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Just as he’d promised.

Somehow, she’d fallen completely head over heels in love with Saviero Cimarosa. Prince Saviero of Liandero. Her consort and husband of a week, and forever.

Admitting this to herself made her feel breathless.

Cesca told herself it was just the sex. She’d had sex before, though not like this. Not the way it was with him. Not this all-consuming, all-encompassing connection that felt like hunger inside her. Not this need that only seemed to grow by the day.

She watched all these men around her argue, thin veneers of courtly manners stretched over their grievances, as she found herself interrogating the whole of her life. Or rather, more critically, the way she’d thought about Saviero all these years.

First and foremost, she’d thought he was boring. She had gone on and on to anyone who would listen about how deeply tedious he was. She called him funny little names she made up, and made certain he heard her share those names with others.

She had been aware of him, in other words. Always.

Though she would have said it was because he was so pointlessly good-looking. So ridiculously handsome and straight-up hot for a tax code in a well-tailored suit.

But now she had to wonder if her lifelong awareness of him had been whispering the truth to her all the while.

Because all it had taken was one kiss and just like that, she was his.

She had known exactly who had hauled her out of that club, simply by the way he gripped her wrist.

As if some part of her could recognize him anywhere, in any state. Like he was imprinted on her, stamped deep into her bones, like her very own genetic code that spelled out his name.

And it had taken these extraordinary circumstances for the truth to dawn on her.

She loved him.

Cesca was wildly, chaotically, ridiculously in love with him.

And she was already married to him. Not just married, but sealed into a royal marriage in a kingdom that had never had a royal divorce. Royal scandals, sure, and many of them involving spectacular examples of infidelity. But never a divorce.

She was in love with him, and she had every reason to believe that they would get to spend a glorious life together. She was in love with him, and she trusted him, and all of a sudden and in the most unexpected of ways, it seemed to her that everything had fallen into place.

Maybe not the smartest thing she’d ever done, she thought, since she wasn’t sure she really knew all of him. Not really. She was supposed to have learned her lesson about trusting people. Saviero had seen her at her worst. He knew things about her that she hadn’t known herself until he’d shown her.

All this when she was well aware that there were parts of him he kept back. She could feel it.

Not smart at all, she told herself, but helplessly.

Because it seemed she’d learned nothing after all. She loved him.

It got worse every time her heart beat.

Cesca tuned back in to the conversation, vaguely amused that it was still going on with such intensity. Since she had no intention whatsoever of allowing a vile little man like Roderigo Delacroix to bring his brand of “business” to Liandero, no matter what any of these ministers said.

The trouble with the life she’d led before taking the throne was that she knew too much about too many powerful people, and from the inside. Or rather, that was the trouble this cabinet was going to have with her, because she couldn’t un-know those things.

Nor would she pretend that she’d read a very long and boring article, or consulted with someone deemed an expert, when she had her lived experience to go on.

That being her actual experience with the vile little billionaire when he’d been married to her friend, and then consoling that friend when he’d tossed her aside. With a complete and total disregard, as if she wasn’t human to him once he’d moved on.

“Her Majesty has made her position perfectly clear,” Saviero was saying, his tone clipped and not all that calm or polite any longer. “I’m not certain why this conversation is continuing.”

“Spoken like the loyal palace dog you are,” Lord Frick belted out, and everyone in the room recoiled.

Not because they disagreed, Cesca was aware. But because no one went for Saviero like that. It wasn’t smart.

But Lord Frick only scoffed. “Though to be clear, our newly minted Prince is loyal only to the crown, not the wearer of said crown.” And he seemed to take an eternity to turn his head and look down his aristocratic nose at Cesca. “And just look at the lengths he’ll go to prove it.”