Page 51 of Forbidden Royal Vows

She did not seem to move, but her gray eyes cooled considerably. “What I cannot countenance is the savaging of a man who did nothing to deserve these attacks but walk beside me at a garden party.”

Everything in Caius went still. As quiet as if he was standing at the top of a mountain, with nothing but a sea of forever stretching out on all sides.

“This is a man who graces the covers of magazines with regularity, because he is a household name, almost entirely because of the genetic gifts that make him so pleasant to look upon. He can also boast a direct, hereditary link to almost every noble house in Europe,” Mila was saying. “He is a favorite of style-setters and old guard watchdogs alike, because he is not merely pedigreed, he is kind. He is amusing, but never at the expense of others. By any standard, he would be a perfectly appropriate escort for any woman, including a queen. Indeed, the only reason he is held to be a disgrace, as I read to my surprise this morning, is because of the speculation in the gutter press about how he spends his personal time.”

Caius felt almost...outside his own body. As if he was looking down from far, far away. As if perhaps he had actually died, hearing these words he had not understood until now that he had waited his whole life to hear.

The woman he loved, defending him. And not simply defending him, but painting a picture of him so that all the world would see him that way.

The way she did.

He found himself gripping his chest at that. The way she did. The way she must, or she would not have said those things.

To the world.

Mila did not seem to move, and yet the way she looked at the camera changed. It was as if she was demanding that anyone watching look within themselves and ask, Is this fair? Is this right?

And she wasn’t finished. “I ask you, who are we as people if we believe every rumor we hear, hold it as fact, and judge each other harshly because of it? I am not certain who among us could stand tall in the face of such an onslaught. I am appalled that anyone should have to. I am deeply saddened that his association with me has apparently opened the floodgates to this sort of shocking behavior on such a widespread scale.” She paused for a moment, then leaned slightly closer to the camera. “I have read a great many vile things about both him and myself in these past weeks. For myself, I understand. I am a Queen. I am public property. But a man who smiles at me in a photograph is not.”

She did not say anything like You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

But Caius was sure everyone heard it.

“Furthermore,” she said, all stone and ice, “the world will know when and if the day comes that the Queen of Las Sosegadas requests romantic advice from the tabloids. Until then, I will walk in gardens as I please, with whom I please, and will expect my subjects to understand that I, too, have a life to lead. I hope to live it in a manner that will make them proud. But I cannot—I will not—live it to anyone’s standards but my own.”

For a long time after Mila’s face disappeared, Caius couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure he breathed.

It was entirely possible, in fact, that he was really, truly having a cardiac event.

Or several.

When he ascertained that he was still alive, somehow, he swiped up his phone once more so he could watch that statement over again.

To make certain that he was not hallucinating. That Mila had said what he thought she had.

That she had defended him to her kingdom. To the world.

She had not spoken to him at all since he’d left the September House. She had not had her people chase him down to see if he had somehow released that photo, as he’d thought she would.

There had been no contact between them.

And that meant that Mila didn’t know that he’d gone off into the wilderness, or come back a changed man.

“She doesn’t know,” he said out loud, in the quiet of his room.

She didn’t know, and yet she had sat there and told the whole world not only that she would do what she pleased with him, but that he was an excellent choice. That he was a good man. That he was a worthy escort of an honest-to-God queen.

Caius felt as if something walloped him, hard.

As if he was a different man all over again because it walloped him so completely. He was surprised he wasn’t tossed backward out of the room, across this haunted city, and into the Pacific Ocean.

When he stood at last—when he was able to stand—he felt drunk. And wild with it.

This time when he picked up his phone, he barked out more orders. Then he had to check the mirror more than once to see if he was in a proper state before he left the room.

Because he was fairly sure he was somehow wearing that statement on his face.

Caius wasn’t sure he thought clearly again until he was in his plane, winging his way toward a tiny little jewel of a country tucked away in the mountains of Europe, and the only woman in his life who had ever defended him.

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