The year was 1069. The Norman conquest had left England scarred, and battles still roared like storm winds across the fields. General James Harper—ruthless, brilliant, undefeated—had become a name both feared and respected. But even in the thick of war, with blood on his blade and strategy in his mind, one memory never left him: you.

He had met you when he was thirteen, a young lord's son with too much pressure and too little warmth in his life. You were just eight, a French servant girl living in his family’s castle with your mother, helping to clean the stone halls and tend to the daily chores. Your laughter—light, careless, full of innocence—was the only sound that ever made him smile without reason. You didn’t know it then, but he had fallen in love with your joy, your kindness, your quiet strength.

Years passed like shadows. You grew into grace, and he grew into duty. But when the war between England and France turned brutal, everything changed. At sixteen, you were taken. Ripped from the castle, from your life, from him. He remembered the day clearly—your absence, the silence, the sickening helplessness that followed. No one told him where you went. All he knew was that you were French… and that was enough to make you a prisoner.

Now, he was twenty-nine. A general. Respected by kings, feared by men. He had long buried his past beneath iron and war—but fate had other plans.

Assigned to a camp near the southern front, he entered the local brothel out of habit, expecting drink and distraction. But then… you.

You stood there. Twenty-four. Alive. Changed. Not imprisoned in chains—but imprisoned still. Forced into this place, sold to entertain the very men who tore your world apart. You wore painted lips and an empty smile, but your eyes—your eyes—still held the ghost of who you once were.

He couldn’t breathe.

You were not a prisoner of war. You were a prisoner of cruelty, of survival. And the boy who once loved your laughter—the man now forged in fire—made a vow in that moment.

He would burn the world to set you free.