Page 20 of Forbidden Royal Vows

And the farther she moved away from the sound of all of those voices—all of that polite laughter, the buzz of gossip, speculation, and apparently, now, talk of marriage—she felt more and more like herself.

Like the Mila she got to be when she closed the door to her bedroom each night.

The Mila she was when Caius looked at her and the world fell away.

The farther she went, the better it felt, so she actually let herself move faster, then faster still, until she was running flat out.

Until she was breaking a damned sweat.

As if she was just a woman. Just a human being, hurtling unseen and yet protected by these hedges. Just out here running on a pretty summer day because it felt good to run. Using her body because it was hers. Because she wasn’t simply a figure stamped on the side of a coin. She breathed. She bled.

Every once in a while, she even wept.

And for a few months, long ago, she had let herself feel every single thing a human could. Every beautifully mortal sensation, on every centimeter of her body, and she hadn’t cared what she looked like while it was happening. She had spared not one thought for the sounds she made or the position of her lips on her face.

She had been alive in a way she hadn’t been before or since.

Mila ran faster and faster, filled with a kind of mad, desperate exultation.

She burst into the center of the maze at last, skidding to a stop in the sweet-scented grove and blowing out a long breath that seemed to take from every part of her. As if it was scooping out everything inside of her, all those old ghosts and long-held fears and regrets, and releasing them all into the sacred geometry of this hidden place.

Here in the center, the grim hedges gave way to flowering trees. They cast shade, dancing over the sparkling pool that gleamed there in the sunshine. As if that long-ago crown prince, despite his dark feelings for everything within the palace, had been unable to prevent himself from showing his soft center to the very few people who ever made it here.

Mila was panting a bit as she walked to the edge of the pool. She gazed down at it, looking less for her reflection and more for the sense that she could, if she wished, be the woman she had only ever been in a real sense for a scant few months on the other side of the world.

I want to feel as if I chose not to be her, she thought fiercely.

Then she said it out loud. “I chose to come home. I chose to be Queen. I chose this.”

Her dress felt heavy all around her after running as she had in it, but she didn’t mind. Because for once, for a moment, she felt light. Airy.

And the same old dark thoughts pressed in, but she ignored them. Here, now, she shoved them aside.

Because she did not need to spend more time litigating her own behavior. Or her choices. That was in a past she could not change.

She had chosen to marry Caius long ago in a civil ceremony on a beach during a golden sunset, presided over by stranger who had never heard of either one of them.

And she had kissed Caius here in her own palace, though she certainly knew better. She could pretend that he had stolen that kiss, as if she had been a piece of candy in a store somewhere that someone could palm on their way out the door. Instead of what she actually had been, a grown woman, a literal queen, who had known exactly what he intended to do and had let him do it.

If she was honest, she had wanted him to do it.

Mila could lecture herself about what she owed her country and do a few more rounds about what her duty was and what she owed her family and her people and the very ground she stood upon, but not today.

Not here, where no one could see her.

Because this was the only place on the palace grounds where she ever felt like that anonymous girl she’d been for only those very few months of her life.

That was the gift her father given her before his death. That was the magic he had bestowed upon her.

It is too dangerous, she had said at once when he’d called her into the bedchamber where he’d spent his last days. She had sat on the edge of the bed as indicated when he’d inclined his head toward the mattress and had frowned at him. All the while ignoring that fluttering, leaping thing inside her at the very idea. What if I were to be kidnapped? What if I were to get myself into trouble? It would reflect badly on you and the whole kingdom.

You will not travel with an entourage, he had said quietly. Only one guard who has been training for the position. She will be tasked to look and act the part of a friend. The two of you will fly commercial. You will drive a rental car, eat in regular restaurants, sleep in unsecured hotels, and at no point will you do a single thing that would make anyone imagine you are in fact the Crown Princess of a royal house.

That fluttering thing was threatening to take her over, but she had learned her lessons well. But...

The King had reached over and rested his hand on her leg. My father sent me off to do the same thing when I was about your age. It was his belief that no one can fully commit themselves to this life without experiencing a different one, however briefly.

But the risk... She’d tried again.

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