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“Your Majesty!” they cried. “Queen Francesca!”

Holy shit, Cesca thought. I’m the fucking queen.

Her secretary, clearly having been read the riot act by Saviero’s unsurprisingly joyless staff, had not been her usual jubilant self. What she had done instead, on the ride down the hill, was list off all the things Cesca was expected to accomplish in her walk down the long Cathedral aisle.

She had tried to listen intently, but then she’d been standing there in the snow with a bloody scepter in hand and she was the Queen and she was getting married, to Saviero of all people, and she couldn’t remember a word the poor woman had said.

But she hadn’t freaked out about it. Her mother had always said that the blood of the kingdom coursed through their family’s veins, like it or not. And Cesca decided that was true.

She simply told herself to act like a queen. The Queen.

And that was what she did.

It was not until she’d seen the approving look on Saviero’s face as he waited for her to reach him at the end of that aisle that she’d understood that she had gotten it right. That she was sure she had.

Now she was outside again, the crowd was cheering even more loudly, and the only thing she could think about was the way his mouth had felt on hers.

Her entire body was a shivery wreck. And she couldn’t forget that her reaction had been so overwhelming, so intense, that if he hadn’t held her upright with that hand on her face again, her knees might have given out.

Right there on the altar, in front of the entire kingdom.

She really ought to have been angrier about that than she was.

But he still held her hand, so she concentrated on other things.

Like the fact that they were so in sync. He did not tell her to pause, then gaze at him at the top of the Cathedral stairs. She did it without him having to ask, because both of them were entirely too well-versed in public appearances to miss the perfect photo opportunity—one that would likely grace the front pages of newspapers everywhere.

Then they walked down together to the horse-drawn chariot that waited for them in the snow, and paused to wave to the crowd once again. Saviero helped her climb inside the carriage and when he followed, also helped her arrange her dress on the forward-facing seat so she could sit by her window and wave regally as the horses trotted off.

Neither one of them spoke. Cesca told herself it was because she was too busy looking at the throngs upon throngs of people clustered along the chariot’s route, giving up their Christmas Day to stand in the snow and cheer this wedding that should have felt shoddy and thrown together at the last minute, because it had been.

But it hadn’t felt like that at all.

If Cesca didn’t know better, she would have thought that she and Saviero had been planning to marry each other for most of their lives.

She leaned back and said so, and then regretted it when he nodded in that way of his. That yes, I control entire universe, and it is all as I planned thing that he did as easily as he drew breath.

“I’ve had my staff prepare a statement, but it really ought to be issued by you, Your Majesty,” he said.

She wondered if he meant that to sound like an order, because he was so used to issuing orders. Or if that was his attempt at addressing her with the respect due her new rank. “Of course you did.”

His blue gaze found hers and she saw the hint of reproof there, and anyway, he carried on. “I think it’s best that we present our relationship as if it has gone on for some while. You and I both know that the general public longs for a fairy tale. Much as they might enjoy it when their leaders act out of duty above all else, it also on some level offends them. They want to think that everything is a romance. That decisions are made from the heart and never the brain. It is the paradox of the human condition, I suppose.”

“Or people just like a good story,” Cesca replied. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I’m pleased you think so.” The chariot rocked over the cobblestones, and there were still cheering crowds outside. She had to remind herself to wave again, because it was far too easy to get caught in that tractor-beam gaze of his. And the things he was saying. “My suggestion is that we say that we have been secretly together for at least three years. And that we did not feel that we could marry before your brother, as we did not wish to draw attention away from the crown. But in the wake of Vesuvius’s decision, we thought it would be a lovely gesture to start this new reign together, as we’d always planned to marry one day.”

She didn’t want to tell him that she felt the tension between her brain and her heart then. The human condition, as he’d put it, and he hadn’t sounded all that complimentary. Because the story he told was a lovely one, and fit how she’d felt in that Cathedral.

But then there was the reality.

“We have to word the statement carefully,” she said, instead of…any of that. “I cannot sound as if I require a husband to lead the country.”

“I agree,” he said at once, and that surprised her.

She supposed that on some level, even though she’d known Saviero her whole life and had never seen him so much as gesture toward power in the way that every other minister in that cabinet room had attempted earlier today, she still expected it from him. Simply because that was what people did.

Especially men, in her experience, but only because they typically had more access to power in all its forms.