Your Majesty,

We write to tell you we shall be arriving around nine tomorrow, Thursday the seventeenth. We promise not to make a scene or tease you. Well, we may tease you, but not too harshly. Not this time.

Etan Rex

I smiled. Rex. How fancy. As a fellow sovereign, maybe I would adopt that. But not the royal we, which I intended to taunt him mercilessly about once he arrived. I held the letter up to my nose. I could smell Isolte on the paper, and if I focused, him, too.

He was on his way, and he was still joking with me, and no matter what else was happening, at least there was that.

Never a dull moment, my principal lady came bounding up the pathway.

“Valentina, what is it?”

She was beaming. “It’s done, Your Majesty.”

I let out a blissful sigh. “Perfect.”

Thirty-Six

I SAT AT THE VANITY in the king’s—well, queen’s—chambers as Valentina gave me one last look over. My crown was speckled with sapphires, my ring from Mother shone with its ruby, and my wedding rings? Well, they sat in a safe place so I could see them when I wanted. Jameson and Silas both had their hands on how I’d made it to this place, but the steps I took forward from here all belonged to me. So, I wanted to be perfect today.

Given her past, Valentina was more eagle-eyed than even Delia Grace and was a natural at my side. What’s more, we had one another’s perfect trust, a thing that had been found and lost and found so many times between Delia Grace and me.

“Valentina, I feel silly for not asking this sooner, but are you uncomfortable being out there today? Not being queen anymore?”

She made a playful face. “Not at all. I’m much happier being your subject than their queen.”

“So you don’t miss it? Not even being away from Isolte?”

She squinted a moment, thinking. “No. Home is what we make it. And I’ve made mine here.”

“You have been too good to me,” I said. “I’ll have to find a way to thank you for it someday.”

She shook her head, her tone peaceful and resolute. “You rescued me. King Etan rescued me. This is me thanking you.” She stepped back, surveying her handiwork. “There now. Beautiful.”

“I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, but I am very nervous.”

“With how close you two have been, there’s no way this meeting could go poorly.”

I swallowed my words, thinking that, with how close we’d been, this could be the hardest meeting of my reign.

Valentina knocked on the door, and the guards opened it for me. I walked through with her tailing my skirt as I serenely acknowledged the crowd. Just beside the dais, Hagan was waiting for me, his arm outstretched.

Hagan was what Valentina had referred to as a “perfect specimen.” He was tall with a sharp nose and dark brown hair. His broad shoulders made everything he wore fall impeccably, and, most importantly, he was from one of the oldest families in Coroa. In the days when my mother was trying to parlay what she thought would be a brief relationship with Jameson into a proposal from another high-ranking family, Hagan hadn’t even been on her list. He’d been too good for me.