This should have been one of the happiest moments of my life. After letting the press speculate for a week, with Maximilian showing up at nearly every event I attended, today the royal palace officially announced the king’s engagement. This afternoon, we stood together in the palace gardens and smiled adoringly at each other for the press. Now we’re standing at the head of one of the ballrooms within the palace. Today isn’t the engagement ball—that public event celebrating our upcoming nuptials is scheduled for next Sunday—but instead a more ‘intimate’ event for the army of staff and residents within the palace who probably won’t enjoy a full night’s sleep from now until the wedding.

While gazing down at me with an enraptured expression, Maximilian raises a toast to his future queen. The fiancée he’s pretending to love.

I don’t know why this hurts so much. This was my idea—to show the world a couple in love.

I didn’t know he would do it so well. When the toast is over, he bends his head and gently touches his lips to mine—and for a moment, all the pain is gone, washed away by the pleasure of his touch. It happens every time he kisses me…which is often. As often as a man in love would. And not only chaste kisses, as now, but kisses that are hot and deep and so full of need that I forget sex is a part of duty and obligation. His every caress sweeps that knowledge away.

Until it’s over, and I remember again.

Now he lifts his head and I can’t stop myself from rising up on my toes, trying to hold onto the pleasure just a little longer. Trying to delay the pain.

As if sensing my reluctance, he kisses me again. So gently. So sweetly. As if he can’t bear to let me go, either.

He’s so very good at this. If I didn’t know the truth, I could almost believe he loved me, too. He breaks the kiss but still doesn’t let me go, instead wrapping his strong arm around my waist and pulling me in against his side.

“How are you holding up?” he asks me quietly, his gaze shining with concern as it searches my face. “This isn’t too much?”

“Of course not,” I murmur back.

“You’ve had barely a moment to rest this week.”

True. I haven’t yet cancelled any of my own appointments. Instead I added dress fittings and wedding consultations to my already full schedule.

My free moments have dwindled to nothing. I spend almost no time alone during the days and fall into bed exhausted each night. But it’s better this way. I don’t spend too much time in my head, thinking about Maximilian pretending to love me and wallowing in the hurt. If I did that, I would probably break down screaming.

Then the photographers could add that meltdown to my greatest hits.

“We can rest during the honeymoon,” I tell him.

Predatory hunger sharpens his expression. “You think we’ll be resting?”

I have to laugh. “No.” And I look forward to it. A month of losing myself in his touch, and forgetting that it’s all pretend.

“Tell your assistant to clear more time in your schedule so you can sleep,” he commands softly, raising my fingers to his lips.

Then we’re no longer alone, as Frederich Groener approaches us. The Minister of Foreign Affairs gives Maximilian and me a hearty grin. “My congratulations to you both.”

“Thank you,” I tell him with a smile. Perhaps he would rather see Adele von Schuster standing where I am now, but his congratulations sound sincere—and after coming into contact with some of Maximilian’s staff and advisors over the course of the past week, I suspect that to most of them, the king’s happiness trumps every other concern regarding his bride.

After Frederich, we are besieged by more individuals offering their congratulations, and the focus of the gathering slowly shifts away from Maximilian and me, transforming into a giant cocktail party. Lively conversations spring up around tables of food and drink, small groups forming and breaking apart. After receiving a line of well-wishers, Maximilian and I separate to begin mingling—which is both relief and pain.

I hate being apart from him. I hate knowing that he’s only pretending to love me. I hate knowing that it was all at my suggestion.

I hate having everything that I ever wanted…and complaining.

Determined to enjoy the party and to acquaint myself with more of the palace staff, I refill my champagne and turn towards a small group near the patio doors—and find myself facing Jeannette von Hintze, Maximilian’s social secretary.

She stands about my height, with fierce red hair and cat-eye glasses. Her sharp gaze cuts through the lenses like green lasers.

“Victoria.” A pleasant smile accompanies the greeting. “How are you getting along with Ursula?”

My new assistant, who came from Jeannette’s department. “Very well. Thank you for giving her up.”

She waves that thanks away. “She’s friends with Geoffrey, and he filled her head with harrowing tales of narrowly avoided scheduling disasters and heroic efficiency. So becoming the queen’s personal assistant will be a dream come true. Did she tell you about the interview we’ve scheduled for next Sunday?”

“She did.” With a writer from a major publication, and who has already conducted a series of interviews with Maximilian. After news of the engagement broke, he requested the opportunity to speak with us together. “I’ve opened up the morning to accommodate it.”

Jeannette nods sharply, her gaze leaving mine to scour the lively room. “I must say that presenting this as a love match was a stroke of genius. I would have suggested it to His Majesty myself if I’d had any inkling that he could act.”

Smiling, I point out, “He’s always in the public eye. Doesn’t that cultivate an ability to perform?”

It has for me. I can smile even while my heart feels torn in two.

“He’s good at hiding what he feels. Not at faking what he doesn’t.” She glances back at me. “Karl thinks that I am the leak.”

I don’t manage to conceal my surprise—and then have to laugh. “I would, too. A scandal would have generated more press than Wilhelm Dietrich’s staid daughter would.”

At least until Maximilian began pretending to love her.

She tilts her head as if considering, but amusement lurks behind those lenses now. “That’s true.”

“But your job is to protect Maximilian’s image,” I continue. “Which also means protecting me now. No matter how horrible and boring you think I am.”

Unfazed by my candor, she nods. Then surprises me again with, “I misjudged you. I’ve made inquiries, spoken to your friends.”

“My friends…such as Felicity? Adele? Elsa? Or anyone else that I’ve brought into Kapria, so they can raise awareness for various causes that I discovered they’re interested in?”

She acknowledges my response with a wry look. “I suspect you know this publicity game as well as I do.”

Better, perhaps. Because I don’t understand how she could not know what I’ve done. “Didn’t you keep a file on me?”

“Of course. Though it was obviously not as comprehensive as it should have been.”

How could that be true, if I was thoroughly vetted? Unless Maximilian didn’t need a file. “Did he keep a close eye on me, then?”

Jeannette shakes her head. “His only focus was on Kapria. We were to update him if anything of importance occurred in your life. But much of what you did was under our radar. Probably because it wasn’t your occupation. You simply seemed to have a wide social circle and a do-gooder reputation.”

As I listen to her, I smile and smile and smile—though my cheeks feel numb. Though my fingers feel numb. I wish my heart was numb. But this pain is even deeper than the ache of watching him pretend. Because the only event of importance that he ever acknowledged was my graduation.

In twelve years, Maximilian only thought of me once? And only because Jeannette reminded him that I exist.

She lifts her chin, as if nodding to someone across the room. “You should go to him now. For two people in love, you’ve been apart too long.”

So we have been. On deadened limbs, I make my way to his side. His loving smile when he sees me cuts so deep, I almost can’t bear it.

I’m only glad we’re not alone. With him is a familiar figure in uniform, who interrupts Maximilian when he begins to make the introductions.

“No need to tell me who this one is.” Colonel Bist takes my hand. “Lovely to see you again, Victoria.”

I smile wryly. “I wonder if that’s true, Colonel.”

He chuckles and looks to Maximilian. “Victoria served in my search and rescue unit… How many years ago was it?”

“Five,” I remind him. “It was the winter that the unit received no rescue calls…except one.” For a goat that got stuck in a crevasse—and after we rescued him, he remained at the lodge with us for the remainder of the winter, despite the colonel’s repeated threats to throw him into a stew pot.

“That’s right.” His eyes twinkle. “The winter I went hungry.”

Maximilian follows the exchange, then regards me with a puzzled frown. “You served in the militia?”

His question spears straight through my heart. How could he not know that?

And I fear that I can’t completely conceal my hurt behind my smile this time. My lips feel tightly stretched over my teeth as I tell him, “I had just left the university, and wanted to be of service to Kapria. I inquired at the palace first but received no response. So I volunteered for a year.”

The warmth of his gaze caresses my face. “You are full of surprises, Victoria.”

But I’m not. I’ve never hidden anything. Everything I am, everything I’ve done, has always been out there in the open if anyone cared to look. But he didn’t.

Yet I knew everything he had done. Because I’d been preparing for this role since I was sixteen. So I bare my teeth in a sharp smile and tell him, “You inspired me, Your Majesty. You fought for this kingdom’s future and I wanted to do the same. So I wore the uniform. And after leaving the militia, I used my family’s connections to bring in celebrities or aristocrats whose interests and donations might help lift Kapria up.”

“So you were never in the background at all, but were the driving force.” Admiration fills his eyes. “I truly could not have chosen a better queen.”

Except he didn’t choose me. My father did. And I can’t bear this anymore—not knowing if that warmth and admiration is genuine, or if he’s pretending even now.

I have to get away from him.

Wearing my smile, I turn to the colonel. “Please excuse me,” I tell him, then bob a quick curtsy to Maximilian. “Your Majesty.”

Then I walk away, as fast as I can—all the while pretending that my heart isn’t bleeding in my chest.