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“I already said my vows to you as Queen,” she said to him now, fiercely, because it was long past time she spoke. And this time with her whole heart. “But now I pledge myself to you as a woman.”

She watched his whole face change as she said that. Those bright blue eyes. That beautiful, chiseled jaw.

All of it flooded with a kind of wonder.

He smiled at her and Cesca found herself smiling back, out of control and heedless and she let it happen.

And when she felt the emotion prick at the back of her eyes, she did absolutely nothing to keep those tears from falling.

“I love you,” she told him, trying to match his certainty, his strength. “You make me feel brand-new. You make me feel that I can do anything, as long as we’re together. I want to make you feel the very same way.”

“My love, my Queen, my beautiful wife,” he said, and it almost sounded like he was laughing, like the joy was that encompassing. “You do.”

She leaned in closer and put her mouth to his mouth. “I love you so much it makes me feel mad and wild and sometimes as if my own feet can’t hold me up. You’re better than any party I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to a lot. I never want this to end, Saviero. Never. No matter what.”

“I promise you, it never will,” he said, fiercely, his hands still on her face. “We never will.”

Cesca was speaking now and she couldn’t seem to stop. “I want to make babies with you and raise them in love. I understand that there will be duty, too, but I want us to be a family first.” She shook her head. “Is that even possible?”

He kissed her then, and she could feel his smile against hers. His wonder and his light.

“We will make it possible.” He said it in that way he had that brooked no argument. “We will make it exactly as we like it, Francesca. That is a promise.”

“I love you,” she told him, because she could say it as much as she liked, “and the more I think about it, the more I think I’ve loved you for most of my life.”

“How can that be?” Saviero asked. And Cesca felt her smile widen, because if she wasn’t mistaken, that was a teasing note in his voice. “When I am so terribly boring?”

“I have no idea,” she said with a sigh. “I must be boring, too.”

He laughed and then he pulled her closer so he could lay her back out on that bench.

So they could prove exactly how boring they were to each other, right there, where no one would dare come looking for them.

And that was what they did for the rest of their lives, over and over again—they bored each other silly, as often as they could.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SAVIERO AND CESCA planned out their life and the first decade of her rule with precision. They decided they would wait to begin having children until the kingdom got used to their new Queen. And that they would spend that time building up Cesca’s reputation and good works, the better to coast on positive public opinion.

But fate had other ideas.

Cesca got pregnant in the first six months of her reign despite the precautions they’d taken, and they decided that maybe they didn’t need a plan, after all. And Saviero found that the more he let himself love, the more that he accepted the possibility of the losses that had affected him so profoundly all his life.

Perhaps a bit grumpily, but he tried.

Vesuvius took on the role of Saviero’s High Minister, but his take on the role did not require him to spend every moment of his life in the kingdom. Instead, he called in when he was out of the country, which allowed him to spend as much time as he needed with his own family.

And there was something about the old King helping the new Queen that made the kingdom very happy indeed. Especially because Cesca maintained her astronomically high popularity even though she was now the Queen.

The baby helped.

But she also cleaned house, starting with the cabinet. She fired Lord Frick personally—and took pleasure in suggesting that he could now spend his time focusing on his wardrobe, as she knew men liked to do.

Cesca admitted later that she had enjoyed the old man’s sputtering more than she should have. “I suppose that makes me petty,” she said.

Saviero had laughed while running his favorite brush through her hair. “I must be far more petty, then, because I wish I’d seen it.”

He had been too busy firing the rest of the useless, hidebound ministers.