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She sometimes thought it really must be.

Still, tonight, his unsmiling face looked a bit grimmer than usual.

“Princess Francesca,” he intoned, because why should the man speak when he could intone, “I come to you on a matter of the gravest importance.”

“Let me guess,” Cesca replied, profoundly bored already. “You don’t like my outfit.”

No one at the palace would like any of her clubbing outfits, which was a major reason Cesca loved them. She chose them specifically because she wanted them to cause mass cardiac confusion among the palace staff and the royal cabinet themselves when they saw them featured in the tabloids. And she rarely missed the target.

This one tonight involved hot pants, a bandeau top, and a sheer, flowy tunic in a warming shade of anthracite with a staggered hem and the drape of a ball gown, for drama. She had slayed on the dance floor, obviously.

Though now that she was standing outside on a December night high up in the Alps, Cesca was mostly just cold.

Saviero didn’t respond and she opened her mouth to say something else outrageous—

But instead, he did the most extraordinary thing.

He sank down to one knee before her, which should have looked ridiculous, but Saviero made it into a pageant of athletic grace.

Then, with rather less grace and athleticism, all the rest of the security detail—at the vehicles and her usual people in a semicircle around her—all did the same.

Cesca’s entire body went cold. She told herself it was bafflement.

“The king is dead,” Saviero said, his voice grim—but sure. Impossibly sure. “Long live the queen.”

She heard him, but it wasn’t until the others chanted that same line a few times that what he was saying truly sank in.

Cesca couldn’t imagine what they were on about.

She stared at Saviero, waiting for the joke—not that she’d ever seen the slightest shred of evidence that Saviero was capable of levity in any form, and she’d known him most of her life.

“We must take you to the palace immediately, Your Majesty,” Saviero told her as he rose. It was not a request.

He nodded to someone she didn’t bother to look at herself, still too confused, and then he was ushering her to one of the SUVs. And Cesca was so bewildered by what he’d said and what he must mean by it that she let him put her in the back without comment.

Saviero slid in beside her and tapped on the glass that separated them from the driver. The SUV took off—and suddenly they were in a motorcade, racing through Old Town, the ancient city of spires and statues that looked like a fairy tale in the predawn light. The palace gleamed high on the hill before them, a beacon as ever and also her family home, and this was not getting any less ridiculous.

“If this is a prank, it’s quite elaborate,” she pointed out. She listened and, yes, those were sirens she heard. “You have the Royal Guard and the Old Town Police involved.”

Saviero seemed to take a long time to turn toward her. His gaze was cold and blue. His jaw looked like granite. More so than usual, that was.

“We have been looking for you,” he said in that deadly voice of his, so stern it felt like a ruler or five across the palm. She curled her hands into fists in her lap. “For almost twenty-four hours.”

“It’s Christmas, silly,” Cesca replied brightly. “I like to dance it in. That’s not exactly a secret.”

Saviero looked at her with something that looked a lot like fury in his gaze. It seemed to sear straight through her, leaving a trail of flame in its wake, which was so wild she assumed it was leftover excitement from the rave. Because it couldn’t be him.

Not least because Saviero Cimarosa didn’t possess the emotions necessary to get furious in the first place.

“Listen to me, for once,” he gritted out. “Your brother abdicated his throne at ten in the morning yesterday. He made a formal proclamation to the cabinet, then flew east. Far east, to the United States, where he was ordered by air traffic control in the Midwestern city of Chicago to turn back in the face of a dangerous weather event. He did not comply.”

Saviero’s gaze burned into her. Cesca could not seem to breathe.

He continued in that same ragged, insistent voice. “His plane signaled distress and then crash-landed roughly forty-eight miles shy of the local airport. That put him in the middle of one of the Great Lakes. An area that is currently experiencing whiteout blizzard conditions.”

Cesca could not seem to do anything. She felt as if she was in a stranglehold.

“King Vesuvius is presumed dead,” Saviero bit out.