Page 11 of Forbidden Royal Vows

Not helpful or productive, she scolded herself. “Things are very different than they were back then,” Mila managed to say after a moment, grabbing at the remnants of her dignity as best she could.

Instead of letting herself get carried away by his magic.

Not that it seemed to affect Caius at all. He reached over and brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek, as if it was his dearest wish to light her on fire. Then he carefully tucked a piece of hair that should not have fallen from her elaborate updo behind her ear.

“I would not say that everything is different,” he said, his voice little more than a low rumble.

And to her astonishment and great despair, Mila wanted to cry.

She could feel it rush through her, then rebound as if it meant to drown her where she stood, and for a moment she really did wonder if her knees might buckle.

Because there it was again. The faintest shadow of that sliver of hope she should have known better than to hold on to, all these years later.

The sliver of hope she would have sworn she’d long since extinguished.

She tamped it down, ruthlessly. The way she had learned how to do long ago, because it was that or perish beneath the weight not of her crown, but the piles upon piles of expectations heaped on top of it.

“It is not a simple problem to solve,” she told him, when she could be sure she sounded calm. Even. “And I know you disagree. But it has never been simple, no matter how many arguments you mount.”

His wizard’s gaze gleamed in the dark. “I have made it simple, Mila. You may thank me later. After all, the damage is done. There is only the announcing it.”

She’d forgotten too many things, that was the trouble, like how much she wanted to simply melt into this man. And she blamed herself for that, too, because ignorance was never something that a queen could allow herself to wallow in, but she’d chosen it in this case. It seemed like valor, all those years ago.

Because she had been reeling from the loss of her father and the loss of this bright magic she’d found with Caius that had seemed as if it might kill her, too.

When she should have known that sooner or later, he would come back. Because people always came back to collect on promises.

Promises she should never have made in the first place.

Mila made herself take one step back, then another, and it felt as excruciatingly painful now as it had that last day. More, maybe, because she’d tried very hard since that day to tell herself that she’d made all of that up. Or, more charitably, that she had been stunned by her father’s death and sideswept by all the ramifications of it—all of which had felt very different now that it was more than a theoretical protocol to be discussed while her father was still safely alive.

But no. It just hurt. Everything about Caius was the same agony, no matter how she looked at it.

The difference, she told herself sternly, is that now you do not have the luxury of showing anyone your feelings, especially him.

Mila pulled herself back into character, though these days she thought it was less a character and more simply who she was. The Queen. Always the Queen. She folded her hands in front of her in as regal a manner as possible. She arranged her face into polite impassivity. She managed to look down her nose at him though he still towered over her, and she was not a short woman.

And she pretended that she could not hear that low, mocking sort of laugh of his.

“What announcement do you think we should make?” she inquired with deadly calm and the faintest hint of something almost like interest. Almost, but not quite. “That the man recently seen as the paramour of an old childhood friend is in fact having secret assignations with the Queen? The people will be delighted, I am sure.”

“I know this is a long shot,” he drawled, in that way he had, with that particular accent of his that was all accents and no accent. And somehow entirely him. “But we could always try the truth.”

She shouldn’t have mentioned Paula, because now all she could think about was her friend. Her poor friend, who she had betrayed. There was no other way to look at it. Paula could have had absolutely no idea that Caius was secretly married, much less married to her friend and queen. But Mila knew full well whose arm Caius had arrived on this night.

“The truth is impossible.” She almost allowed herself to frown at him. “And now you have made me not only betray myself and my country, but my friend. I think that’s a hat trick.”

“And to think,” Caius replied as if this was all terribly amusing to him, “I’m only getting started.”

And that terrible desire, that impossible dragon, was still coiling around inside of her, lighting her up in ways she’d forgotten was possible for her to shine. Just as she’d forgotten what it was like to have someone touch her the way he did.

So casually, as if she was a person. As if she was like everyone else, and could be jostled casually, touched carelessly, brushed up against by mistake.

These were things that did not happen to the Queen of Las Sosegadas. These were things that were not allowed to happen. Ever.

These were more things to grieve when she was alone.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, very sternly so that perhaps she would listen to herself, “your date is waiting for me. And likely for you.”

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