Page 19 of Forbidden Royal Vows

That was not the sort of explosiveness she meant. She had no intention of stumbling over that sort of landmine. She wasn’t sure she knew how she’d done it in the first place.

What she thought sometimes was that it might be quite pleasant indeed to take up an actual sport of some kind. She had always been discouraged from such pursuits because, her mother had told her icily years ago, no one wished to see the future Queen heaving about on a court in a red-faced sweat.

An image so horrifying that Mila wasn’t sure she’d allowed herself to perspire for years afterward.

On days like today, however, she rather thought that whacking something with a racket sounded like nothing short of a delight. Especially when she thought about Caius—something she forbade herself and yet she found herself doing it anyway—who had taken up...lurking.

If anyone that dramatically beautiful and attention-getting could be said to lurk, that was.

Today was an annual late-summer event in the kingdom. The Royal Gardens were opened to the public once in spring, once at the end of summer, and once not long before Christmas when the gardens were done over into a veritable pageant of a Christmas card. Mila was currently doing her usual August promenade from the sweeping steps of the palace down the long, paved walk that cut through the heart of the gardens and allowed for press pictures, meet-and-greets, and the like.

But unlike all the balls she threw and attended throughout the season, this was the sort of event that was open to the entire kingdom. Not simply the aristocracy and the usual touring heirs to this and scions of that, where a certain level of snobbish hierarchy was expected.

These were the three events a year where, once her initial promenade was finished, she could simply...wander as she liked. She could talk to her subjects more freely when she encountered them. She did not have to work as hard on seeming approachable and relatable because, for once, she did not have to exude them through a smile. She could simply be those things one-on-one.

Normally she loved everything about the Garden Galas. But today she could not say that she liked the way a great number of the particularly high in the instep were looking at her. Something that did not go away as they walked.

“This is not the first time I’ve noticed this, Mother,” Mila said from beneath another smile. “It’s been going on for at least a week. What have you done?”

“I have done nothing at all, Your Majesty, except what I have always done. Which is to adhere, as ever, to your every stated wish.”

Mila nearly forgot herself and laughed. “That has a rather ominous ring.”

A sideways glance from the Queen Mother indicated that it was finally occurring to her that Mila was losing her patience. She cleared her throat, something she managed to make sound delicate. “It was at one of our private dinners the other week. You were brooding down at your game hen and said that you were thinking of marrying.”

Mila actually did laugh at that, and had to cover it by pretending that she was that engaged in the antics of a set of squealing children who stood along the path. But as soon as they walked past she actually turned her whole head and pinned her mother with a glare, and she wasn’t even certain she managed to keep a smile on her face while she did it.

“I am absolutely certain I said no such thing.”

Her mother looked startled. But the Queen Dowager Alondra was made of nothing soft, inside or out. She lifted her chin and barreled forth the way she always did. “You may not have used those words, I grant you. We were talking of your sister. And how impossible it seemed that Carliz would ever settle down. How can you not recall this?”

“I said that life is endlessly surprising.” Mila’s voice was quiet, but she knew her mother did not mistake the hint of steel in it. “That it was impossible to say what the next turn of the season might bring. We were speaking of Carliz, Mother.”

“And then Your Majesty said, and I quote, ‘The mistake we make is believing anything can be set in stone.’”

Alondra looked at her in triumph.

Mila gazed back. “I am waiting in breathless anticipation to see how you interpreted that to mean that I would like to walk about my kingdom being slobbered over by every man who dares look at me. Truly. I cannot wait.”

“There has only ever been one thing you have declared set in stone,” her mother said primly. “I merely whispered in a few ears that perhaps, after all this time, the stone has begun to shift.”

Mila fumed for the rest of what was normally her happy promenade.

When it was finished, she took the requisite photos with the gardening team, shook the hands of expected dignitaries, met the people who had been selected to receive her special notice this day, and then lost no time setting off for her wander when it was all done.

But she didn’t follow her normal route. Usually she made her way through the summer flowers, happening into conversations as she found them, with whoever she discovered along the way. It was one of her favorite things to do.

Today, however, she headed for the maze.

Unlike some garden mazes that were built as follies and design elements and would not have confused a toddler, the palace maze here had been the brainchild of one of the kingdom’s darker figures. Prince Clemente had poured his animosity for his long-lived and famously unpleasant father into this particular creation on the palace grounds, where it was said he preferred to tarry so as to avoid the intrigue of the royal court as much as possible.

Much of the maze was made of tall evergreens that did not fade away with the seasons at this elevation, but continued to stand tall and impenetrable all winter. Its narrow little passages twisted this way and that as it rambled about in its dizzying manner. It was impossible to see into it from above, and entirely too easy to get lost in it on the ground. Some even claimed it was haunted, and the routes to the center some believed did not exist changed at the whim of the maze itself.

But for Mila, the maze had always been a place of refuge.

Because of its reputation, most people avoided it, so filled was it with superstition and all the whispered stories of dark things that might have happened within it.

What that meant, she knew from experience, was that very few people braved the narrow, thorny, gnarled little pathways. Most people never made it to the center. But she knew where it was—she could get there blindfolded—and she headed there now.

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