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Only then would Saviero try to find a way to accept this tragedy. Only then would he allow himself to grieve.

Maybe it was better they had to focus on the churning gears of the monarchy, he thought now. Because if they had been left to their own devices in these terrible hours, Saviero was not at all sure what he would do with himself.

Watching Cesca closely was far better than examining the yawning, catastrophic loss of a friend he had long considered a brother in all but blood. He focused on her now. He knew that she imagined herself a great mystery, and perhaps she was to the rest of her brother’s cabinet.

But she had never been a mystery to him.

He could see that she was doing exactly what he was doing. Shoving it all down. Locking it up. Not allowing herself to think about her brother, and the fact that she was managing it as well as she was impressed him.

When Vesuvius had spoken to him yesterday about the path he felt he needed to take, he had said something that Saviero had dismissed at the time, because he’d been too focused on the abdication itself and all the implications of that choice.

He remembered it now. Do not forget that my sister was raised by the same parents who raised me, Vesuvius had said.

Only now did Saviero truly understand what that meant.

And he wondered if Cesca understood that she was more a queen in this moment than she’d ever been a princess.

He had pulled her out of the club. He’d seen exactly the sort of night she was having, and he’d also seen how she’d rejected what was happening. And yet somehow, between the words they’d exchanged in the back of an SUV and this room, she had taken her throne.

The truth was, he was proud of her. He couldn’t imagine anyone else who could have handled this as adroitly. But time was running short. The papers had already run with the abdication story, and the palace had put out a statement that the new Queen would address her subjects in due course.

That meant she had to look like a Queen and not just act like one.

Optics were important. If Cesca didn’t know that, she wouldn’t have arranged herself so deliberately in that chair. Saviero decided it boded well for their future—starting with the rest of this strange performance of a day.

He straightened from his place near the door. “I think it is time that Her Majesty begin preparations for what I’m certain will be a long, complicated, and emotional day,” he said, and not in a way that suggested he was asking.

And he could see the rest of the cabinet take on board, then, that he was not speaking to them as a High Minister of an abdicated king. Not anymore. By nightfall—hell, in the next few hours—he would be deemed the consort to the Queen and elevated to the rank of Prince, and he didn’t think that any of them, himself included, had really thought through the implications of that.

But that didn’t change it.

Saviero inclined his head toward Cesca and watched as she managed to obey him, rising to her feet and moving toward the door, while giving the impression that it was entirely her own idea.

The more he considered it, the more he was sure that she was going to do beautifully.

He walked her away from the ministers and their gathering, waiting for one of her barbed comments, but she said nothing. He led her back through the palace and once again into the wing set aside for the family apartments, and still she was quiet.

It was only then when he led her all the way to the door of her quarters that she turned around to face him, an analytical sort of look on her face.

“You don’t want to marry me.” She said that flatly. Matter-of-factly. As if it could not be debated. “I’ve never imagined you to have that kind of ambition, and believe me, I can smell that sort of thing at a hundred paces. Not to mention, you don’t really think very highly of me, do you?”

“Your Majesty is mistaken.” He did not intend to enumerate all the ways she was mistaken, however.

Saviero reached past her and opened up the door to her quarters, and ushered her into the foyer of her expansive apartments that sprawled down one side of this floor. He closed the door behind him and pulled out his mobile, shooting off a text as he stood there.

“There will be a reshuffling of your staff,” he told her. “I will have your new—”

“I don’t want my staff reshuffled.”

He lifted his gaze to hers, thinking she was defying him for the sake of it, but she did not look defiant. She had a mulish cast to her jaw, but her dark hazel eyes were sad.

That made him temper his tone. “It is not appropriate for the staff members you learned to manipulate when you were in diapers to take over the care of the monarch, Francesca. You must realize that.”

“This is not a discussion I am going to have today,” she shot back at him. “I agreed to marry you. If you want that to happen, I suggest you let me get there with as many familiar faces around me as possible.”

They were not in public anymore. He slid his mobile back into his pocket and trained his full attention on her face. “It’s not about what I want to happen. It is about what must and will happen. The sooner you accept that, the better.”

“Or what?” Cesca retorted. “You don’t have to threaten me, Saviero. I’m not an idiot. If I didn’t see the wisdom of marrying off the scandalous princess to the most boring man who ever lived, I would never have agreed to it.” She folded her arms as she glared at him. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What’s in this for you? This has to be your worst nightmare, to be stuck with me forever. Aren’t you the one who likes to call me the disaster in a dress?”