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  Her heart ached. She shored herself up against it, tried to hold herself together. He’d made his choice. All she could do now was face her future with dignity.

  “You and Simon are free to work for the Castle in an alternate capacity,” the lawyer went on, “though you would of course still need to find alternate housing.”

  “No,” she said before Simon could respond. “I’m leaving.”

  Simon turned at that, finally looking at her. “What?”

  The lawyer cleared his throat. “I’ll, ah, leave you to discuss.” He half-bowed before remembering they were no longer royalty and scurrying out of the room, embarrassed.

  Penelope’s fingers were still splayed across her stomach. She dropped her hand and pulled herself up, examining the suitcase on the bed. She’d been in the middle of packing when the lawyer had come for their briefing. She resumed the job now, sweeping open her underwear drawer and dumping it into the bag. She paused—the corset she’d worn on her wedding night lay on top of the pile. She was tempted to pull it out and toss it in the trash, remembering how he’d kissed his way up her calves that evening, how he’d looked at her like she was priceless and beautiful. In the end she just dumped some more pajamas on top of the garment, unable to bear throwing it away but also unable to look at it any longer.

  Simon stood up behind her. “What do you mean you’re leaving?”

  “I want to get away from this place,” she replied, not looking at him. “I’m going back to my toy store, my old life. Or maybe I’ll leave Escona entirely. Travel the world.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “It’ll get me away from my mother, anyway, now that I won’t be able to send her to America.”

  Simon took off his reading glasses—he’d been looking over the paperwork involved in this whole mess all day—and rubbed his temples. “Must be nice to have a safety net,” he said in a low, vicious tone. “What am I supposed to do, while you frolic off across the world? I gave up everything for you. For Escona. I let myself be used by you and now I have nothing to show for it. It’s easy for you to just run away, to give up. Some of us don’t have that luxury.”

  Oh hell no, he was not going to go there. She whirled on him. “I might have kept some connections to my old life, I might have not been completely ready to be Queen, but I was always more ready for romance than you!” she declared, stabbing a finger at him. “I didn’t use you for anything, and I’m done letting you use me for things now.” She yanked open her last drawer, scooped up an armful of jeans, and dropped them into the suitcase. With a savage motion, she slid the zipper shut.

  “So that’s it? We’re doing this? Divorcing, moving out?”

  “I’m moving out. I don’t care what you do.” She didn’t look at him when she said it. She didn’t want him to know how untrue it was, didn’t want him to see her so vulnerable. She hated what was happening, what it had done to them, but it was over. She wanted this whole chapter of her life behind her. Someday, she would heal. The faster she got away from this man and this castle the faster that would happen. “We’ll do the divorce quietly, before the baby is born. You can go back to Danovar if that’s what you want.”

  He scoffed. “There’s nothing for me there now.”

  “Then you can stay here and serve the new King.”

  He hesitated. “What about the baby?”

  “What about it?”

  “Will I…” he didn’t finish.

  She sighed, all the fight going out of her. “I don’t want the baby confused,” she said softly. “We’ll have different lives. Maybe… maybe it’s best if you pretend none of this ever happened.”

  “You don’t want me to see the child?” His voice sounded strangled.

  She put her hands over her face. That tone of his nearly did her in. But if she let him be a part of her life, if she saw him on a regular basis, if she let him help raise their baby—would she ever stop wanting him, ever stop missing what they’d had? Would she ever heal? He’d made his priorities clear, and they weren’t her. She wasn’t sure if it would be better for a child to grow up with a father like that, or no father at all. “I don’t know,” she said, miserable. “I need time to think.”

  He walked out without a word. She sat on the bed for a long time, head in her hands, trying to imagine a future where she didn’t feel as completely shattered as she did in this moment.

  18

  Simon was starting to hate the library.

  He leaned over the desk, pen at the ready, staring down at the legal brief in front of him. The words on the document might as well be random ink blots. He’d been sitting here for over an hour already this morning and still hadn’t been able to focus enough to read the damn thing, much less make notes on it, even though he’d promised one of the senior lawyers he was working with that he’d get them his thoughts on it by this afternoon. Truth was, he hadn’t been able to focus for days. Not since he’d realized what a complete and total ass he was.

  It hadn’t taken him long. The day after Pen had left, one of the castle lawyers had come to ask him to stay on as a consultant, and Simon had thought maybe this would give him a sense of purpose again. He was serving the Crown, after all. Not in a public, exalted way like last time, but glory had never been what he was after anyway. He just wanted to be a part of something bigger than himself. He just wanted to belong. So he’d accepted the job offer, hoping it might give him that.

  It hadn’t.

  He’d woken up in the middle of the night last night and finally had to give in and admit what he’d known for days now. He didn’t feel fulfilled. He was serving the Crown, had even been offered a new set of small apartments nearby, but this place still wasn’t home. Nowhere would be, not without Penelope.

  But he’d lost Penelope. Because of his complete, total ass-ness.

  He shoved the brief away with a disgusted huff. Ass-ness? Had he really fallen so far as to make up words now? This was just pathetic. He needed to stop moping around feeling sorry for himself and make a plan. He knew what he needed to do: find a way to get Pen back on the throne and into the life she needed and deserved, and ask her if she could find any way to let him into her heart again. But not only did he have no idea how to do that, he also had no idea how to do it without making it look like he was using her to fulfill his own needs. He could find a way to get her on the throne without asking her to be with him again, of course, but he didn’t trust himself to be able to follow through on that, because he’d been without Pen for exactly one week now and he already felt adrift and broken without her at his side. Plus, the image of her marrying someone else—which she would have to, in order to have a secure reign—made him want to put his fist through the nearest wall.

  How could he have been so stupid? Why hadn’t he just gone with her, torched those divorce papers the second she tried to hand them over—he knew she hadn’t wanted the separation either, not truly—and told her the truth? His home was with her. He didn’t feel like he belonged here anymore because she wasn’t here. He’d been fighting for the wrong thing all along, trying to support the Crown instead of his wife, and he had no idea how to make that up to her.

  He wondered what she was doing right now. How she was doing. Did she still have morning sickness? Was there someone around to take care of her? Who would help her take care of the baby when it was born, if she decided she didn’t want him in the child’s life? He tried to stop himself before he followed that thought too far, before he felt the phantom weight of his son or daughter in his arms, before he imagined what his and Penelope’s child might look like. Would it have her hair? His love of books?

  A librarian dropped a tome in front of him, saving him from his reverie before he broke down completely. “One of my friends at the royal library asked me to pass this along to you. Said they spent weeks searching for it after you requested it,” the woman said. “Apparently someone mis-shelved it.” She sounded scandalized.

  He opened it half-heartedly. The book was from an old request he’d ma
de, back when he’d been researching Pen’s legitimacy for the throne after they’d first met. At the time he’d hoped to add it to his stash to take back to Danovar and study before the wedding, but he had no use for it now. Still, he didn’t want to offend the librarian and he always did have a compulsive need to see a project all the way through, so he thanked her and flipped through it. What had he needed this book for? Right: more research on The Advancing of Dynastes Law of 1645. He flipped to the right chapter, not even stopping to savor the smell of old books the way he used to, and squinted at the page.

  Then he blinked and re-read the passage. The offspring of an unfit heir shall not be part of the succession while other heirs remain able and willing to take the throne. He jumped to his feet, strode to the archaic law section of the library, and pulled two more books off the shelf with his heart pounding in his chest. Half an hour’s research confirmed that the law had never been amended, and that the type of complete abdication Nathaniel had performed had, in the eyes of that law, put him squarely in the “unfit” category.

  Which meant his son, whether or not he’d been born before the abdication, couldn’t inherit if Penelope still wanted the throne.

  Simon jumped to his feet and scooped up the books, elated—then stopped.

  What if Pen didn’t want the throne anymore? What if she didn’t want him? Or what if she thought she had to take both or neither?

  He had to approach this carefully. He wanted nothing more than to be with Pen again, but he wanted her to be with him because she wanted to be, not because of any perceived ulterior motive. Their first marriage had been necessitated by the laws of Escona and the needs of her nation. If they were to have any shot at being together again, it had to be their choice. Her choice. If she wanted him and not the throne, he would be completely fine with that, because his home was with her. If she wanted the throne but not him… he would need to find a way to be okay with that too.

  Swallowing hard, he gathered up his things and went to find the woman he loved.

  19

  Penelope stared at the miniature rocking horse on her desk, feeling as wooden and lifeless as the toy. She’d been off her game ever since she came back to her old store. Her creative well had run dry; no matter how many new designs she tried to draw up, they all felt joyless and pointless, and they’d all ended up in the trash. Even working the front and seeing the happy kids with their new toys couldn’t cheer her up. She wanted to blame the hormones—the first trimester was no joke—but she knew that was only a tiny part of it. The biggest reason she’d been so listless was sitting halfway across the city in one dusty library or another, carrying on his life as if she’d never been a part of it.

  She put a hand on her belly, trying to hold back the tears. She’d made such a mistake when she’d let Simon into her life, into her bed. Now every time she looked at their child she’d see him. She couldn’t bring herself to regret it, though. She missed him with a ferocious sort of grieving anger, but she still wouldn’t give up their time together for anything.

  “Miss Penelope Alcott?” came a voice. She jumped and looked up. A bicycle messenger stood in front of her, holding out a manila envelope. “Delivery for you,” he said. “Need you to sign.”

  She scribbled her name across the clipboard he provided, frowning at the envelope when he handed it to her. The return address was the Castle’s law office.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Was she being recalled? Had the toddler abdicated somehow? For just a second, she let herself imagine it: the life she’d been meant for. She saw herself on the throne, passing legislation and making policy changes that would benefit all the children of her country. She saw herself confident in her abilities. She saw Simon at her side, smiling at her, supporting her.

  And that was where the daydream crashed to Earth. Because he wasn’t at her side, would never be again. The paper in her hands wasn’t to remake her as Queen. That life was over. When would she get that through her head?

  She tore the envelope open with harsh motions. It was a summons, an order to appear at the law office for a deposition—to answer questions.

  She frowned. Had she forgotten to sign something before she left? The summons was for this afternoon, which implied something urgent. She crammed the paper back in the envelope, gathered her bag, and told her staff she’d be back tomorrow.

  Penelope arrived at the law office five minutes early and more than a little peeved. She’d had to race traffic to get there on time, especially after having to stop for two puking breaks. Whoever had come up with the term morning sickness had either been delusional or a man, because that shit happened all day every day. Or at least that had been her experience over the last week.

  “Excuse me?” she called to the empty front office. “I was ‘summoned’?” She used air quotes even though no one could see her, hoping her tone would convey her irritation.

  The door to one of the back offices opened—and Simon strode out.

  She gaped at him. The sight knocked the breath out of her: perfectly-tailored Clark Kent suit, adorkable reading glasses, an expression that was half uncertain and half determined. He was sporting a day or two’s worth of stubble and his hair was half an inch longer than he usually let it go between trims. She wanted to run her hands through it. She immediately hated herself for the thought, and wrapped her arms around her ribs just to make sure she wouldn’t reach for him the way she was aching to do.

  “You summoned me?” she asked, once she was sure the words would come out icy and not wobbly.

  “Penelope,” he said, as if he were helpless to say anything else. That tone, those eyes, that look on his face—it made her want to tuck herself into his chest, and she couldn’t take it. She turned around and strode toward the door. “Wait!” he called after her. “Please. Just give me five minutes. I found something.”

  She stopped but didn’t turn around. “What did you find,” she asked, her voice flat.

  He moved a little closer. “A way to reinstate you. If that’s what you want.”

  Hope flared in her chest, bright and painful. “What?”

  “I found an old law. From the seventeenth century, but it’s never been amended, it’s still in effect. It says you inherit before the boy—he can only inherit if you’re not willing and able to be Queen. And Penelope, you have to know, you are much more than able.” He took a breath. “Are you willing?”

  She stared at the door, unable to say anything. There was a catch. There had to be. “What about you?” she asked at last. The question hung in the air and she wanted to take it back. She didn’t want him to answer, didn’t want to hear what he had to say. If he rejected her again, she wouldn’t be able to take it. If he wanted her back, she wouldn’t be able to say no, and she had to say no, because he would only want her as a queen and not as his wife.

  “I don’t have to be in the picture unless you want me to be,” he said at last. “I’ll disappear if that’s what you really want. But… if you can give me a chance to earn your forgiveness, to earn back a place in your heart, I want to ask you to be my wife. Again.”

  She turned.

  He hurried on before she could speak. “I wouldn’t be King. I found another old law, a way around the statutes. We could get married and ensure a strong relationship between Escona and Danovar without ever actually making me part of your reign—I’d have no official title, no official role in ruling.”

  Speechless, she shook her head. He would give up all of that, everything he wanted? For what? “What would you have?” she asked, trying to figure out his angle. He had to have one. She couldn’t let herself believe otherwise. It was too dangerous.

  “You.” His eyes met hers, igniting a line of pure electricity between them. “I want you back,” he said softly, “because you are my home, Penelope. I don’t need a title, or my own land, or a castle. I just need you.”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes. So this was his angle. He wanted her back, because he loved her, and he was willing to
give up everything else he thought he’d wanted for his entire life to get her.

  It was a pretty damn good angle.

  Unable to hold herself back any longer, she threw herself at him, and he dropped the folder on the ground without a second thought to gather her up in his arms and hold her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I’m so sorry I was such an ass.”

  “I’ll forgive you.” She sniffled. “Eventually.”

  His chest shook as he laughed. “Fair enough.”

  She hesitated. “Are you sure you’re willing to give up being King? Maybe we could… I don’t know, find a way to—”

  “No,” he said, firmly but gently. “This is what I want. I’ll have my life of purpose, it’ll just be more flexible than I’d pictured. I’ll be able to support you in whatever role you need me to fill. I’ve never cared about the glory. I don’t mind being behind the scenes. It’s you everyone should be looking at anyway.”

  She beamed up at him. Then, unable to deny herself any longer, she slid a hand down his shirt and fiddled with the first button. “What if I want to look at you?”

  His grin smoldered, igniting something low in her stomach with a fiery need. “That could be arranged.”

  She pushed him back, toward his office. He leaned around her to look at the folder on the floor. “Wait, the papers, we need to get them signed and sent off—” he protested.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “A few hours.”

  She grabbed his tie and smiled. “All the time in the world, my love.”

  Epilogue

  This time when Simon built the treehouse, he left his rings in his wife’s care.

  She glanced up at him from her spot on the lawn as she watched. “Remember to put the ladder in the middle!” she called.