Page 24 of Forbidden Royal Vows

And the anguish she saw on his face didn’t make it any better.

“I don’t like any of those options,” he said, as if the words cost him. As if this all hurt him as much as it hurt her, and the funny thing was, she believed it did. Not that it changed anything. Not that anything could. But her foolish heart jolted all the same when he smiled again, just for her. “What if I had a better idea?”

CHAPTER SIX

MILA WASN’T SURE that it was a better idea at all.

In fact, she thought a few days later as she quit the palace for the September House, she was fairly certain that she had taken leave of her senses completely. And this time she did not have the excuse that she was off on a journey to experience a different sort of life, as prescribed by her own father.

This time she did not have any excuse at all.

Her mother fussed at her about everything and nothing, the way Alondra always did when one of her flock was leaving her—something Mila had to chant to herself to keep her smile welded to her face and the spirit of empathy in her heart.

“The kingdom has soldiered on through this very same crisis a number of times a year since antiquity,” she reminded the Queen Mother.

Also my mother, she reminded herself, who calls me only my title so she won’t slip up and call me an endearment in front of government officials.

“And we no longer have to send messengers by horse and cart. You can call me. If you must.”

Alondra did not miss her daughter’s faint emphasis on the word must.

By the time Mila sank into the back of the armored SUV that had been prepared for her, she was only too happy to sit back, close her eyes, and start counting the minutes of the drive that would take her to a month of something far closer to freedom than usual. That was as normal as her retreat itself. It wasn’t that Mila didn’t enjoy her life and her role. She did. But she also liked this tradition—the only version of a holiday a queen could have.

She was driven out of the city before the car started making its way around the lakes. One after the next. The car wove a path from lakeshore to rolling field to lake yet again, giving Mila a tour of the country itself.

It looked like a painting. It always had.

She supposed it was down to her to make certain it always would.

The car began to climb once more on the far side of the great valley. They took the steep switch-backed roads until the air grew colder and she could see that snow had already fallen on the highest peaks. Only then did they turn in through a set of unmarked but sturdy gates, then take a slightly less steep zigzag of a drive until they reached the house itself.

It had been built to be a kind of mirror of the palace that stood all the way down on the other end of the valley. It was too far to see with the naked eye, though she’d seen artists’ renderings of the two buildings and the valley many times, as it was considered an iconic representation of Las Sosegadas. But the two royal dwellings couldn’t have been more different.

Where the palace was a collection of spires and turrets, rising high above the kingdom’s capital city like a beacon of prosperity and peace, the September House was more of a brooding affair. It had been built as a hunting cottage, but the word cottage didn’t really apply. It had been expanded over the centuries so that now it was a cluster of different buildings that shouldn’t have gone together at all.

Yet they always seemed to do so beautifully, to her eye.

Mila could feel the tension in her shoulders melt away as they pulled up and stopped before the stairs that led up to the heavy wooden doors.

The house was ready for her. All the lights were blazing against the bite of the cold this high up. She knew that the kitchen would be stocked full and that the staff who lived on the grounds would give her the space she liked. There would be deliveries of perishables twice a week and otherwise, unless she called them in, she would be left to her own devices.

Mila felt the lick of a familiar flame, deep within.

She let the driver carry her bags inside, because he would have been offended if she did not. And then she stood in the warm, welcoming hall that smelled the way it always did—of a hint of cinnamon and something citrusy—and waited until the car disappeared back down the long drive.

The flame within her danced higher.

The house had been built as a place to relax on a grand scale. The library flowed into an atrium, then flowed out onto the terraces that were lovely in warmer weather, then seemed to roll off into the woods. She walked that way, but instead of heading outside she took the turn that would lead her into the rambling kitchen. Then to the old door that led down into the cellars.

The cellars housed some of the kingdom’s finest wines, and many gifted bottles from abroad, but she walked past them. She kept on going down a long, cold corridor carved into the mountain, then down another flight of stairs that a scant few people even knew was there.

It had been hidden, deliberately. It was far off in the back and looked as if it should be little more than a closet. Mila pulled the keys from the pocket of her long skirt that she’d brought with her from the palace—another item she hid away in her private effects. She opened the door that looked like a forgotten closet and switched on the lone light that did little to beat back the shadows gathering there on the spiral stone stair. It looked and felt medieval, and her father had told her—when he’d told her about this family secret in the first place—that there were some arguments to be made that it might, in fact, date from that period.

But it had been put to great use in the last century’s great wars.

Mila followed the cold stair down and around until she got to the heavy iron door at the bottom. She fit a second key into the lock there, and threw the dead bolt. Then she pushed back the other bolts with her hands, and slowly, carefully, opened the heavy door.

And then smiled.

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