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Vesuvius deserved better than that. It was literally the least she could do.

So she made herself curve her mouth, not exactly into a smile, but something that worked. With a little bite all its own.

“What an unexpectedly merry Christmas for me,” she said, her eyes on the footlights the way her mother had taught her. “Who could have foreseen I’d be ending it with a husband? Much less one who might otherwise have been canonized.”

But she couldn’t bring herself to look at Saviero while she said it.

Because there was only so much acting she could handle.

CHAPTER TWO

CESCA WAS HANDLING everything far better than Saviero had expected she would.

Or perhaps she was simply in shock.

Either way, after all agreeing that the wedding was what mattered and what should be focused on—because it was also an opportunity to formally crown her before she appeared before the public, a royal fait accompli, though he doubted that part of it had occurred to her yet—the ministers kept monologuing at her for the better part of an hour.

What they were doing was jostling for position, Saviero knew, but they were underestimating their new monarch. They were also treating her the way they’d treated her all her life, when they could dismiss her as the spare. He would be very surprised if she kept any of them. Vesuvius had never wanted them himself, but had bowed to tradition.

Cesca was not one to worry overmuch about tradition. He was well aware she found such things boring. And the only thing she found more boring than tradition were those who pompously upheld it, as well he knew.

Saviero could have stopped the men from talking at their new queen so insistently, of course. But he didn’t, because he was finding himself surprisingly intrigued by the way Cesca was handling herself.

Oh, he knew what she thought of him. He had once heard her call him a hunk of petrified wood, and he’d been pretty certain she’d known he was listening. So he could only imagine what she called him when he wasn’t around.

To his face, she was happy to tell him that he was boring, lifeless, and she had spent the better part of her youth coming up with new and ever-changing ways to tell him that he was an enemy of fun.

Saviero supposed that was true. He also knew that she had been rebelling specifically against him when she had decided to prance into this meeting in her clubbing attire rather than changing into something a touch more regal. He could have stopped that, too.

But he hadn’t. He would have, if he’d believed that she needed his protection. And while he wasn’t entirely certain that she didn’t—in a general sense—he hadn’t thought that this particular selection of cabinet ministers would pose too much of a problem for her.

Mostly because none of these men were likely to take their thoughts to the media.

And besides, he could admit that he’d wanted to see if Cesca could play the part of the Queen dressed like a club kid.

To his surprise, or maybe he wasn’t all that surprised, she pulled it off masterfully.

The way she sat in that chair, as if everything about her was inherently regal and she could have been naked for all that mattered, was a study in presence and authority.

Saviero wasn’t happy about any of this, to put it mildly. He had not wanted his best friend to abdicate, and not only because he’d understood how it would change his own life. But because he’d always believed that Vesuvius was an excellent King, or he would not have served him for all these years.

He could not allow himself to think about the fact that not only was his friend not King, now. But that he was also—

Saviero could not allow himself to even think the word. It had been hard enough to do what needed to be done in the wake of the report that Vesuvius’s plane had crashed. He had heard the news from the grim palace security office and had wondered how on earth he was meant to do anything—

But then, that was the benefit of having no choices. His service was to the crown, and that was what had gotten him to breathe. To stand. To shut down the grief that wanted to take him over and do what needed to be done—as it had always done.

He had focused on Cesca instead.

In truth, though he would never admit this—least of all to her—Saviero thought she looked like some kind of feral Viking Queen, prepared to ride out into battle. Those braids. The dramatic eye makeup. Those skimpy clothes she wore, but layered beneath that grand, flowing tunic that made her look otherworldly.

He could tell there was not a single man in this room who knew what to do with her.

Except for him, that was.

This was not the time to think about all the ways he’d imagined taking the kingdom’s party princess in the hand over the years. This was not the time to allow himself access to fantasies he’d forbidden himself from entertaining long ago.

First there was this day to get through. This day that was always going to be hard, but was now near unbearable. Yet the salient points had not changed. The Queen needed to be crowned and then married. Everything had to be settled, and quickly, so that the kingdom could carry on with as little disruption as possible, especially once Vesuvius’s death was made known.