Page 35 of Forbidden Royal Vows

“I like fitting the pieces together,” he said, and he knew he was losing it because he sounded so vehement about it. Not the faintest hint of an incoming joke or any small drop of self-deprecation. But he couldn’t seem to stop. “I like putting the right people into the correct rooms. Making sure the trains run on time. That everyone is paid. That everything works the way it’s meant to work. When most people see a beautiful sports car, they ooh and ahh over the shape of it. The form. How it looks when it drives. But what fascinates me is what’s under the hood. That’s what I like.”

He stopped himself from saying, That’s who I am.

For a moment, they held each other’s gaze.

But then, Mila laughed.

And he didn’t know how to tell her that the sound splashed over him like acid. “You have always been a great many things, Caius. But I would never consider you a mechanic.”

He should have told her then. He could have. He could have dug down into that trembling place inside, where everything was unsteady and new, glaring and terrible. He could have torn herself open, and showed her who he was.

That it was no laughing matter—

But his mother’s voice was in his head, snide and harsh, telling him exactly what he was good at.

So all he did was smile when she came closer, and laugh along with her, careful to make sure he was charming. So goddamned charming, because that was the only thing anyone ever saw when they looked at him.

Even Mila, apparently. After everything.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MILA KNEW THAT something had changed after that day she’d heard him on a call she wasn’t sure he’d meant her to witness. Something was different, though she couldn’t put her finger on it.

She wasn’t sure she liked that yearning thing inside her that wanted to know him inside and out in ways she certainly didn’t want to be known herself. She wasn’t sure she liked any of the messy, impossible things she felt these days, come to that.

Then again, September was waning all around them no matter how they filled their stolen days. It felt to her as if both she and Caius were on edge.

It was there in the way they devoured each other, but talked less. Everything was heat and flame, until she began to wonder if they would both burn to a crisp up here on her month away. The kingdom would look up and see nothing but a bright and burning torch where the September House had been.

Some part of her, she was unnerved to discover, actually craved that. As if self-immolation was that perfect solution she still hadn’t been able to find. Instead of a daydream of pure, outrageous selfishness. Not to mention anathema to everything she’d always believed she was.

But that was the trouble with spending time with Caius. She began to imagine that almost anything was possible.

When she knew better.

No matter how she agonized, no matter all the what-ifs that sometimes kept her awake at night wrapped up in his arms—thinking through one implausible scenario after the next—she knew better.

Her life had been planned from the start. It had never been her own, no matter those stolen weeks with him. It wasn’t hers to give away to her feelings—something she’d seemed to understand more fully the last time.

Yet the more torn-up she felt that their end was nearing, the more ravenous he became.

And though she prided herself on never shying away from a difficult conversation, that, too, was different when it was Caius. She tried to tell herself that was only because they had both known, this time, that there would be nothing else.

Maybe this was simply how it would be between them this time, in lieu of any unpleasant scenes.

She told herself she ought to be happy with that. But what she felt, instead, was that she’d miscalculated. There would be no grand ceremonies to throw herself into on the other side of him this time. She had nowhere to ascend now that she was already Queen. She did not have to race home to the palace to comfort her sister, who had never enjoyed as peaceful a relationship with their father as she had. Or to perform her duties seamlessly and beautifully for her mother, who would not speak of her grief, only the future that Mila needed to embody to make it all right that her husband, the King, was gone.

It was beginning to seem clear that she might find this parting more difficult to bear than the last, and with less distraction. Fewer great griefs.

There would be no state funerals or coronations to concern herself with once September ended. There would only be whatever was left of her heart in his wake.

“Where will you go next?” she asked him on one of their last nights in the house, though neither one of them had mentioned next.

Until now, she supposed. Obliquely.

They’d thrown together one of their typical dinners tonight and she was trying her best not to let herself get too emotional—something she had never had to worry too much about and was now going to have to learn how to tuck away again, out of sight, if perhaps not as out of mind as she might wish—over the ease of it. Of simply being in the same rooms Caius inhabited.

After all these weeks they could predict each other’s movements, in the kitchen as well as in bed. And there was something poignant and marvelous about the dance of that kind of intimacy. They hadn’t experienced that before. There had been too much camping, too much hiking, so that everything was always new. Including them.

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