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Inside his new rooms, it was a whirl of activity as the staff rushed about, working on the dozens of tasks he had handed over to them over the past nearly twenty-four hours.

But he only had eyes for his private secretary. The man hurried toward him, shaking his head. “The convoy was forced to stop east of Chicago,” he said in a low voice meant for Saviero’s ears only, as still so few knew about the plane crash. A terrible genie that could remain in its bottle for only so long. “They hope to be in the air again soon, as the storm is expected to begin to let up shortly and they can be certain that they will land.”

Saviero swallowed hard, and refused to let the emotion inside him well up. “There is no other word from the security team?”

His secretary looked distraught. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

Saviero nodded, curtly, and his only nod to the churning sea of feelings inside him that he could not address—not now, not today, maybe not ever—was to rake his hand through his hair in an uncharacteristically restless manner.

Outside, he heard the bells ringing out, marking that it was eight in the morning. The sun would be up soon. Christmas morning was well and truly underway.

He checked his mobile for important messages, deleting all the strange numbers that he knew were calls from media outlets for his comment on the abdication.

Saviero moved through the busy outer rooms of his new apartments and made his way back to the main bedroom at the far end. He stood there, looking around the room but not seeing anything. He was thinking about his lost friend, and trying his best not to let it pull him under.

He told himself that whatever else it was, and would be, Vesuvius’s death was a stark reminder of exactly why he lived his life the way he did. Why he kept it so ruthlessly clean of any entanglements and focused all his attention on the crown.

Because the other option was a loss so devastating he could not comprehend how he would survive it.

But he had to survive it, so he focused on the things he could change and shape. Soon enough, his head was whirling with all the plans for the day and the work that needed to be done to shift the narratives that he knew were already taking root in the press. Or would. He was thinking about launching Queen Francesca to her people in a way that would immediately settle her in every Lianderoan heart, and knew that Vesuvius had been right to put him on her team so intimately. Not as an adviser, but as her husband.

Because not only did Vesuvius know that Saviero would absolutely take care of his sister in his absence, he also knew that Saviero could appreciate the kind of fresh blood Cesca would bring to the throne. More than this, Saviero knew how it could be received in some quarters and could act accordingly, shaping the new Queen’s reception before it happened.

He thought of those things, but then, above all of them, he found himself thinking about the double doors that took up the better part of one of his interior walls. There were windows all along the back, and he had a spacious private sitting room and his own library here as part of his bedroom suite. But the double doors slid open to create an archway with the Queen’s rooms directly on the other side.

Bedchamber to bedchamber, he knew, so that they could be as privately communal as they liked without having to traipse about the palace or involve anyone else in their intimate decisions.

He thought about that for a lot longer than he should have.

When his mobile buzzed in his pocket again, it took effort to bring himself back to the present. To reality instead of the firework display in his head.

He tried to shake it off, pulled his mobile out, and then stared down at the message on the screen. It showed a name that Saviero hadn’t seen in a long while, and he almost didn’t open the message now. Because he wasn’t ready to offer what he assumed would be the necessary compassion and some kind of grief counseling to the woman who was the reason that Vesuvius had flown off in that plane in the first place.

He would get there eventually, he was sure.

But he just wasn’t sure he could do it today.

Yet Saviero opened the message anyway, because an accident wasn’t her fault and he should have been above such unworthy thoughts, scanned it—and then froze.

Because she wasn’t looking for anything of the kind.

The American art curator that his friend had fallen in love with years ago, though had broken up with once the date of his inevitable Royal Wedding had been set, was passing on information. The most critical information Saviero had ever received, and he had to read it again and again to make certain he wasn’t making it up. That he wasn’t fantasizing it because it was what he wanted to read.

He tried to call, but she didn’t answer.

Yet no matter how many times he read the words, they said the same thing.

Vesuvius was alive.

CHAPTER THREE

CESCA DID NOT let herself cry until she was in the shower.

Only there did she allow herself to indulge the terrible, bone-wracking sobs that tore through her. She clung to the tiled wall and slid down to the floor when her knees no longer held her upright. Then she let the hot water beat all over her as she cried and cried until she had nothing left.

Only then, standing upright again in the steam and heat, did she pull out her braids and do her best to put herself together again.

It took a while. Quite a long while before she could tamp it all back down again. Shove it all inside that locked box again so she could find her way back to that stage.