Forbidden Royal Vows

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

M ILA TASTED HIM again and died.

Or maybe it was that she came back to life.

It was that intense, that glorious, the way it always had been. The way she had known it would be from the start. The way he had showed her it could be between them.

And tonight his kiss sent her spiraling back through time.

Straight back into all the things she’d forgotten—or tried her very best to forget, with failures she only admitted to in the very dark of night. Then tried to deny come morning.

He took her mouth the way he always had, as if he knew her body and its needs better than she ever could. It was deep, familiar shock of pure desire, as expansive and overwhelming as all of that California sunshine mixed in with days of intense fog that they’d once walked through together.

It was everything she missed and pretended she didn’t. Because she couldn’t.

And it was also a deep and enduring grief, washing over her, through her, making the intensity of the kiss seem to roll through her so hard and wild she was surprised, on some level, that it didn’t knock her off the balcony.

Mila forgot all these years of duty, just the way she had before. She forgot the promises she’d made, the vows she had spoken with such deep solemnity in front of the country and the world.

She forgot everything but the magic of his mouth on hers, the way their lips fused together and their tongues danced, as if their bodies had not forgotten a thing.

As if all this time she had simply chained this dragon deep inside of her, but now she’d roused it all over again, fire and fury.

And she could see the edge of that cliff that she’d leaped off once before. She could see how easy it would be to simply throw herself over the edge, allowing this impossible kiss to sweep her away. It would take nothing at all on her part to simply surrender to the storm, to the bright, gleaming dragon that was this passion she’d so deliberately pretended she’d never known—while all the time it had been coiled up inside of her.

But she wasn’t the girl she’d been five years ago.

Mila no longer had the luxury to forget who she was.

That had been true five years ago, too. Eventually. It was even more true now. She couldn’t block out the simple, undeniable facts that governed her entire existence. She was a queen now, not a princess whose father had given her leave to go out there and find the taste of something normal before it was her turn to take the throne.

She was the Queen and this was her palace, and sooner or later, someone would see them here if they hadn’t already. And even though she knew that her staff supported her, and some even adored her, there was always the chance that someone would think a hefty tabloid payment was well worth a simple phone call and the queen’s lost trust.

Mila put her hands on his chest, though that was its own mistake. Caius was already too beautiful, too impossibly gorgeous to bear, and that was simply looking at him. Touching him was a tragedy and once again, that grief slammed through her.

Because once, long ago and so far away now it seemed like a dream, she had imagined that things could be different.

Once, she had dared let herself hope —

But reality had come for her with a vengeance.

She remembered that, too. It was impossible to remember any part of what happened with Caius without remembering how it had ended.

Mila could picture it all too clearly. She had been standing in a hotel room in a haunted city high in the redwoods, staring in complete incomprehension as the guard she had come to view as more of a friend did not smile back at her. The way Noemí always had done before, every time she officially entered Mila’s presence on this adventure of theirs, where no one could suspect who Mila was.

Noemí had taken to smiling in place of any curtseys or bows.

That day, her bodyguard had instead dropped into a deep curtsy that had seemed alarmingly out of place in this faraway place that had nothing to do with monarchies or palaces. And seemed absurd given that Noemí had been wearing hiking clothes, adding a kind of madness to the traditional curtsy that had only etched a kind of grotesque hyperreality to the scene.

The King is dead , Noemí had said, her voice gravelly and not like her at all. Long live the Queen.

And one of the secrets that Mila held deep in the darkest part of her heart was that for a long, disorienting moment, she had forgotten that the Queen was...her.

That the day she’d been preparing for the whole of her life and yet had never wanted to arrive, had come at last.

All this while Caius took a long, hot shower, unaware that everything had changed. That Mila’s much-loved father was dead, that she had not had the chance to say goodbye, and that she would now have to mourn him under the searing and inescapable lens of the public.

Many of whom would be looking to their new queen to lead them through.

Their new queen who had done exactly what her father had told her he trusted her not to do—and shamed the entire family with an impetuous marriage.

She remembered staring back at Noemí in a silence that seemed to drag on for whole lifetimes, thinking, What have I done?

There was all of that pounding through her now, as if it was new, and then there was the reality of Caius. Caius himself, in the flesh. Not the memory of him that had taunted her and tangled itself around her on too many nights she refused to think about come morning.

Caius, who looked down at her when she finally managed to pull away, that mouth of his already moving into its mocking twist, and all that bright, hot fire in his eyes.

Eyes that were a dark, impossible amber ringed in black.

Like he was made of magic.

She had always thought he was.

Not helpful or productive , she scolded herself. “Things are very different than they were back then,” Mila managed to say after a moment, grabbing at the remnants of her dignity as best she could.

Instead of letting herself get carried away by his magic.

Not that it seemed to affect Caius at all. He reached over and brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek, as if it was his dearest wish to light her on fire. Then he carefully tucked a piece of hair that should not have fallen from her elaborate updo behind her ear.

“I would not say that everything is different,” he said, his voice little more than a low rumble.

And to her astonishment and great despair, Mila wanted to cry.

She could feel it rush through her, then rebound as if it meant to drown her where she stood, and for a moment she really did wonder if her knees might buckle.

Because there it was again. The faintest shadow of that sliver of hope she should have known better than to hold on to, all these years later.

The sliver of hope she would have sworn she’d long since extinguished.

She tamped it down, ruthlessly. The way she had learned how to do long ago, because it was that or perish beneath the weight not of her crown, but the piles upon piles of expectations heaped on top of it.

“It is not a simple problem to solve,” she told him, when she could be sure she sounded calm. Even. “And I know you disagree. But it has never been simple, no matter how many arguments you mount.”

His wizard’s gaze gleamed in the dark. “I have made it simple, Mila. You may thank me later. After all, the damage is done. There is only the announcing it.”

She’d forgotten too many things, that was the trouble, like how much she wanted to simply melt into this man. And she blamed herself for that, too, because ignorance was never something that a queen could allow herself to wallow in, but she’d chosen it in this case. It seemed like valor, all those years ago.

Because she had been reeling from the loss of her father and the loss of this bright magic she’d found with Caius that had seemed as if it might kill her, too.

When she should have known that sooner or later, he would come back. Because people always came back to collect on promises.

Promises she should never have made in the first place.

Mila made herself take one step back, then another, and it felt as excruciatingly painful now as it had that last day. More, maybe, because she’d tried very hard since that day to tell herself that she’d made all of that up. Or, more charitably, that she had been stunned by her father’s death and sideswept by all the ramifications of it—all of which had felt very different now that it was more than a theoretical protocol to be discussed while her father was still safely alive.

But no. It just hurt. Everything about Caius was the same agony, no matter how she looked at it.

The difference , she told herself sternly, is that now you do not have the luxury of showing anyone your feelings, especially him.

Mila pulled herself back into character, though these days she thought it was less a character and more simply who she was. The Queen. Always the Queen . She folded her hands in front of her in as regal a manner as possible. She arranged her face into polite impassivity. She managed to look down her nose at him though he still towered over her, and she was not a short woman.

And she pretended that she could not hear that low, mocking sort of laugh of his.

“What announcement do you think we should make?” she inquired with deadly calm and the faintest hint of something almost like interest. Almost, but not quite. “That the man recently seen as the paramour of an old childhood friend is in fact having secret assignations with the Queen? The people will be delighted, I am sure.”

“I know this is a long shot,” he drawled, in that way he had, with that particular accent of his that was all accents and no accent. And somehow entirely him. “But we could always try the truth.”

She shouldn’t have mentioned Paula, because now all she could think about was her friend. Her poor friend, who she had betrayed. There was no other way to look at it. Paula could have had absolutely no idea that Caius was secretly married, much less married to her friend and queen. But Mila knew full well whose arm Caius had arrived on this night.

“The truth is impossible.” She almost allowed herself to frown at him. “And now you have made me not only betray myself and my country, but my friend. I think that’s a hat trick.”

“And to think,” Caius replied as if this was all terribly amusing to him, “I’m only getting started.”

And that terrible desire, that impossible dragon, was still coiling around inside of her, lighting her up in ways she’d forgotten was possible for her to shine. Just as she’d forgotten what it was like to have someone touch her the way he did.

So casually, as if she was a person. As if she was like everyone else, and could be jostled casually, touched carelessly, brushed up against by mistake.

These were things that did not happen to the Queen of Las Sosegadas. These were things that were not allowed to happen. Ever.

These were more things to grieve when she was alone.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, very sternly so that perhaps she would listen to herself, “your date is waiting for me. And likely for you.”

“If that’s how you want to play it, My Sweet Majesty.”

The way he’d used to call her Princess. The way he’d whispered my princess while he was deep inside her, filling her so completely she could not imagine how they had ever parted.

Somehow the My Sweet Majesty was even...worse.

“I know that you think—” she began, in the sort of placating tone she often used on fractious ministers and unduly contentious politicians.

“I’d be careful with that,” he interrupted her, and that, too, was a revelation and a memory all at once. No one else dared speak when she did. No one had in five years, not even her mother. “You don’t know what I think. I believe you never did. I would try not to make a fool of myself by pretending otherwise, if I were you.”

Mila opted not to inform him that it was impossible for the Queen of Las Sosegadas to be a fool. By definition, tradition, and the odd royal decree.

“An interesting tack you’re taking, Caius,” she said instead, not letting herself fold. Not even considering something like folding, come to that, because it had been a long time since she had ever been required to entertain surrender as a possibility. “I watched a program on this. It’s what men these days do, is it not? Perhaps men have always done it. They fear that no woman would ever want them, usually because they are substandard and unworthy. But instead of working to better themselves, they prefer instead to insult women so that they will feel grateful for lowering their standards to men so far beneath them that it’s almost amusing that they even try.”

And for a moment, then, she simply smiled at him. Not quite sanctimoniously.

“The first thing you should always remember about me,” he replied, with that quirk in the corner of his mouth and his eyes entirely too bright, “is that I do not suffer from low self-esteem, a lack of self-confidence, or any of the maladies the men you’re talking about do. I am not short, nor am I dull. I am well aware of the way I look and how avidly my company is desired wherever I go. I do not need to play games to get women. I need only exist.”

“I see your arrogance has only grown.”

“Is it arrogance or simple truth?” He shrugged. “What you need to ask yourself is if you’re prepared to deal with the version of me that is no longer interested in keeping your secrets.”

She held his gaze as if that little speech did not terrify her, and she did not cower. She did not even blink. After a moment, she inclined her head the faintest bit. “I appreciate you laying out this mission of yours in such stark and unmistakable terms. I will take this opportunity to remind you that I’m not a lost princess on a lost coast any longer. I also know exactly who I am, and I think you’ll find that the girl you knew was never anything more than a daydream in the first place.”

Mila did not say, And now I am the Queen, who you would do well to treat more like a potential nightmare.

She felt it was implied.

“A daydream who had the misfortune to sign legal documents, that is,” Caius countered. In that mild way of his that was at complete odds with that blazing fire in his eyes. “Lest you forget.”

“Barring that,” she said cheerfully, “there are always the dungeons.”

And staying here any longer, interacting with him like this, was beginning to feel like an indulgence, so she turned and marched away. She did not wait to see what he would do, because she was the Queen, damn it.

What mattered was what she did.

Accordingly, Mila swept off, back into this remote and little-used room. She strode past the guard—sadly not Noemí, who had been rewarded for her extraordinary service and friendship by being made a Baroness of the Realm as one of Mila’s first duties, and was now the Minister of Security.

Once she cleared the guard, she raced down the hallway—or her version of racing, since it was undignified to break out into a run. And she checked the clocks standing here and there in all their state as she went. It could not have been more than a handful of minutes that they been together. Ten on the outset. They could not possibly have engaged in anything too scandalous in so short a time, and she was in no way disheveled—apart from that one rogue tendril of hair.

Not that she expected that particular guard to betray her, but that was the thing. Anyone could and it wasn’t even personal. Because Mila wasn’t a person to them.

She hurried along to a salon off a different hall, where Paula was waiting. She was seated on a couch, surrounded by all the pictures of Carliz and her growing family that the palace had been able to find, both in Mila’s personal collection and from all the press sources.

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” she said as she hurried into the room, waving off the aides that waited unobtrusively, because someone was almost always watching in the palace. “I could lie and tell you that I was swept up in matters of state, but the truth is, I was vetting that date of yours.”

Paula laughed. Mila hated herself.

She hadn’t even planned that lie. It had simply slipped out. Because she’d had just enough time on her dash over here to think about the fact that Caius could very easily tell his own tales, and start with Paula when he did.

This was who she was now. It was second nature to play elaborate games of chess, whether or not anyone else was playing.

“He is my escort tonight,” Paula told her, waving a languid hand. “But he is not a date . Can you imagine? Who could possibly take the likes of Caius Candriano seriously?”

“I rather thought the point of him was to take him as extremely unseriously as possible,” Mila heard herself say. Because, apparently, she couldn’t stop.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t ,” Paula said with another laugh. “If it were the right bad decision I wouldn’t hesitate. But I’d sooner jump into bed with a comet than Caius Candriano. I think he would burn a mere mortal to a crisp without even trying.”

Mila had never heard a better description of Caius. It was his reputation, certainly—but she rather thought it was simply a primal truth any woman who ventured near him understood at once. In their bones.

And she could feel that comet inside her, burning her alive, even now.

Had she only been pretending, all these years, that she had somehow escaped that fire?

But there was no time to wonder these things. Not now. She turned to the pictures before them, some on the tablet the staff had brought and some printed out. And for another half hour or so, they talked about when they were younger. When they’d stood on opposite sides of ballrooms, Mila exuding duty from every pore while Paula and Carliz had gotten themselves into different sorts of trouble. Paula had always been more about giving her father white hairs and near heart attacks. Carliz had always promised not to embarrass her sister, so she was simply...irrepressible.

Some years Mila had been jealous that they were allowed to behave as they liked, even within the strictures of their class and its expectations. Other years she had felt quite serene in her choices, and her future.

And now here she was, living out that future, only her past—the one she thought she’d hidden away, far from view, where no one could ever find it—had reared its ugly head.

Well , drawled a little voice inside, as if he was still part of her, not ugly . I think you know better than that.

By the time Paula took her leave, Mila was almost tempted to pretend that she couldn’t remember that part of the evening. She said goodbye to her friend and did not accompany her out into the public part of the palace, where she knew Caius would be waiting.

She told herself that discretion was the better part of valor. That she had nothing at all to fear. That she was not, for that matter, the least bit afraid.

But it was also true that she walked a bit faster to get back to her rooms.

Because once she said good-night to her staff, once she closed her door, she could be Mila again until morning.

Just a person. Just herself.

And tonight she had her own mission.

Mila smiled and thanked her staff as they withdrew. She closed the door behind them to her private rooms and stood there a moment, her heart telling truths she didn’t want to listen to as it beat much too hard in her chest.

She forced herself to go into the dressing room and take her usual meticulous care of herself, the way she did every night. She had needed help out of the dress, but the rest she could do on her own, and so she did. She changed into what her sister had once called princess pajamas. It was a lounging set of the finest, softest cashmere that floated like a whisper over her skin.

And did not in any way remind her of the way Caius had once skimmed his fingers down the length of her—

“Stop it,” she chastised herself.

She sat in front of a mirror and took down her hair, brushing it the way she did each night. Her mother had always told her that it was not only her crowning beauty, but would be looked at more than most women’s, by virtue of the actual crowns she would be called upon to wear.

Like every other part of the vision that is the Queen, your hair must gleam with health and vitality , Alondra had declared. Repeatedly, throughout her girlhood.

Health and vitality , Carliz would whisper, twisting her own hair in a knot on the back of her head some years and acting as if she’d never seen a brush.

Mila took off her makeup, cleansed and moisturized her face. And only then, only when she had attended to the physical body of the reigning queen as was her sacred and sovereign duty, did she surrender to that wild and consistent beating thing behind her ribs.

Only then did she dart back into her bedroom, go over to the desk that stood in one far corner, and dig into the back of one of the drawers. She wedged her hand inside, reaching with her fingers until she could push just the right spot.

The drawer pulled out then. And she could pull off the envelope that she had taped there years back. She held the envelope in her hands as if, were she not careful, it might bite her.

Mila took it over to the bed, climbing up into the center of the mattress on this bed that the staff was forever trying to make more ornate and she was always asking them to make simpler. It had four posters, it didn’t need a canopy. It had enough pillows, it didn’t need a thousand more throw pillows to adorn it. It was already fitted with a soft mattress set to her precise specifications, about which she was quizzed with regularity, lest she spend even one night in discomfort.

And yet she wasn’t sure that she’d ever sleep again.

Mila turned the envelope over. Once. Again.

She blew out a breath and then she opened it up, shaking out the content onto the coverlet before her.

Then there was nothing to do but stare down at the delicate gold chain that held only the simple gold ring that she had worn on her finger only once.

Only briefly.

She had thought she might wear it on the chain instead, but had known even before the plane had landed back in Las Sosegadas that she couldn’t risk it. It would invite comments at the very least. It would demand speculation.

Mila had hidden it away. And she had not allowed herself to look at it since.

Now, once again, she felt all the same things that had charged around inside of her earlier. That wildfire passion. That intense, impossible connection.

The coiled, golden dragon of the way she longed for him and all the grief and hope and loss that went with it.

There were other things that she could do to handle this situation. She knew that. There was a team in the palace whose job it was to anticipate bad press, or any kind of scandal, and get out ahead of it. She should have been on the phone to them right now.

But Mila didn’t pick up her extension.

She stayed where she was, sitting cross-legged on her bed.

She thought of that kiss, that glorious kiss she should not have allowed, and eventually she picked up the gold chain and let the ring dance there on the end of it in the soft light of her bedroom.

Here, only here, where no one would see her and no one would know, she slipped that ring on her finger the way she had years ago.

And for the first time in a long, long while, let the memories wash over as they would, until her mouth tasted of salt and there were no tears left to cry for the man she couldn’t have.

The man she shouldn’t want.

The man she would have to make herself forget all over again, come morning.