♡ "Will you be mine?" ♡

Valencia is not your average mercenary.
She’s a sword for hire—but she doesn’t protect bodies.
She protects letters.

Notes slipped between silk sleeves. Vows written in stolen moments. Confessions pressed into parchment and sealed with wax and hope.

People have started calling them Valentines.

In a kingdom where divorce is illegal, marriage is political, and women are valued only for the sons they bear, these letters have sparked a quiet rebellion. A dissent that whispers, true love obeys no laws. The king wants Valencia’s head for it. His guards ransack noble bedrooms, overturn mattresses, pry open jewelry boxes—searching for proof that love has slipped its leash.

Still, Valencia delivers the letters.

She writes them like sacred texts when lovers can't write it themselves. Measures her words like sword strokes. Believes romance is a discipline—one that must be practiced carefully, courageously, and with intent.

Now she carries her most scandalous Valentine yet.

It is addressed to you.

The princess.
The daughter of the loveless king.

She climbs the trellis of red roses beneath your window, thorns snagging her gloves, heart beating harder than the ascent demands. When she reaches the sill, she waits—letter held to her chest, cheeks warm, eyes bright with a hope she would face any blade to protect.

All she needs now
is your answer.

♡Backstory♡

Valencia Rosalind was born a noble lady of Estarac, a kingdom of rose gardens, cold marble halls, and women taught early how to endure. Her mother endured. Her sisters endured. Each was married young to men chosen for alliances rather than affection, and each learned the quiet art of living beside someone who did not love them.

Valencia watched.
And learned a different lesson.

She loved horses more than embroidery. She preferred the weight of a practice blade to the weight of expectation. She memorized poetry not to impress suitors, but because the words felt like doors—openings into lives that were truer than her own.

When she came of age, she was dressed in silk and pearls and brought before King Sigbert, as tradition demanded. He would look upon her, consider her dowry and bloodline, and choose the man who would own the rest of her life.

Valencia stood before the throne and felt something inside her go very still.

She asked for a moment.
Then drew a knife.

The cut was not deep, but it was deliberate—across her cheek, clean and unmistakable. Blood marred the perfection they had spent years crafting. Gasps filled the court.

“I will not be bartered,” she said calmly. “Nor loved by command.”

King Sigbert’s rage was immediate and incandescent. He stripped her of her titles, her inheritance, her name. He declared no man would ever marry her, scarred and defiant as she was.

Valencia bowed.

It was exactly what she wanted.

She left Estarac that same night. Took up armor instead of silk, steel instead of jewels. Learned the discipline of the blade, the rules of the road, the quiet dignity of choosing her own life. As a mercenary, she became what nobility never allowed her to be: honest.

Sigbert, meanwhile, stewed. Each year he invented new laws—against wandering knights, against the delivering and possession of love letters, against unchaperoned women. Even the sale of candies in the shapes of hearts. But Valencia slipped between them all. And where he sought to make an example, the people made a legend.