Page 46 of Forbidden Royal Vows

Mila blew out a breath, and decided, what the hell, she wasn’t going to brush out her hair. Such a rebel, she told herself sardonically. What she did instead was crawl into her pajamas and then curl up on the chaise with her sister.

Wine in hand.

She’d poured a glass for herself, and handed a glass to Carliz, who made an exaggerated face of shock.

“I see it’s serious,” she murmured.

Mila smiled. She took a gulp. And then she opened up her mouth and told the truth about her life.

She spared no detail. How magical it had felt to escape the palace all those years ago, and how she delighted in the so many ordinary things that her position had always kept her from experiencing. Being jostled on a street. Being spoken to sharply by a stranger. Being made to wait in a queue with everyone else.

Carliz was shaking her head. “I would not have thought that you would get off on people being rude to you, Mila.”

“It wasn’t the rudeness that was delightful.” Mila shook her head ruefully. “I was being treated the same way as everyone else. Not like a precious heirloom that has to be carefully transported from place to place as if a loud noise might tarnish me forever. I liked it. It was novel and exciting.”

“I personally prefer an upgrade,” her sister drawled. “But to each her own.”

Mila held her wine in her hands, frowned at it, and kept going. She told Carliz about her decision to do that long hike. The lure of going out into the woods and up into the mountains, away from everything that she was and would become. She told Carliz how hard it had been at first and how she’d second-guessed her choice—but hadn’t wanted to prove that she deserved the cotton wool treatment by changing her mind. How she had made herself keep going, and had kept her complaints to herself, until the day she’d found she’d hit her stride.

“I didn’t know that was an actual thing,” her sister said.

Mila nodded. “From horse racing, apparently.”

“Well,” Carliz said over her wineglass, her eyes sparkling, “you have always been quite the thoroughbred, haven’t you?”

And then, because it was time, Mila told her what it had been like to meet Caius for the first time. How it had happened like the weather. One moment she had been contemplating her brand-new hiking boots and questioning her skills and desire to do this thing and the next he’d been there, drowning out the universe.

He had been like a shooting star. She had been dazzled.

And they hadn’t exchanged a word for days.

“You must have known who he was,” Carliz said, her eyes wide. “Everyone knows who he is.”

“Of course I knew who he was. I only pretend to live under a rock.”

Her sister laughed at that and waved her hand at the palace all around them. “At least it’s a pretty rock. Let’s brush past how you never told me any of this, shall we? Tell me everything.”

And Mila felt guilty about the fact she’d hoarded all of this to herself, so she spared no detail. How they had gotten to know each other in a way that she knew she would never get to know someone else. Because the situation could never be repeated. She would never have that kind of time or space or anonymity. She would never be on her own again, not like that.

Back then she hadn’t even been the Queen.

“He knows you in a way that no one else can,” her sister said, with a certain wise look that told Mila things she wouldn’t ask about her sister’s marriage. “That’s magic.”

“There was something about being so far away from everything,” Mila agreed. “I’m not sure that it could be replicated. Even if I wasn’t who I am. Because he’s who he is, too. And there was such an intensity to it—as if that kind of anonymity was sacred. Maybe it was simply that both of us were there for the same reasons. To be outside our skins. To find out who we were when no one knew who we were supposed to be.”

Maybe her eyes got the slightest bit misty as she said that, too.

Carliz pressed her shoulder to Mila’s. It felt like solidarity.

“You must hate me for not telling you,” Mila said in a rush.

“Mila.” Carliz shook her head with a certain gleam in her gaze. She reached past Mila and refilled her wineglass, then topped up Mila’s, too. “Remember all those tabloid stories about Valentino and me?” When Mila only nodded, remembering that she’d thought back then that her sister would be the only not-quite-scandal of her reign, Carliz shrugged. “I planted them.”

Mila gaped at her. But queens did not gape, so she snapped her mouth shut. “What? What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t true,” Carliz said. “We didn’t have a relationship. We didn’t continue our affair the night that he was supposed to marry, we started it that night. He would have ended that, too, but I got pregnant. That’s the dirty truth. Do you hate me for not telling you?”

“As your sister, yes,” Mila said, her head spinning, and not entirely from the wine. “As your queen? I’m delighted you didn’t let me know that any of that was happening. My God.”

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