Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
C AIUS WALKED OFF the trail some two weeks later.
It turned out that he wasn’t quite the callow younger man he’d been the first time, unable to imagine a life or a world that wasn’t the same endless merry-go-round of notoriety and exposure. He hadn’t needed months to come to his senses.
“Besides,” he muttered to himself as he took the last long walk back into the nearest town. “The company this time was severely lacking.”
With a couple of phone calls, he arranged everything he’d decided he needed, out there where his clarity had descended when he was finally alone in the wilderness. No comments section. No paparazzi. No one clamoring for his money or his notice or what he could do to raise their profile.
He could breathe again, and getting that back made it clear he’d lost it sometime over the past five years.
Maybe the moment Mila had walked away from him.
But out on the trail with only the sky and the earth, the weather and his heartbeat, he could think through the implications of everything. Every single thing that had happened to the pair of them since they’d met. He could see it all clearly. He could cut through not only the excuses he’d made to himself, but his own deeply ingrained, knee-jerk reaction to be only what was expected when people looked at him and nothing more.
How , the stars above had seemed to say, can you ask for a change you are not willing to give?
He had turned that over and over inside of him.
One day it had rained. On and on, relentlessly, and yet he hadn’t quit. He hadn’t even considered it. Caius had marched grimly on, determined to keep going until he found what he was looking for. That unidentifiable thing inside him that would indicate it was time to leave the wilderness and face the world.
Why , the mountains had seemed to whisper, can you commit yourself so wholeheartedly to a hike no matter the adversity you face, when you accepted the end of your marriage without so much as a whimper?
Caius had walked until he’d found the answers.
He’d walked into that last town, met his assistant, and drove the rest of the way to that same hotel that he and Mila had stayed in so long ago. Once there, he cleaned himself up. He restored himself to form, though part of him would miss the ease of the wilderness. The beard that grew without his notice.
The lack of any reflective surfaces.
He thought a lot about that, too.
And he decided that he could not let himself go so long again. That the moment he suspected the real him was retreating from his own gaze in the mirror, that was his call to take himself off until he found himself again. Until he remembered that he wasn’t who they said he was. That was a role he played, and anytime he liked, he could step off that stage.
He’d had ample time to think through all those parts of his childhood that had led directly to where he was now. Caius knew full well each and every incident that had created the empty vessel he’d made himself into.
And he’d worked so hard on the particular quality of that emptiness, was the thing. He’d learned how to bend any room to his will from a master. His mother was a pro at it—it was only those who knew her who truly saw her for what she was. But her charm, used only on strangers, was a useful tool. It had helped him immensely in his business dealings, which was likely one of the reasons all the rest of his half siblings were in awe of him. Because they relied on his mother’s fickle regard to fund their lives.
It had been good to walk until he remembered that he’d chosen the tools that he would take from her. That he had vowed when he was sixteen that he would never rely on her for anything material again. And he hadn’t.
Caius had developed his pretty-as-a-picture, delightful, and profoundly empty persona instead.
He had used it well.
And now it was time to see if he could fashion a different role altogether.
Because he didn’t need to return to this hotel room to remember all the things that Mila had said to him here on that last day. In their last hour. How she had laid out the gulf between them calmly, quietly, and had explained that the palace would never stand for it.
I am so young , she had said, though she had not seemed the least bit young then. Her gaze had been old and wise and sad. They will question my judgment, and once they start down that road, there’s little hope of coming back. I owe my father’s legacy more than that.
We all owe our parents’ legacies something , he had thrown back at her, reeling from the shock of what was happening. The impossibility that he had found her, the own person in the whole world who looked at him and saw all him. And the agony that he could not keep her. Most of us discuss these issues in therapy, Mila.
Her face had changed then. It had grown sadder. Kinder.
Everything is a game to you , she had said, and it had devastated him. That is what you know of the world, and you play these games well. But what I do can never be seen as a game, because that would make me nothing but a toy. And should that happen, how can I rule?
Nothing that has happened between us is a game, he had gritted out.
But she had only gazed back at him in that same earnest, sorrowful way. Caius. I am a pr— Her voice had caught then, but she’d gone on anyway, with a certain resoluteness that he had thought might kill him. I am a queen. It’s time we stopped playing games of hide-and-seek, don’t you think?
“I do think,” he said now, to the bathroom mirror.
He had not thought so then. There had been a part of him that insisted, always, that he had dispensed entirely with games and that she had treated him cruelly.
Now, all he could think of was the fact she had waited for him to come out of the shower when she could easily have left without a word. She could have had one of her staff deliver the news. She had not had to stand there and talk it through, no matter how upset they both got.
He couldn’t understand how he’d been too busy thinking of his own bruised heart, because she was walking away from him. When her father had just died. And she was going home not just to bury a man she’d loved and admired, but to take his place.
“You,” he told his reflection, “did not deserve her kindness.”
In fact, he had not forgiven her for it. Until now.
When he had set himself to rights, he crashed out on the hotel room bed, thinking that he would get a good night’s sleep in an actual bed. Tomorrow was soon enough to set his various plans in motion. Tomorrow was the earliest he would even consider dipping a toe back into the life he’d walked away from again.
Another thing that sat heavy on him was how easy it was to do that. To simply walk away. This was the second time he’d done it so completely, but then, he’d been doing it all his life. Whenever something got too bothersome or too intense, the Countess had moved them on. He’d adopted the same habits, though he’d told himself it’d been for different reasons.
He couldn’t settle. He was easily bored. He was always looking for the next great thing, and that meant a lot of moving...
At a certain point, a man had to face himself. He had to stop running away and decide, at last, who he was going to be. The geographic cure was a lie.
He clicked on the television, flipping absently through the channels, though it was almost offensive to try to focus on flashing lights and gaudy colors after the serene stillness of the outdoors.
Though when he saw her face, on the screen and not only in his head, he stopped.
And then sat up, because it turned out that Queen Emilia had decided to make a speech.
He had plugged in his long-dead mobile when he’d entered the room, and he switched it on as the news desk of the channel he’d landed on talked about the possible reasons for the Queen to speak.
He found an avalanche of messages forwarded on by his assistant, but none from her.
Still, something in him felt called to attention as the screen changed.
And she was there.
Right there.
“It is not the habit of this palace to comment on the scandals of the day,” Mila said in her calm, serene way, looking directly into the camera. She was sitting quite smartly in a chair in what was clearly the palace, that made her look as if she was seated on a throne without actually reverting to the Las Sosegadan throne itself. The light that fell upon her was splendid, but then again, so was she. Her dark hair gleamed, pulled back into an intricately braided bun at the nape of her neck. She was dressed, as ever, to perfection. He wondered if he was the only man alive who could see the passion that glittered in her gray gaze. He wondered if she knew that he could still see her . “But I find that I cannot remain quiet.”
Halfway across the planet, Caius sat up straighter.
“I have been made aware of the photograph that so many have taken such liberties in dissecting,” said the Queen , with more than a hint of frost to her tone. “I quite understand that there’s an extreme level of interest in me and great speculation about my life, and I accept that. My personal wishes must always be held up against the best interests of the kingdom, and I can only hope that these things align. And that I always act with the country foremost in my thoughts.”
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.
Not even his sister had done that. Not when her own neck was on the line.
In his family, it was always every man for himself.
The plane landed while it was still dark. Caius had slept very little, preferring to rewatch that video of Mila again and again. This time, he didn’t read reactions or comments—because he didn’t care.
He cared about what she had said. He kept rewinding, looking for more nuance. Basking in her voice. Wishing that he could have reached through the screen to curve his hand over the elegant line of her neck. To feel the strength in her even as she spoke so softly, yet so resolutely.
Once in Las Sosegadas, he headed directly for the palace, prepared to charm his way in. One way or another.
Or cause a scene.
He wasn’t picky.
Caius presented himself at the gates, expecting to be turned away. He was already formulating plans for that—
But it was unnecessary.
They made him wait, but after a while he was let in and ushered through the battlements, until he found himself in the palace’s architectural wonder of the forecourt.
Where the woman waiting there, arms crossed, smiled when she saw him.
It took him only a moment.
“Noemí,” he said, with genuine pleasure. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too long,” the woman agreed. She still held herself like the guard she’d been pretending not to be when he’d known her. He’d instantly assessed her as someone with martial arts training and perhaps a military background, which was why he’d taken a closer look at Mila. And realized he knew exactly who she was.
Then hadn’t looked away again.
“I never had a chance to thank you,” he said now. “Those were magical days.”
“They were,” the other woman agreed. “And between you and me, I think we could all do with a little more magic, don’t you think?”
Caius found himself grinning ear to ear. “I do,” he said. “I really do.”
Noemí grinned back, then nodded toward the path that wound around the palace and into the gardens.
“Her Majesty is enjoying an early-morning walk in her maze,” she said. “I believe you know the way.”
Caius started to walk, but something occurred to him. He stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “There were no paparazzi here at the Garden Gala. There were only official photographers.” The older woman only gazed back at him. “And you are the Minister of Security, are you not?”
“I am.”
“I would have thought that you would know of a photograph like that. That you would have seen to it that it did not slip out into the wrong hands.”
Noemí smiled. She seemed to take her time with it. “Sometimes,” she said after a moment, “magic needs a little help.”
With every step he took, Caius couldn’t help but feel the portent of it all. Back in the maze but this time, he knew where he was going. Back at the palace but this time, he wasn’t pretending to himself that he was here for any reason at all save this one.
It was time to do what was right in the soul he’d always claimed he didn’t have, and maybe he hadn’t until five years ago. Nor since, as he was fairly certain he’d handed it over into her keeping.
But the good news about that was that he knew exactly where it was.
The maze was a blur of high, imposing hedges and his own impatience. Until, unerringly, he stepped out into the grove at the center the way he had once before.
Though it was changed now.
Summer had turned to fall. The flowering trees were bare. The pool looked cold and uninviting.
But Mila sat there anyway, as the first rays of the dawning sun peeked over the mountains and then tumbled down into the valley, lighting up the maze.
And bathing her in all of that shine.
“You defended me,” Caius said.
He watched her go stiff. Then she whirled around and her jaw dropped open. Her gray eyes went wide.
“You’re here,” she whispered. “You’re really here.”
“How could I be anywhere else?” he asked. He searched her face, looking for clues. Answers. His own heart. “Why did you defend me, Mila? I thought I was your dirty secret.”
And to his surprise, she turned all the way around, and then came to her feet. Or maybe he met her there in the middle. He would never know. It was all a brand-new sunrise and her gaze, wide and gray and fixed to his as if she was drowning and he was safety.
Caius had never managed to be safe for anyone, including himself. But for her, he would do it. He would figure it out.
“I hate myself for making you feel that way,” she was saying, and there were no echoes of the Queen that he’d watched so many times on his race across the world. This was Mila. This was his Mila. “I hate that I wasn’t strong enough to admit what you were to me years ago. I hate that it took all of this, all of this separation and all of these games I was so sure I wasn’t playing, to understand what I needed, without question, a long time ago.”
They drew closer together, in this secret place that felt like freedom to him. Because it was the first place he’d understood he hadn’t lost her. That even if he had, he could find her again.
It was the first place he’d hoped.
“There has never been anyone for you but me,” Mila told him. She blew out a breath. “And I don’t care how many times you might have sampled those other queens you mentioned, because—”
“I’m a married man,” he said, cutting her off. He caught her gaze and held it, because this was what mattered. This was a truth that had nothing to do with masks or charm or any of the smoke and mirrors he knew how to use so well. “I have never broken our vows. There were times I wished I could. But I couldn’t. I didn’t.”
“Caius...”
And the way she said his name was like a song.
Something shifted inside him, then. All those blows he’d taken since that photo was published. All the things that had become so clear to him out there on the trail.
There had only been one path in his life and it had always led here, to her.
“I’m happy enough to be your secret,” he told her now. “I don’t need you to claim me in front of the world. That you would think to defend my honor is a gift too sweet to bear.”
“But bear it you must,” she replied. “For it is a gift freely given. And I do not think it is the last of the gifts I will give you.”
“I understand who you are,” he told her, holding her gaze, because these were vows far more important than the ones they’d made five years ago on a beach. These were the ones that counted, because he understood the two of them better now. “I always did. Of course you had to come back here and do your duty. I know that you always will. And when you have time to sneak away and make omelets in the kitchen with your own regal hands, I’m your man.”
To his astonishment, her eyes welled up. Then actually spilled over, tracking tears down her face. “I think I will take you up on that,” Mila whispered.
And he found himself smiling, wide and bright. And real. All of this was real.
No wonder the joy of it hurt.
She took a breath. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing for the past few weeks—”
“I’ve been getting myself right,” he said. And he took a step closer. “To claim you, Mila. To claim my wife in whatever way she will have me.”
And the way she smiled at him made his chest feel as if it was bursting wide open.
“I’m happy to hear that,” she said. “Because I intend to claim you, too. And not as some secret affair who has to sneak in and out of tunnels to see me. I’m not doing that again.” She leaned in, sliding her hands up his chest and around his neck. “Do you remember when you asked me to marry you?”
“Of course I do. We were muddy and sore and it’s one of the best memories of my life.”
She was still smiling up at him. “I always expected that I would marry one day, but it was never going to be like that. I was never going to get a surprise proposal, a man suddenly on his knee out of nowhere. It was never going to be based on love, emotion, sex. Any proposal that I could expect to receive would involve half the palace. A vetting committee. There would be many discussions and signatures. So you have already given me the most romantic gift that I could receive.”
“I think you need more gifts, My Majesty,” he murmured.
“I would like to return that gift.”
Mila’s damp eyes were fixed to his, and even though he could see the tears on her cheeks, he could also see that core of iron in her. Every inch the Queen.
But also his .
She didn’t go down on one knee. She held his gaze steadily. “Caius Candriano, would you do me the honor of becoming my king?”
“I accept,” he said at once.
“I wasn’t finished,” Mila told him reprovingly. “Will you be King Caius, my chosen consort? My liege man and protector as long as we may live? Will you help me do my duty, both in and out of the marital bed?”
“Your Majesty,” he said, lifting one of her hands to his lips so he could kiss her knuckles, a courtly gesture from another age that seemed to fit this—and them—to perfection. “It would be my very great pleasure.”
“And will you promise that you will always find me?” she asked softly. “Because I fear that it’s possible that I might get lost again.”
“I will always find you,” he promised, without hesitation.
“And I will always love you,” she told him in return. “Caius, I hope you know, I always have.”
And then the Queen Las Sosegadas sank down onto her knees, tipped her head back so she could smile at him in the wicked way he loved most, and proved it.