Page 39 of Forbidden Royal Vows

So instead, she called for her car and headed back to the palace early.

That meant she had extra time to turn herself back into the Queen.

She had to ride down from the September House and put her mask back on. Her armor. She had to root out every soft place, inside and out, and wall it up. She had to wrestle her body back under control, because the way she wanted him was physical, and still forbidden.

With every kilometer, she forced herself to remember who she was.

The closer they got to the palace, the more she reminded herself of what her life was, would be, and always had been. Who it was promised to. And what her duty required of her.

Mila is dead once more, she told herself as the car pulled in through the palace gates, and they shut tight behind her. Long live the Queen.

She woke up the next morning and surrendered herself to the team of aides who tended to her wardrobe, her skin care, her hair, and everything else concerning her appearance. She let them sigh and cluck over her as they repaired the damage of her month away, muttering over her cuticles and giving her hair what they called a little gloss.

Mila presented herself at a private dinner with her mother. Then she sat there while Alondra, seeming not to notice her daughter’s mood, launched into her usual recitation of gossip, innuendo, and scathing commentary on everyone and everything Mila had just spent a month forgetting.

Back in her rooms, she could feel that ring in the back of its secret drawer, seeming to pulse like it had its own heart. Like it was beating to its own rhythm. Like it was shooting out light and heat, daring her to keep ignoring it.

But she did.

She got up and went out to her little viewing room instead. She wrapped herself in quilts. She got into her personal supply of wine, and she watched Caius’s films.

In chronological order.

They were love stories.

But they were not happy. They were textured and complicated. They were tragic and they were beautiful, and she could see him and her stamped deep into all of them.

And so there, on her favorite couch, alone at last, she cried.

That terrible ache. That impossible grief.

Oh, how she cried.

The next day, she was absurdly grateful to throw herself into her usual roster of meetings and appearances, and only slightly puffy and hungover after her aides were done with her. That night, she went to a dinner where she sat between two equally tedious self-styled titans of industry, where all she was required to do was nod sagely and make the odd opaque remark.

And it was fine, she told herself back in her rooms again that night. Once again refusing the siren call of her ring. The ring that he wore around his neck. Right there, next to his heart—

But it did her own heart no good to think of it.

It did her no good to think of him at all.

All thinking about him did was keep her up at night, watching the films he’d helped make. The films he’d tinkered with, like a mechanic after all, to create art while all she could do was sob.

And then suffer through her aides clucking all around her as they tried to repair the dark circles beneath her eyes the next day.

It did her no good to dream about him, either, because her body refused to understand that he no longer slept there next to her, that long, rangy body of his sprawled out beside hers, with a muscled arm tethering her in place.

A dream just like that woke her on her third night back in the palace.

He wasn’t there, she knew that, but it took a while before she could do more than stare at her ceiling. Before the tears stopped sliding down her cheeks to make her ears wet.

And she couldn’t fall back asleep.

But it was productive, Mila told herself, because she used the time to plan. Who she would call in her legal office to come talk to her about what had happened long ago in America. Who she would trust with that information, and who she thought would give her the best advice in return. Who, then, she could trust to hunt Caius down and handle him appropriately. So that, whatever else happened, they could legally be separated. As quietly and under the radar as possible.

Something she should have done five years ago.

Mila told herself that the emptiness she felt, that stunning desolation, was nothing more than a quiet certainty that she was on the right path at last.

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