Page 114

“Your brother was also aware of this staircase,” Saviero told her. “He used it often, to come and go from the palace as he wished without anyone the wiser.”

He heard her let out a breath. “You surprise me yet again.”

Saviero did not have to look back at her, not when she was right there behind him, coming down the stairs so close to him that if he stopped, she would likely collide directly into him, plastering herself against his back—

But he had meant what he’d told her in his bedchamber. He had every intention of savoring every last inch of her delectable body, but it wasn’t going to be something they got over with quickly. It wasn’t going to be an item to take off a to-do list.

He had wanted her far too long for that.

“I thought Vesuvius sat about with his staff, coming up with new and more nauseating ways to be perfectly honorable and dutiful in all things,” Cesca was saying. “Sneaking out seems completely out of character.” They continued down another few turns in the stair. “Though I suppose the secret life does explain the whole abdicating for his mistress thing.”

“I believe his mistress, Aeryn, is the love of his life,” Saviero told her. Vesuvius was not here. He did not need protecting. By abdicating, he had placed his private life in the full, public view of the entire world. So there was no need for Saviero to protect him from his own choices—but then, perhaps what he was doing was supporting the man he considered a brother. “And more to the point, there was no other way he could claim his own child.”

And it had been a very long day all around, but he was certain that Cesca knew these things. That Vesuvius would have mentioned them in their call if she had not known these things already. But even if he had not, Saviero would make sure that the Queen was fully aware that her brother had not faffed off to Chicago on some whim.

“You can take a breath, Saviero,” came Cesca’s amused little drawl, a tone he’d heard from her more times than he could possibly count. “I don’t think my brother needs you to ride to his defense. I don’t need to be convinced that he would abdicate only in the most dire of personal circumstances. I did know him, after all.”

And when he did pause to look back at her, she lifted a shoulder. “Did you bring me into a secret stairwell to lecture me about my brother’s motivations? Because, honestly, I feel like that could have been an email.”

She made him laugh, was the trouble. She always had, but before—before he’d been married to her, before he’d tasted her, before he’d had his hands on her—he’d been better able to keep his reactions to himself. He wasn’t sure he liked this evidence that he wasn’t as in control of himself as he’d imagined he was.

“Not at all, Your Majesty,” he said as formally as possible, because he knew that got to her and sometimes, a man had to use whatever weapons he could.

He stopped on one of the landings and with flourish, opened the door. Once they left the stairwell, they were in a corridor, deep below the palace. A place he knew, without having to ask, that Cesca had been before. He could see the curious look on Cesca’s face, but he didn’t explain. He kept walking, leading her deeper and deeper into parts of the palace he was quite certain she’d never explored before.

Like her aunt, Cesca had always ventured beyond the palace, not within it.

After they’d walked a while, winding their way through the less showy and more practical, functional parts of the palace, he led her down the darkest, dingiest hallway imaginable. It was barely lit, and what it illuminated looked shoddy at best.

He’d always assumed that was someone’s idea of a good joke.

Because all of the shoddiness led them directly out into the glory that awaited them.

Cesca followed him the whole way, her silence speaking for her quite loudly, as the hallway looked more and more dire. It was that final turn, rounding the corner, that made her gasp.

Because all the way down beneath the palace, carved deep into the mountain and kept secret from monarch to monarch, was what was offhandedly referred to as the lower observation deck. If anyone referred to it at all.

That hardly explained the pull of this place. When he looked at Cesca, her mouth was slightly ajar and her eyes were filled with more of that wonder.

He was beginning to think he could get addicted to that look on her face.

They were standing in a glassed-in area that looked out over the sweep of Liandero Valley. There was a seating area here, and some tables, but otherwise there was nothing but the view. Old Town nestled at the base of Palace Hill. The Cathedral standing there in all of its glory on the far side of the narrow valley.

And then, spiraling out into the dark, there were the lights. The lights of the city, and then out into the villages. At this time of year, particularly, there were lights everywhere. Every cottage in every forgotten village was strung up with Christmas lights.

The effect was like standing close up to the Milky Way. The valley looked like a series of constellations strung together, gleaming into the perfect winter dark.

“I had no idea this was here either,” she breathed, flattening her palms to the glass.

“My understanding is that it has always been meant to be a particular privilege for the monarch,” Saviero told her. “At one point, these were only caves, but it was where kings and queens would stand and gaze out over the territory. It is said that during many a war, the monarch has slept here so he might be first to know that the enemy had attacked.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said quietly. “Isn’t it? Just…impossibly beautiful.”

And as she stared out at this kingdom of hers, that now she would rule, Saviero gazed at her.

It reminded him, sharply, of that night he’d found her studying her mother’s drawings. There was something about the look on her face. A complicated expression, something like grief and joy at once.

He felt his chest tighten in response.