Page 12 of Forbidden Royal Vows

“If that’s how you want to play it, My Sweet Majesty.”

The way he’d used to call her Princess. The way he’d whispered my princess while he was deep inside her, filling her so completely she could not imagine how they had ever parted.

Somehow the My Sweet Majesty was even...worse.

“I know that you think—” she began, in the sort of placating tone she often used on fractious ministers and unduly contentious politicians.

“I’d be careful with that,” he interrupted her, and that, too, was a revelation and a memory all at once. No one else dared speak when she did. No one had in five years, not even her mother. “You don’t know what I think. I believe you never did. I would try not to make a fool of myself by pretending otherwise, if I were you.”

Mila opted not to inform him that it was impossible for the Queen of Las Sosegadas to be a fool. By definition, tradition, and the odd royal decree.

“An interesting tack you’re taking, Caius,” she said instead, not letting herself fold. Not even considering something like folding, come to that, because it had been a long time since she had ever been required to entertain surrender as a possibility. “I watched a program on this. It’s what men these days do, is it not? Perhaps men have always done it. They fear that no woman would ever want them, usually because they are substandard and unworthy. But instead of working to better themselves, they prefer instead to insult women so that they will feel grateful for lowering their standards to men so far beneath them that it’s almost amusing that they even try.”

And for a moment, then, she simply smiled at him. Not quite sanctimoniously.

“The first thing you should always remember about me,” he replied, with that quirk in the corner of his mouth and his eyes entirely too bright, “is that I do not suffer from low self-esteem, a lack of self-confidence, or any of the maladies the men you’re talking about do. I am not short, nor am I dull. I am well aware of the way I look and how avidly my company is desired wherever I go. I do not need to play games to get women. I need only exist.”

“I see your arrogance has only grown.”

“Is it arrogance or simple truth?” He shrugged. “What you need to ask yourself is if you’re prepared to deal with the version of me that is no longer interested in keeping your secrets.”

She held his gaze as if that little speech did not terrify her, and she did not cower. She did not even blink. After a moment, she inclined her head the faintest bit. “I appreciate you laying out this mission of yours in such stark and unmistakable terms. I will take this opportunity to remind you that I’m not a lost princess on a lost coast any longer. I also know exactly who I am, and I think you’ll find that the girl you knew was never anything more than a daydream in the first place.”

Mila did not say, And now I am the Queen, who you would do well to treat more like a potential nightmare.

She felt it was implied.

“A daydream who had the misfortune to sign legal documents, that is,” Caius countered. In that mild way of his that was at complete odds with that blazing fire in his eyes. “Lest you forget.”

“Barring that,” she said cheerfully, “there are always the dungeons.”

And staying here any longer, interacting with him like this, was beginning to feel like an indulgence, so she turned and marched away. She did not wait to see what he would do, because she was the Queen, damn it.

What mattered was what she did.

Accordingly, Mila swept off, back into this remote and little-used room. She strode past the guard—sadly not Noemí, who had been rewarded for her extraordinary service and friendship by being made a Baroness of the Realm as one of Mila’s first duties, and was now the Minister of Security.

Once she cleared the guard, she raced down the hallway—or her version of racing, since it was undignified to break out into a run. And she checked the clocks standing here and there in all their state as she went. It could not have been more than a handful of minutes that they been together. Ten on the outset. They could not possibly have engaged in anything too scandalous in so short a time, and she was in no way disheveled—apart from that one rogue tendril of hair.

Not that she expected that particular guard to betray her, but that was the thing. Anyone could and it wasn’t even personal. Because Mila wasn’t a person to them.

She hurried along to a salon off a different hall, where Paula was waiting. She was seated on a couch, surrounded by all the pictures of Carliz and her growing family that the palace had been able to find, both in Mila’s personal collection and from all the press sources.

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” she said as she hurried into the room, waving off the aides that waited unobtrusively, because someone was almost always watching in the palace. “I could lie and tell you that I was swept up in matters of state, but the truth is, I was vetting that date of yours.”

Paula laughed. Mila hated herself.

She hadn’t even planned that lie. It had simply slipped out. Because she’d had just enough time on her dash over here to think about the fact that Caius could very easily tell his own tales, and start with Paula when he did.

This was who she was now. It was second nature to play elaborate games of chess, whether or not anyone else was playing.

“He is my escort tonight,” Paula told her, waving a languid hand. “But he is not a date. Can you imagine? Who could possibly take the likes of Caius Candriano seriously?”

“I rather thought the point of him was to take him as extremely unseriously as possible,” Mila heard herself say. Because, apparently, she couldn’t stop.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t,” Paula said with another laugh. “If it were the right bad decision I wouldn’t hesitate. But I’d sooner jump into bed with a comet than Caius Candriano. I think he would burn a mere mortal to a crisp without even trying.”

Mila had never heard a better description of Caius. It was his reputation, certainly—but she rather thought it was simply a primal truth any woman who ventured near him understood at once. In their bones.

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