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But she shoved all of that away, because none of it mattered. Not right now.

“I can’t believe it’s real,” she said. She cleared her throat, and let her gaze get a little heavy on his. “Promise me that it’s real, Saviero. I don’t think that I could bear losing him again.”

His gaze intensified. “I have no reason to believe that it is not. And, of course, I asked for proof of life. You saw that.”

She had seen that, she remembered now, and it felt like a very great relief to think of something other than unwanted attractions.

His mobile had fallen to the floor while they embraced. Or, she corrected herself sternly, held each other up during the unexpected gut punch of emotion that had everything to do with Vesuvius.

Saviero reached over to pick it up, swiped at his screen, and then let out a breath. He didn’t make her wait or wonder. He turned the screen toward her and showed her what was on it.

A picture of Vesuvius lying on a couch, asleep.

Cesca let out a noise that sounded like some kind of wounded animal. A long sort of sigh. Or a howl, perhaps.

“Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God.”

She felt shaky. Relief and a hard, wild kind of joy, and too many other things too complicated to name rushed through her, making her feel almost lightheaded.

“Thank God,” she said again, “that he is still with us, so I can kill him for flying his plane into a snowstorm.”

“I will help you,” Saviero said, and she laughed at that.

And then was surprised that he did, too, although it was a rusty sort of sound that she would not have been surprised to learn had never emanated from his absurdly beautiful body before.

Then, suddenly, they were looking at each other again. She felt electrocuted all over again. They were still laughing. Together.

And it was all a little too cozy for her liking.

So she sat back on her heels and she patted at the turban she’d made of her hair. “I don’t suppose the text also said that he’s thought better of abdicating and was on his way back to spare us all from this charade, by any chance?”

Cesca watched that moment of laughter drain away from Saviero’s face, and was shocked to find that she missed it. Immediately. And hated that she was the one to make it go away.

More fodder for therapy, she told herself. Assuming the monarch was allowed such things on the other side of all this.

“I’m afraid not,” he said after a moment, in his typically grave manner. “But I’ve done my best to make the transition as easy for you as possible.”

“Have you now.” She tilted her head toward the open doors in her wall. In their wall. “By reminding me of the wifely duties I will have to perform?”

But that didn’t land the way she’d expected. She’d thought that he would get all prissy, the way he often did when faced with her exploits. She’d imagined he would recoil and then pull himself up through the shoulders and neck, as if he could make himself into a human raised brow, all indignation and affront, without saying a word.

He was good at that.

But he didn’t do it. Instead, he gazed at her for entirely too long.

“That is something we need to discuss,” he said, after far too long a pause, and she could not have said why her pulse was beating at her so wildly. “But you do not need to worry. I have no intention of pressing on that issue.”

Cesca could no more imagine him pressing her for sex than she could imagine him sprouting wings and flying loops around the palace.

And when she only stared back at him, his gaze grew somehow more opaque. “What matters is the wedding,” he said, sounding as grave and certain and Saviero as ever, which seemed to reverberate inside her differently now that she knew how he smelled. “It will also serve as your coronation celebration. That is the only thing that we should be thinking about right now. When it comes to intimate matters, or resentment of such matters because the fate of the kingdom rests upon them, I believe that we will be just fine if we wait to discuss the topic at a later date.”

Then he rose up from the ground as if lifted from above and smoothed down the front of the suit jacket he wore, because of course he had been out roaming about the streets of Old Town looking for her while dressed impeccably and still looked just as pulled-together hours later.

And maybe it was because all that relief for her brother had walloped her sideways.

But Cesca was certain that she had never been so offended in her life.

“I can’t possibly be understanding you correctly,” she said, scowling up at him. “Are you…tabling the discussion of whether or not we’re going to sleep with each other?”