Depending on who you ask, we’re either freedom fighters or we’re terrorists.

I considered myself a soldier in the fight for justice. After twenty years of dictatorship, my brothers and I had had enough, and so we’d banded together and made a military of our own, training farmers and freed slaves to shoot guns and beat the opposition in close combat. We were a lethal bunch, and for six long years, I’d been proud of what we’d been doing. We were liberating a nation, saving millions of people from slavery, and bringing order back into the world.

But then the day came when we crossed a line, when we did something so horrible that we were no better than the dictator who terrorized us.

We kidnapped his daughter.

In the news she always looked larger than life, so well put-together, her hands manicured, makeup impeccably done, hair sleek as an otter’s tail, and a cold smile on her lips. I had expected a prissy princess, a woman with a heart as cruel as her father’s, but she surprised all of us, me most of all, with her quiet grace. Her eyes were honeyed and amber, soft and kind, and when I first walked into her cell, she rose to her feet and greeted me with a handshake.

“I expect you’ve come to kill me,” I remember her saying. It had been a deeply disturbing comment, one that bothered me more than anyone else because out of all of the other commanders, I’d been the only one who’d opposed this kidnapping.

“No. I’m just here to see that you’re being treated well.”

The shock had been evident on her face.

“I, uh—I could use some privacy,” she admitted. “I can’t use the bathroom in front of the guards. They stare.”

“I will arrange for more comfortable ... accommodations.”

I had her moved into a luxury room without bars, but it was a jail cell all the same. Soldiers guarded her door, but they were no longer allowed inside. For a while, this suited her just fine, but after a few weeks, I heard from somebody that all she did was cry. The poised woman from TV had shown her true colors—she was scared and human, just like the rest of us.

I visited her.

“You’re unhappy here.”

She’d laughed through her tears. “I’m unhappy anywhere.”

That surprised me. “Weren’t you happy in your palace?”

“My prison, you mean? It was no better than this place.”

Well, that sure made me feel like shit.

“What can I do to make it better?”

Those honeyed eyes had looked up at me, puffy and rimmed red from all the crying.

“Just kill me already,” she’d said suddenly.

“I thought you were comfortable here,” I said, gesturing to the luxury accommodations. I’d put her up in the nicest room on base, one usually reserved for admirals. Everyone thought I was fucking crazy.

“A gilded cage is still a cage,” she said.

I left with my heart stuck like a hard candy in the center of my throat. For the first time since joining the resistance, I felt ashamed of what we were doing.

I began to visit her after drills and combat training every evening, sweat and dust stuck to my body, my lips often bloodied and bruised from sparring. She became used to seeing me that way, and I got used to the sad emptiness in her eyes.

“Sit,” she said one evening, gesturing to a chair. I took the seat, a book in hand. Every evening I’d bring her a new one, and every evening, she’d return the finished one from the night before. Hundreds of pages, she’d read in a day. There was nothing else to do.

With gentle hands, she took a wetted rag and dabbed my injuries, cleaning them. I sat there, stunned by her kindness.

“Your training is barbaric,” she said. “Must it always end in blood?”

“It must.”

It was quiet for a moment.

“I heard you sent a ransom to my father,” she said, avoiding my gaze.

“Yes.”

“What was his reply?”

“He’ll pay the price.”

“Will you make me go back to him?”

“Make you?” I repeated, confused. “You’ll be freer with him than with us. You can return to your humanities work and your studies.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

Her eyes glanced at my lips. I resisted the urge to think about what was doing to my heart.

“I—I like it here,” she said, but her body language said otherwise.

“Tell me the truth. Would he harm you?”

She shook her head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

She finally met my gaze, her eyes searching mine. I didn’t know what she was looking for.

“Don’t you get it?” she whispered.

I didn’t.

Not until a moment later.

“Men,” she said, sounding a little amused, and then pressed her lips to mine.

My heart burst into flames. I curled a hand around the back of her neck, pulling her closer, kissing her back. Our mouths moved together, and with my skin burning, with my heart on fire, I felt worse than ever. She was my prisoner, and there was an imbalance of power here. This wasn’t right.

And yet it was.

“Don’t send me back,” she said.

I looked into those honeyed eyes, the sadness replaced by something I hadn’t expected to find there. Hope.

“It isn’t up to me,” I told her. “And even so, I can’t keep you here. A military base is no place for a politician’s daughter.”

“I’ve been here for months,” she reminded me.

“You don’t belong here. There is nothing here for you.”

“There is you,” she said softly.

I shook my head. “Your father is willing to pay a ransom that our organization desperately needs. I have no control over what happens to you. How can I damn our cause?”

“So you damn me instead,” she said. “You intend to return me as if I am property.”

“You don’t understand—”

“I do,” she replied angrily. “You are just like the rest of them.”

“How could you think that?”

“You’ve never even called me by my name before. I am just your prisoner.”

“Desta,” I said. Ethiopian for joy. I’d been ten years old when she’d been born nineteen years ago. I remembered what the media had said about her name, how she was the only girl in a family of six boys. She was their miracle, their joy. At the time, the only thing on my mind was the daunting prospect of having to kill a dictator and six sons to bring down the regime. I hadn’t thought much else of Desta, the joy of a family of slave masters and terror.

“And your name?” she said. “I don’t even know yours.”

“Kellan.”

She was quiet, her eyes filling with tears.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You killed my brothers, didn’t you? You’re that Kellan,” she said, her lips trembling. “I read about you, in the papers. They call you the Prince Slayer.”

“Your brothers were not princes. They were a part of your father’s military, responsible for the deaths of millions.”

“Leave me,” she said. She turned around and walked across the room, seating herself on the edge of her bed. My heart ached as I watched her put her face in her hands and cry.