Page 130 of Thrones We Steal

Finally, he breaks his gaze and bows his head. My queen, the motion says. I’m scared my heart will break anew.

I lower my eyes to blink away tears, and when I look back, he’s gone.

I step out into the beautiful sunshine, casting beams from the gold orb and scepter I still hold, into the crowd who is cheering my arrival. The clear sky draws my eyes upwards. Can he see me from up there? The rays of the sun warm my skin like his pride pouring down from heaven. It seems fitting to release the anger and resentment I feel toward him for choosing the coward’s way out, and instead cling to the good memories I have.

The scores of people facing me are chanting, echoing the one that started inside the church. God save the queen. They wave the flag of Wesbourne, its green stripes a vibrant emerald in the sun. Children sit on their father’s shoulders, desperate for a glimpse of their new queen, and swing their chubby fists back and forth in celebration. All around phones are snapping pictures, future proof of I was there that day.

Do they know everything I’ve given up for them? Probably not. But that’s okay.

Great loves are worth sacrificing everything for, even our fairy-tale dreams.

And sometimes the best fairy tales are the ones we write ourselves.

* * *

Don’t worry—Henry and Celia’s story is far from over! Read on for a bonus chapter from Castles We Storm!

41

Bonus Chapter

“What does Rosalind think?” Maisie is sitting beside me in the back of a black limousine. We are flanked by security SUVs front and back. I moved from an SUV to a limo after my coronation.

I think it’s meant to be an upgrade.

“Rosalind is the very last person I would go to for advice on anything pertaining to the royal household, and I certainly would never ask her about money.” After she recovered from my major faux pas, she would be ruled by nothing less than her own ambition.

“Don’t you ever think you’re too hard on your mother?”

“I’m not any harder on her than she is on me.” I stare at the schedule for the Feed the World Foundation meeting where I’m about to make a twelve minute appearance—just long enough to shake a few hands, take a quick tour, and present a plague. My staff has even allowed me a two-minute bathroom break.

“The duke was right,” I say. “Raising taxes is the only solution.”

“I have another idea. But you probably won’t like it either,” she says.

If she’s prefacing it with that, I probably won’t. “What?”

“You have to promise not to shoot me, okay?”

I narrow my eyes.

She quickly immerses herself back into the digital world at her fingertips before saying with nonchalance I can only assume is fake, “You could ask Henry.”

I stare at her, waiting for the punchline, but she remains focused on the screen. “Henry?” I haven’t said his name out loud in months. Doing so now feels like a rusty hinge.

Which is embedded in my heart.

“I know the two of you aren’t speaking, but I thought—”

“If it involves Henry, you couldn’t have been thinking.”

“Celia, he could help with this. I know he could.”

“I take back what I said about Rosalind. At that point I’d forgotten Henry existed.” I flip to the next page in my lap, which contains a detailed map of the exact route I will take for today’s walkabout, where I will have enough time to shake the hands of exactly twenty-seven people arbitrarily selected from the crowd.

“Come on. You two worked together so well researching Helena and her lover. Surely you can put aside—”

“Put aside what? Our differences? Our mutual dislike?” The fact that he broke my heart? Drove over it with a military tank and left the pieces to broil in the sun?

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