The camp no longer felt like Luca's alone.
Whispers followed Isla now, soft as wind through silk. Men nodded when she passed, not in mockery or lust as before, but in the quiet reverence reserved for someone who had earned her place through blood and silence. They didn't know her heart still burned for freedom. They thought she was a queen rising beside their commander.
In a way, she was. But not in the way they imagined.
It began small. A loaf of bread smuggled to a starving recruit. A wounded soldier saved because she ordered better care. The camp had begun to breathe differently since her influence settled in. Discipline no longer came from fear of Luca's wrath—it came from the strange calm that followed when Isla entered a room.
Luca noticed. Of course he did.
He watched her that evening from across the firelight, his face half hidden behind a glass of wine. "You've made them loyal," he said quietly.
