Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
T HE PALACE WENT into crisis mode and stayed there. Teams of outward-facing staff huddled in the corridors, whispering to each other about the situation . The crisis management battalion took over all palace communications. There was a sudden influx of very serious people having very intense meetings, throwing around buzzwords and PR phrases.
Mila sailed about pretending she didn’t notice. Or perhaps that it was all beneath her notice, which was not quite the same thing.
But when Carliz arrived, a few days after that picture hit the papers when it was clear that the scandal was not going away on its own, she was grateful.
More than grateful, even though her sister had left her baby, not quite a year old, at home.
“We don’t get to see him enough,” Mila chided her as she greeted her with a hug.
“This visit is not about him,” Carliz replied in a fierce whisper, hugging her back.
Hard.
“How can you travel without your child?” Alondra asked that first night as they gathered for a private family dinner. “I know I never did. Not when you were both so small.”
“You and Father did a round of extended state visits all over Europe the year I was born,” Mila said mildly. “And again when Carliz was eighteen months.” She smiled when her mother glared at her. “I’ve had to study the history of state visits, of course. What worked, what didn’t, goals versus outcomes, the usual.”
Carliz, on the other hand, smiled in that way she had that was precisely calculated to drive the Queen Mother mad. She had cultivated that smile, Mila knew. She had spent years working on it.
She had once told Mila, If you can’t be the heir, be annoying instead.
“It is actually not necessary to live forever tethered to a child,” she told Alondra languidly now. Deliberately giving the impression that she let her infant fend for himself on his Mediterranean island home when Mila knew she did no such thing. “As you apparently decided yourself in your day, Mother. I always knew we were secretly alike.”
Alondra did not care for that comparison, as the way she gripped her utensils made clear. “I suppose that husband of yours can afford a fleet of excellent nannies,” she murmured, quite as if her two daughters had not spent large swathes of their young lives in the care of staff.
“We do have some help,” Carliz agreed. Serenely. “Though Valentino prefers to care for Centuri himself, whenever possible.”
The Queen Mother blinked. “How singular that he is willing to babysit.”
“He is not singular, he is a parent,” Carliz replied, and she no longer sounded languid. Though she was still sparkling at her mother. “A parent cannot babysit their own child. By definition.”
“You will argue about anything, Carliz,” Alondra said, as if this conversation had already exhausted her. “My goodness.”
“If you’re asking if the man I married, the love of my life, is a good father? Yes, he is. And lo, just as he is perfectly capable of making empires out of all he surveys, he can also take care of our baby . Sometimes he does so when I am right there.”
Alondra did not respond to that. Mila glanced at her sister. “I’m not sure she can take that on board.”
“I’m sure you’re both very droll,” their mother replied. “I am certain there must be someone who would find your humor entertaining.”
That person, she made clear with her tone, was not Alondra. She started talking of incidental things, deftly leading them all away from powder keg topics like anything involving Carliz’s husband and Mila’s scandalous photo.
So mostly she discussed the plans for the holiday decorations in the palace.
Later that night, when Carliz slipped into her bedchamber the way she had that summer she’d lived here—and every single night when they’d been girls—Mila felt herself relax for the first time since she’d walked down that trail behind the September House and found Caius gone.
Just...gone.
The crisis team had suggested he’d planted that photo, but she’d shut them down.
I am more likely to have planted that photo than Caius Candriano could ever be , she had said dismissively. For one thing, he does not plant photos. He doesn’t have to.
But she had almost wished she could believe that he had. It would have felt like a message. It would have felt like something.
“So,” Carliz said breezily, taking her place on the chaise. “It sounds like we have some catching up to do, no?”
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.”
“That’s what happens when you fall in love,” Carliz said in the same soft tone. “All of the noise, all of the trouble, it all disappears. And all that matters is the bright light that shines between you two.”
“I did more than find it,” Mila told her then, though her throat constricted as she spoke, so used was she to keeping this secret. “I married it.”
And it took some while after that to settle back down. Because first there was the squealing. And enough shrieking that she had to assure the guards that all was well.
But Mila couldn’t really blame her sister for this reaction.
It was actually...comforting. Validating, somehow. Because it meant that it was the big deal—the huge deal— that she had always thought it was.
She couldn’t beat herself up for hiding this if her sister, who was usually impossible to rile up like this, was having this kind of reaction. Imagine what her mother would have done five years ago?
“I’m sorry.” Carliz wiped at her eyes, still shaking her head. “You were far more composed when I told you my tiny little secret. But I can’t believe you managed to hide something like this not just from me, but from the whole world. For years .”
“I kept thinking it would come out. I kept thinking that I would wake up one day to find that he’d told the entire planet.” She blew out a breath. “But he never did.”
They both sat with that for a while.
“What are you going to do?” Carliz asked. “I know you were leaning in the direction of being the apparently not at all virgin queen for the rest of your life, but sooner or later...?”
She didn’t have to finish that thought. They both knew what family they were in, and what each of their responsibilities were.
“There is no question about what I will have to do.” Mila couldn’t look at her sister anymore. She stared at the wineglass instead. Ferociously. “I must do my best to provide the kingdom with an heir. And, really, I was always meant to find the perfect king while I was at it. They have a list of the attributes this paragon should possess. He should be quiet and self-effacing. He should be weighted down by his own pedigree, someone who fades into the shadows while standing in plain sight, so as never to detract from my sovereign magnificence, blah blah blah.”
Carliz reached over and hooked her hand over Mila’s wrist. She squeezed until Mila found her gaze. It was too bright. Searing. “What’s the point of being the Queen if it means a life of lonely misery? Isn’t that just a nun? That’s not your job description, Mila.”
“Maybe,” Mila agreed, astounded both that her voice was noticeably rough and that she did not feel compelled to hide it. “But what can I do?”
Carliz laughed at that. “Have you confused yourself for someone else?” When Mila only looked at her without comprehension, she sighed. “What if you just said, Guess what? I love him. And I’m the Queen, so I’ll love who I want. What could they do?”
And it was easy, in a happy red wine flush and the joy of her sister’s presence, to tell herself that was a good idea. That not only was it a good idea, but that it would be easy. A wave of the nearest scepter. A royal inclination of her queenly head.
But when she woke up in the morning her queenly head ached, her royal heart was sore, and she had to sit in on another endless meeting about approaches to the scandal. She had to nod sagely at the discussions of crisis management, sinking relatability scores, and messaging .
None of this was new. Only the intensity of these discussions were different.
And maybe she had changed—or it was the hangover that lingered at her temples—but it sat heavily on her that what they were talking about was her life . This roomful of people, mostly men in dark suits, was carrying on a rather heated debate about how she should proceed to live out what no one directly called her ruined life. Though it was heavily implied that it would all be picking up pieces and hoping for divine intervention from here.
All it took was one photograph that was in no way salacious to overshadow her otherwise entirely spotless reign, and the exemplary life of excellent behavior that had preceded it.
What she needed to do, she thought when the interminable meeting was over, was not listen to these crisis counselors. They were worried about a photograph and internet chatter. They didn’t even know the real crisis, which was that she had given her heart away five years ago. Then frozen herself solid when her father died.
Only Caius had come back, and nothing in her was frozen any longer, and she was finding it hard to remember why she had decided that the only way she could exist was to disappear into her role. Become a statue of the Queen , like the one that would no doubt stand somewhere in this palace one day, instead of a person.
She knew she needed to find that statue again, no matter what she could remember. It was past time to pull herself together. Get her armor back in place. Figure out how to wear the Queen like a mask again, but this time, never take it off again.
But first she enjoyed every moment of her sister’s company. They saw old friends, like Paula. They spent as much time as they could alone together. Carliz had her speak to Valentino on the video calls she made and took to check in with him and the baby, so that at the end of the week or so she stayed, Mila felt as if she knew her brother-in-law in a way she would not have otherwise.
Better still, she had a sense of her sister’s relationship with her husband, which, after all the studied formality in their family, felt like fresh air.
And on the last night of Carliz’s visit, they once again indulged in a private family dinner. Because tradition always won out, no matter how many times the three of them had proved that sharing meals was a fraught exercise.
“I hope,” Carliz said over the fish course, with a sparkle in her gaze that told Mila she was about to cause trouble, “that if we can agree on nothing else, we can agree on this. At least everyone can understand why even a saint like Mila would trade in her reputation for the likes of Caius Candriano. It doesn’t need an explanation. Pictures of him exist.”
“Carliz.” Alondra looked appalled. “Really.”
Mila tried to look stern and queenly, but heard herself laughing instead. That did not make her mother any happier.
“The pair of you go too far.” She pushed back from the table. “This can only embarrass the crown, no matter what the man looks like. I was never taken in. And I’m surprised that you, Mila, would allow yourself to stray so far from the path your father laid out for you.”
“So you can call her Mila after all,” Carliz murmured, eyeing Alondra. “But never affectionately. Only to chastise her. No wonder she had to keep a secret or two.”
Mila should have stepped in then. She should have ended this with one of her usual serene asides that were actually commands...but she didn’t.
“You don’t understand, Carliz,” their mother replied icily. “Thrones and crowns and the family legacy do not concern you. You’ve made that clear enough.”
“By not marrying some terrible, boring man the palace selected for me?” Carliz laughed. “Guilty as charged.”
Mila realized too late that this was a wound that needed cauterizing. “Mother, please sit down. It’s Carliz’s last night.”
But there was no stopping her mother tonight. “You promised your father that you would never embarrass him, and what do you think this is? How do you think he would react to your involvement in such a tawdry scandal?”
“Returning to reality, it could be significantly more tawdry,” Carliz pointed out. “All they were doing was looking at each other. Everything else is base speculation.”
“If he was any kind of man, he would have immediately countered the situation. Instead, what is that clip that keeps running again and again?” The Queen Mother made an aggrieved noise. “Speaking of all his bedmates and calling them queens. It’s disrespectful. It’s beneath your station, Mila. I thought you understood that.”
Mila stared down at her plate, biting her tongue. Something she was not sure she had ever literally done before, and it hurt. Maybe that was good. She was tired of her heart hurting, so might as well spread the wealth.
Carliz did not hold back, however. She fixed their mother with a direct, unflinching gaze. “Which sovereign’s station are we concerned about here? Mila’s? Or Father’s? Because they’re not the same person.”
“Your father would never cause a scandal,” Alondra belted out. “I can tell you that.”
“I can’t take this seriously.” Mila didn’t know she meant to speak.
Or maybe she did. Maybe something else inside of her was taking control at last. It wasn’t that mask. It wasn’t the Queen . But that was the trouble with all of this, wasn’t it?
She was tired of the Queen .
She liked the woman she was when she was alone with Caius. She always had. She hadn’t thought that she could ever access that woman again—but it had been easy. All had taken was the way he looked at her.
All it had taken was seeing herself in his eyes.
Maybe she was having trouble remembering why it was she couldn’t have that all the time. Why it was the end of the world to even want it.
She realized that her sister and her mother were gazing at her, waiting for her to explain herself.
That meant she had to try. She sighed. “I question why this is the greatest scandal of all time. It seems a bit unfair, if I’m honest. I have been a literal paragon of virtue my whole life. There are very few members of royal families who can say the same. And there’s nothing untoward about that photo. We could have been discussing the weather.”
“It’s because you’re such a paragon,” Carliz said quietly. “People are so desperate for you to have a secret, dissipated life—one that makes them feel better about not living up to your standard of untouchable virtue—that they’ve created one out of a single photograph.”
“People are horrified at what it means,” Alondra argued. “That a woman whose passion has always been her duty to have her head turned by such a...wastrel of a man.” She made a face as if she was disgusted at the very thought. Or as if it was Caius himself who revolted her, and something in Mila...chilled straight down to the bone. “It’s beyond comprehension.”
“You can comment on my behavior, Mother,” Mila said quietly. And very, very coldly. “But I am not interested in your opinions on his.”
“Hear, hear,” Carliz muttered.
But Alondra waved a hand at her. “And now this. You are the Queen of Las Sosegadas, Mila. It is a little bit late to start acting out one of your sister’s teen rebellions.”
Carliz made a sound at that. But Mila found herself looking at her mother in a way she normally reserved for uppity ministers.
“Excuse me?” she asked, very quietly.
The Queen straight through.
But her mother’s face was flushed with emotion. “I don’t understand how you could let him do this to you,” she cried. And when Mila started to speak, she didn’t stop, which, from Alondra, was akin to flipping over the table. “Duty is everything. Duty is all that matters or ever will. It is the only thing you will be remembered for. Because we, your family members, will pass on and no one will know who you were behind closed doors. They will speculate. They will imagine as they please. But all they will truly know is whether or not their Queen did her duty. Duty is all that’s left.”
As she stood there, her face crumpled, just slightly. Just enough. But she caught herself before she could dissolve entirely.
Then, as her daughters watched, she pulled herself together in a manner Mila knew all too well. Because she did it herself. That deep breath. The straightening of the shoulders. And then, at the end, the determined rise of her chin.
“Love dies,” her mother told her, in that rain-soaked voice she would never acknowledge. She had never cried in public. Mila and Carliz had assumed she’d cried in her bedchamber, but they had never seen it. If she asked about it now, Mila knew Alondra would say that was the tribute she was paying the late king. “All that remains is your legacy, and that only comes from your dedication to your duty.”
Mila felt winded. She and her mother stared at each other across the table, and Alondra’s chest might have been heaving as if she’d just run uphill, but her gaze was clear.
“And that is why, my favorite queen, only sister, and very best friend on this earth,” Carliz said quietly, from where she was still lounging in her chair, “you must love while you can. As hard as you can. For as long as you can.”
She shook her head when Alondra started to speak, and harder when Mila opened her mouth to do the same. “Yes, even you. Especially you.”
Carliz looked at her mother, then at her sister, with compassion and something else in her gaze. Something like pity, Mila thought, though that stung more than she wanted to admit.
But then, Carliz was the only member of the family who had picked her own path. She had gone to university outside the kingdom, the first in the line to ever do such a thing. She had not toed the family line, married a palace-vetted candidate, and quietly produced children to bulk out the blood claim to the throne. She had declined the offer to take royal engagements, because she wanted the chance at a different life.
And Mila couldn’t help noticing that she was the happiest person in this room.
Possibly in the whole of the palace.
“You have to make the duty worth doing by living a life worth claiming,” Carliz told them both, with a kind of wisdom in her voice that made everything inside of Mila seem to ache. In rejection, she tried to tell herself. But she thought it was likely recognition. Her sister seemed to pin her with that gaze of hers. “Or what is the point of living at all?”