might one day own her back.