Page 1 of Forbidden Royal Vows

CHAPTER ONE

QUEEN EMILIA OF LAS SOSEGADAS was perfect.

She made sure of it.

Las Sosegadas was a tiny country between France and Spain, all mountains and sparkling alpine lakes. Her family had ruled it for centuries, mostly in peace. And her people were consistently at the top of all the polls that measured the happiest citizens in the European Union.

And unlike some other kingdoms, support of her monarchy was always robust.

Because, she knew, she was perfect.

Perfection wasn’t simply her job. It was her calling. Her duty.

She spent hours every day discussing exactly how the Queen could appear to her best advantage in all things, not because she had an ego, because she didn’t. What she had was a crown and what she owed her subjects was to keep it untarnished.

In private, she could be a person. Even a woman.

In private, she still thought of herself as Mila, the nickname only her sister still called her. Even her mother called her Your Majesty now, likely to remind herself as much as anyone else that it was her daughter on the throne now instead of her late husband.

There were a lot of things Mila liked about being just Mila, but that was always a temporary state, mostly when she was asleep.

The moment she left her rooms and let anyone lay eyes on her, she was the paragon of a modern queen she always was. In public, Mila was only and ever the Queen.

She had promised herself to her country and that was that.

A life of service suited her perfectly, she always said, and she meant it.

Tonight her service to her country had involved the sort of dress fitting that had taken most of the afternoon. It was always necessary to make sure that she looked the part, of course. She had an entire wardrobe team dedicated to the task and they were good at what they did.

What Mila had to do in turn was always and ever appear relatable. But not too relatable. Subjects wanted to love their Queen, but they certainly didn’t want to know her too well. A simple flip through the headlines of any European kingdom on any given day told her as much.

Mila had to strike a balance between seeming almost approachable while never actually letting anyone near enough to get any fingerprints on the symbol she’d become in her short reign.

Figurative fingerprints, that was. Or the Royal Guards would get involved.

Tonight’s event was a banquet to honor service to the crown, an annual gala that also raised money for various charities. It was the usual collection of aristocrats, Mila saw at a glance as she arrived, her foot hitting the exact stone that she had promised it would hit at the exact time it had been announced she would.

Because it was always important to be a dependable icon, no matter what else she was.

Sometimes Mila thought it was all she was.

If so, she thought now, there are far worse things I could be.

And she did not list off what those things were, as she sometimes did. She already knew that did not lead to perfection. It went the other way, rather precipitously.

She swept through her usual protocols for these things. The selected greetings after her entrance. The few, carefully chosen comments to make it clear that she knew the people she was speaking to. Even a smile now and again.

Mila had always been good at these things. She’d always known how to make these little connections, over so quickly, feel bigger than the sum of their parts. Because she had not been thrown into the royal life in a turbulent fashion. She’d had the gift and curse of knowing that her father was not only going to have to die someday for her to succeed him, but that the doctors had given him a date by which they expected that to occur.

There were very few good things about that, but one of them—maybe the only one—was that he had taken the time to prepare her appropriately for what was to come. And not in the abstract, as she’d been taught as a child.

She had no regrets, she told herself.

What was there to regret? She was the Queen.

“You are looking splendid, Your Majesty,” said her mother from her side as they left the receiving line and processed through the party, headed for the Queen’s usual spot on a dais up near the throne. Mila inclined her head, lest anyone think she was engaging in something as base as small talk or gossip while the trumpets were playing.

Was it ostentatious to have balls take place in front of the throne of the kingdom? Certainly. On the other hand, she had been told many times that most people appreciated the touch of glamour.

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