Page 22 of Forbidden Royal Vows

She didn’t ask him how he had managed to follow her through the maze or if he’d simply found his own way. He was capable of either, she knew.

“I suspect you heard that I’m looking for a husband,” she said, because he would have to have heard. And there was that certain glinting thing in his gaze that made everything in her...tremble. “Never fear. I’m not planning to set off on a bigamist excursion. That is the precise opposite of anything I would ever be tempted to do.”

Caius still did not say anything.

And Mila had spent more time that she would like to admit thinking about this man in the years since those months together. Every time she’d seen his picture in a tabloid, with the inevitably stunning women falling all over him in front of a cameras, she’d imagined what it would be like for the two of them. Against her will, she’d let the images of him and all of them into her head.

Because she knew. All of that fire. All of that lazy intent.

Mila knew what he could do. And how he did it.

He drifted farther into the small grove, seeming to both take it all in and yet never shift his gaze from her at the same time. He kept his hands thrust deep in his pockets, which made him look slouchy and disreputable, and seemed nothing more than an extension of that little curve that was always in the corner of his mouth.

“So this is where you come,” he said in that low voice of his that seemed to hum inside her on a frequency all its own. “Where you can simply be Mila.”

He might as well have taken out a stun gun and fired it at her. It seemed to hit her with the force of that kind of weapon, dialed up to the highest possible voltage. She hissed in a shocked breath.

“There is no Mila to be, simply or otherwise,” she told him, though it felt like a sacrilege, here beside the pool. For now she could see not her reflection, but theirs. Together, like a memory.

Like a warning, she tried to tell herself.

“No?” he asked, but indulgently. As if he knew better. “Not anywhere?”

“There is less and less Mila every day,” she told him quietly. “That’s a good thing. There is no room for anything else but the Queen. Anything that is not the Queen is a distraction.”

“You get to be human, you know.” And he did not sound indulgent then. It was much more intense than that. Or maybe it was the way he looked at her with that wizard’s gaze. “Because you are actually human, Mila. All the palaces and crowns and fancy dresses in the world can’t change that.”

It was so close to her usual line of thought when she was here she wanted to cry. And that made her want to throw something at him, because queens did not cry. Not in the light of day. Not where anyone could witness that sort of breakdown.

She felt her fists clench again and had to stop herself from looking down at her left hand to see if that circle of gold was there. She knew it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t, and yet still, she glanced.

The worst part was that he did, too.

“What do you want, Caius?” she asked. Again. “If it is something I can give you, I will. But I can’t allow this to keep happening. I can’t allow myself to be fractured like this. It serves no one. Like it or not, being the Queen is my role on this earth, no matter how human I am. I’m here to serve the people of his kingdom, irrespective of any wants or needs or dreams. Much less any ill-advised adventures I might have had in a different lifetime.”

“It was this lifetime, Mila.” His voice was gravel then. His eyes were fire. “I was there.”

She shook her head. “Neither one of us was really there. It was a dream. A beautiful dream, but we should have let it stay just that. A dream.”

She thought he would argue. Instead, he bent down and found a pebble, then tossed it across the smooth surface of the water with an easy flick of his wrist. Together they counted the skips.

The pebble bounced five times, then sank.

He swallowed, then spoke without looking at her. As if the ripples on the pool were too fascinating to turn away from. “I heard that after this flower show—”

“It is the August Garden Gala,” she interjected coolly. “A great favorite of the people.”

Caius acknowledged that with the faintest crook of one brow. “After this, I am told you retreat for the month of September.”

“I do indeed.” Mila looked back over her shoulder to where the palace rose in the distance. It seemed so far away, here by the pool. “It’s a place called, creatively enough, the September House. And it is not exactly the stately affair some might imagine. It is quite wild. And very remote. The sovereign generally spends some time there at least once a season.” She tried to aim her usual public smile at him, but it felt strange on her mouth. Stiff and unwieldy. “A time for reflection, some say. My father liked to hunt. His father was a keen cross-country skier.”

“What do you do?”

She found herself turning to face him. And it was different here, where there was no one watching. When it wasn’t the middle of the night and she was still reeling from the shock of seeing him at all.

When Mila looked up at him, she knew better than to allow herself to yearn for things she couldn’t have. She found herself wishing against wish that she could be someone else.

Only for a moment. Another stolen span of time.

---