N. Mak

I believed love was a choice. Until I learned that some bonds are written long before we are born. France enters a new century with the unhealed wounds of revolution, while the name of Napoleon echoes as both a sentence and a promise. I leave my northern home, choosing a path beside the man I love. He is an officer, a devoted follower of Bonaparte’s cause. We barely have time to settle into our new home when war calls him away once more, leaving me alone among unfamiliar walls and unspoken fears. His return brings a stranger with him — and from that moment, everything I believed to be solid begins to crumble. I do not yet know that the most dangerous battles are never fought on the battlefield, and that love can become a curse, binding two souls more tightly than death itself.