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Cesca and he had hired an eclectic selection of new ministers, all of them surprising choices without the usual credentials—those being blue blood and an aristocratic family. There were voices from all levels of Lianderoan society, and the people loved her for it.

Not as much as Saviero loved her, he often thought. But he took great satisfaction in watching his Queen, wife, and lover fully inhabit this role she would never have chosen.

She was not opposed to tradition as long as it did not strangle those who followed those traditions. She liked innovation. She liked new ideas.

And at night, she liked to stop being Queen altogether and be a wife to her husband and a mother to her children.

Maybe they couldn’t raise their children without an understanding of the duties they would face, but they could raise them well. And they did.

Love and grief were mirror images, Saviero came to understand, and neither were to be feared.

On the contrary, they were what made life worth living.

And so it was, many years after that Christmas that had proved so fateful, that Saviero stood in the Royal Cathedral in Old Town, flanked by his two best friends in all the world.

“It’s hard to believe we’ve come full circle,” said Kyriakos of Zaccaria. “It seems only yesterday that you both tried to talk me through my wedding.”

Vesuvius laughed. “Yes, because your wedding was a disaster.”

They all laughed, because none of their weddings had been disasters, in the end. And now they were finally all going to be family in truth.

Because one of Kyriakos and Aikaterini’s daughters, the Princess Olympia, was here in Liandero to marry the love of her life. That being the Crown Prince Leopoldo, Saviero and Cesca’s oldest son.

Full circle indeed.

Saviero looked out at the Cathedral the way he had on his own wedding day. His beautiful Queen sat in her usual place of prominence today, looking out at her subjects. Aikaterini, the Princess of Zaccaria, was at her side, both women looking as if they didn’t much care who saw them looking emotional. This was their children’s wedding.

Saviero would join them there after he delivered the first reading.

Prince Kyriakos was on hand to walk his daughter down the aisle.

And Vesuvius was also to read at his nephew’s wedding.

They had all made this happen, Saviero thought, by virtue of the friendship they’d maintained for most of their lives.

It was another Christmas Day and a Royal Christmas Wedding was a beloved Lianderoan tradition. Saviero liked that it was snowing outside, the way it had been all those years ago when he’d waited for his party princess to become his Queen.

He’d understood that he was making her the center of his life. But he’d had no idea that she would also become the center of his heart.

Looking back, he wouldn’t change a thing.

And it was true that he and his friends lived lives of duty, in one way or another—not exactly what they’d all planned back in the day.

But it was family that mattered most. And it had all started with this brotherhood of theirs.

The organ music began then, and Kyriakos stepped away so he could go and meet the bride, his daughter, as she arrived.

Next to Saviero, Vesuvius was smiling out at his beautiful wife, Aeryn, and their children, demonstrating simply by the look on his face that he had made the right decision when he’d left his throne behind.

Saviero cast a gaze over the rest of his children, all of whom straightened a bit when they saw their father looking at them—but also grinned, because they had learned to tease him as much as their mother did about his propriety, but only in private.

In public, they modeled themselves after him.

Then, at last, he looked at their mother.

His beautiful wife. His Queen.

The light and love of his life.