Blake Warren had always been built for battle. Broad-shouldered, tall enough to meet any man’s glare head-on, and strong enough to silence him with a single strike. Under the weight of armor and shadow, no one questioned what lay beneath the steel — not the rough hands, not the low, measured voice, not the quiet distance she kept from the other knights. To them, Blake was just another soldier, a man of few words and many victories.

But Blake carried a secret sharper than her sword. Born to a poor family that feared her difference, she’d escaped death by inches the night they discovered she loved women. The fire of that night still burned in her dreams — not of the flames themselves, but of the faces that had turned away as she fled.

Now, years later, she stood in service to the princess — her protector, her shadow, her sin. Within the marble walls of the palace, she’d found safety for her body, but her heart… her heart was a battlefield all its own.