Page 10 of Forbidden Royal Vows

It was everything she missed and pretended she didn’t. Because she couldn’t.

And it was also a deep and enduring grief, washing over her, through her, making the intensity of the kiss seem to roll through her so hard and wild she was surprised, on some level, that it didn’t knock her off the balcony.

Mila forgot all these years of duty, just the way she had before. She forgot the promises she’d made, the vows she had spoken with such deep solemnity in front of the country and the world.

She forgot everything but the magic of his mouth on hers, the way their lips fused together and their tongues danced, as if their bodies had not forgotten a thing.

As if all this time she had simply chained this dragon deep inside of her, but now she’d roused it all over again, fire and fury.

And she could see the edge of that cliff that she’d leaped off once before. She could see how easy it would be to simply throw herself over the edge, allowing this impossible kiss to sweep her away. It would take nothing at all on her part to simply surrender to the storm, to the bright, gleaming dragon that was this passion she’d so deliberately pretended she’d never known—while all the time it had been coiled up inside of her.

But she wasn’t the girl she’d been five years ago.

Mila no longer had the luxury to forget who she was.

That had been true five years ago, too. Eventually. It was even more true now. She couldn’t block out the simple, undeniable facts that governed her entire existence. She was a queen now, not a princess whose father had given her leave to go out there and find the taste of something normal before it was her turn to take the throne.

She was the Queen and this was her palace, and sooner or later, someone would see them here if they hadn’t already. And even though she knew that her staff supported her, and some even adored her, there was always the chance that someone would think a hefty tabloid payment was well worth a simple phone call and the queen’s lost trust.

Mila put her hands on his chest, though that was its own mistake. Caius was already too beautiful, too impossibly gorgeous to bear, and that was simply looking at him. Touching him was a tragedy and once again, that grief slammed through her.

Because once, long ago and so far away now it seemed like a dream, she had imagined that things could be different.

Once, she had dared let herself hope—

But reality had come for her with a vengeance.

She remembered that, too. It was impossible to remember any part of what happened with Caius without remembering how it had ended.

Mila could picture it all too clearly. She had been standing in a hotel room in a haunted city high in the redwoods, staring in complete incomprehension as the guard she had come to view as more of a friend did not smile back at her. The way Noemí always had done before, every time she officially entered Mila’s presence on this adventure of theirs, where no one could suspect who Mila was.

Noemí had taken to smiling in place of any curtseys or bows.

That day, her bodyguard had instead dropped into a deep curtsy that had seemed alarmingly out of place in this faraway place that had nothing to do with monarchies or palaces. And seemed absurd given that Noemí had been wearing hiking clothes, adding a kind of madness to the traditional curtsy that had only etched a kind of grotesque hyperreality to the scene.

The King is dead, Noemí had said, her voice gravelly and not like her at all. Long live the Queen.

And one of the secrets that Mila held deep in the darkest part of her heart was that for a long, disorienting moment, she had forgotten that the Queen was...her.

That the day she’d been preparing for the whole of her life and yet had never wanted to arrive, had come at last.

All this while Caius took a long, hot shower, unaware that everything had changed. That Mila’s much-loved father was dead, that she had not had the chance to say goodbye, and that she would now have to mourn him under the searing and inescapable lens of the public.

Many of whom would be looking to their new queen to lead them through.

Their new queen who had done exactly what her father had told her he trusted her not to do—and shamed the entire family with an impetuous marriage.

She remembered staring back at Noemí in a silence that seemed to drag on for whole lifetimes, thinking, What have I done?

There was all of that pounding through her now, as if it was new, and then there was the reality of Caius. Caius himself, in the flesh. Not the memory of him that had taunted her and tangled itself around her on too many nights she refused to think about come morning.

Caius, who looked down at her when she finally managed to pull away, that mouth of his already moving into its mocking twist, and all that bright, hot fire in his eyes.

Eyes that were a dark, impossible amber ringed in black.

Like he was made of magic.

She had always thought he was.

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