??Perspective of Boudica — Before Joining the Copas??

  The fortress had already fallen.

  Barbarian walls soaked in blood, banners burning in the cold wind, and corpses piled at the main gate.

  She was the last survivor.

  Her spears were chipped.

  Her legs, cut.

  And still… she did not retreat.

  Luiz Fernandes — that damned commander of the Copas — watched her with that lazy, smiling look.

  The kind of smile men wore right before taking what they wanted.

  She spat on the ground.

  If she was going to die, she would die fighting.

  > “Are you going to fight,” he taunted, “or just keep staring at me with those wounded-animal eyes?”

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  She answered with a shove.

  Three days. Three nights.

  She attacked. He dodged.

  She screamed. He laughed.

  Her spear ripped through the air. His sword cut through silence.

  But on the fourth day… she fell.

  Not from lack of strength.

  But from having nothing left.

  She collapsed to her knees — exhausted.

  No mana.

  No rage.

  Only… emptiness.

  And then she braced herself for what enemy soldiers always did when they defeated a barbarian woman.

  She had no spears left. Only teeth.

  If anyone tried, they’d die with their throat torn out.

  But Luiz… simply knelt down.

  He picked up her fallen spear.

  And handed it back — with a clean hand.

  > “I defeated you. But I don’t want to destroy you.”

  She didn’t understand.

  He went on, serious in a way he would never be again:

  > “You’re not a toy. You’re a weapon. And the Copas need living weapons, not broken trophies.”

  She stared at him for long seconds.

  She had expected to be dragged away to please some general.

  Expected chains.

  Expected the end.

  But he only stood, turned his back, and said:

  > “When you want to fight for something that doesn’t reek of fear… come.”

  A month later, she appeared at his camp.

  With her spears restored.

  With her heart stitched together by rage and doubt.

  With words burning on her tongue:

  > “Copas defeated me.”

  “Copas will want me.”

  But she never said what she truly felt that day.

  She never confessed that she would rather die than become another object of humiliation in the hands of the Empire.

  And she never admitted that what truly bound her there...

  ...was the fact that Luiz didn’t want to own her.

  He wanted to respect her.

  Something she had never known before.

  ---

  ? Final line for the reader:

  > “Boudica didn’t fall in love.

  But for the first time…

  …she felt that someone had seen her soul before her body.”