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If the brick had been stuck in an oven for the past ten years.

But that was nothing next to the state of her mouth.

She realized now that she should perhaps have asked Saviero more questions about the ceremony he’d obviously planned. But it hadn’t seemed like it mattered much in the grand scheme of things. She’d gotten dressed after talking to her brother—assuring herself he was alive and accepting that he was passing on this duty to her whether she was ready or not, just as he had been forced into readiness when their father died.

Trying on her wedding gown had felt like as decent a method as any to settle into the weight of that duty. She’d stood on a raised dais so that Madam Durand and her assistants could fuss all around her, get her input on the fit, and then whip it off again to do alterations on the spot.

The clock had been ticking, so while Madam Durand and her team worked on the alterations, Cesca’s staff had hustled her into a different dress. This one was giving less bridal energy and more I have always been the Queen vibes. It had been sleeker and in a deep royal blue, appropriate to the occasion.

Then Cesca had gone down to the old throne room on the main floor of the palace that was still used for ceremonial moments and was considered more of a chapel these days. And nothing, she supposed, was more ceremonial than being crowned the Queen of Liandero.

She had read about these ancient customs a thousand times, growing up. She had watched her brother as he had accepted the ermine cloak and the ancient scepter, and had read from the same historic book. All those years ago she had watched Vesuvius kneel before the throne that sat there in a nook in the chapel in all its timeworn splendor, and she had never imagined herself doing the same.

Not once.

Nor had she ever imagined climbing the steps to the raised platform, and sitting upon the throne, hoping that her face looked appropriately composed and solemn as they settled the Queen’s Crown upon her head.

The last Queen of Liandero, a blood heir instead of a consort, had been the iconic Valentina, who had ruled in the eighteenth century. She had taken lovers from among her knighted guards after giving birth to her son and casting her scheming husband into what was not properly a jail, but functioned as one as he was never permitted to leave the grounds. Then she had pranced about Europe as if she owned it, making eyes at any men she pleased—be they monarchs or merchants—and yet somehow had kept the kingdom prosperous and peaceful all the while. No matter who tutted about her exploits and tried to plot against her. Valentina had died in her late seventies in her much-younger lover’s arms and she had always been Cesca’s idol.

It was possible that it was only then, contemplating the history of it all and how rare it was that she was being crowned, that what was happening really hit her.

And somehow, sitting there, it had felt less like crisis management and more like fate.

Though she wasn’t entirely sure about that, because she had been looking across the throne room at Saviero when she’d thought it.

As if all of this really was fated, him most of all, and that seemed to skitter through her like some kind of reaction in her nerves.

And then settled in deep, like bone.

When it was done, when all the ancient words and centuries-long traditions were observed and she had pledged herself to the kingdom, the bells rang out over the palace. She knew that new flags would be raised, banners would fly, and the trumpeters would play out from the battlements.

But she did not witness any of that, because it fell to her to elevate Saviero’s rank as her first official act.

He came before her and knelt before the throne.

Her throne, now.

And surely that kneeling should have struck her as an act of obedience. It should have shifted something between them, she’d thought. It should have made them both pointedly aware that she was vastly superior to him, and that his subordinate position meant that he was in some way diminished. She had always thought that was how things like this looked.

But that was not at all how it felt.

For one thing, he was too big. This enormous man kneeling before her simply made her feel…something like giddy inside, because nothing could make him seem small. Nothing about him was small.

She said what needed to be said, then carefully tapped him on one broad shoulder and then the next with the royal scepter.

And that simply, High Minister Saviero Cimarosa, already a member of the kingdom’s aristocracy thanks to his family’s long and storied support of the crown, became Prince Saviero of Liandero.

The honor is all mine, Your Majesty, he had said, as scrupulously polite and correct as always. Then his blue eyes had met hers, and she’d felt them like a lightning bolt. Though I will confess that the title I am shortly to assume in the Cathedral when we wed is already the one I prefer.

And her whole mind seemed to go blank at that.

Because she knew he meant husband, and all she could think about was how it had felt to kneel on the floor in her bedroom, her arms around his neck and his scent in her nose and—

It had been much harder than it should have been to stop that train of thought. Cesca counted herself lucky that they’d had so little time left before the ceremony, or who knew what she might have done.

She had thought about the man far more than was wise as she’d been hurried back to her rooms, where the Parisian dressmaker and her assistants had sewed her into her dress. Then her hairdressers had arranged her hair to better hold her crown. Her makeup artist had followed her down into the traditional horse-drawn chariot that had waited to sweep her down from Palace Hill across Old Town to the Royal Cathedral that nestled at the base of the far hill, to make certain that she looked perfect.

Once there, she had stepped from the chariot onto the steps that led up to the grand old church and had felt something shift deep inside her as the crowd roared out her name. Not Cesca. Not anymore.