He settled a hand on her shoulder, the other tipping her chin to turn her face up to his. Finally Beatrice seemed to snap back into herself. She opened her mouth in protest—and Connor, seeing her parted lips, leaned in to kiss her.

She didn’t resist. It felt so powerfully familiar, because she had been here before, so many times: folded in Connor’s arms, surrounded by his tensed strength. The sheer Connor-ness of him overwhelmed her senses.

It was as if that kiss had slipped her back in time, to before she lost her dad—back when she wasn’t a queen, but simply a girl in love with the wrong boy.

Then reality crashed back in and she pulled away, her breathing unsteady.

A single tear slid down her cheek. Seeing it, Connor lifted a hand. His fingers were callused, yet he brushed away her tear with painstaking gentleness.

“Run away with me, Beatrice. Let me help you get out,” he said fervently. “Let me save you from all of this.”

It was precisely what Beatrice had threatened to do the night before her father died: to run off with Connor, abandoning all her responsibilities. And yet…

Let me save you. Connor didn’t understand that Beatrice no longer needed rescuing. She hadn’t been forced; she wasn’t trapped. If she’d wanted to escape being queen, the only person who could have saved her was herself.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“So that’s it? You’re going to get married, just because you think it’s part of your job description?”

Her heart broke at how fundamentally he’d misunderstood, and she bit her lip, searching for the words to explain.

Back when Connor had been her Guard, she’d accepted that she would someday be queen. Now she chose it. Some people might not understand the distinction, but Beatrice knew it made all the difference in the world.

A destiny was something that happened to you, that fell upon you like rain no matter how desperately you tried to hide from it. But if you walked toward it with your head held high, then it wasn’t your fate—it was simply your future.

Beatrice looked into Connor’s eyes and said the only three words that would make him listen.

“I love Teddy.”

For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her. Connor’s eyes closed, and when he opened them again, they glinted like newly forged steel. “You can’t.”

She placed her hand, with its glittering engagement ring, over his. “I loved you so much, Connor. Some part of me will always love you.” She thought of last night with Teddy, of everything she was still discovering about herself. Her feelings for Teddy might have been the greatest discovery of all. “But now…I’m in love with Teddy.”

Beatrice had come to understand that the human heart was a magical thing. It had so much room inside it, enough room to contain more than one love over the course of a lifetime.

Connor and Teddy had each given their hearts into her safekeeping. Beatrice imagined she could feel the weight of them in her hands—they were smooth like bird’s eggs, like the massive rubies down in the Crown Jewels vault, and infinitely more precious.

It wasn’t right of her to keep Connor’s heart any longer, not when he didn’t have hers.

Connor stared down at their clasped hands. “I don’t understand what changed.”

“I changed. I’m not that girl anymore, the princess who fell in love with her Guard. I’m queen now.”

That girl had been lonely, and na?ve about so many things. More than anything, she’d been desperate for someone to understand her.

But that girl had died that day at the hospital when the flag sank to half-mast and she realized that she’d spoken to her father for the last time.

“Beatrice—that’s exactly my point. You’re only with Teddy because you’re the queen! If you hadn’t been forced into this role, we would still be together.”

If her dad hadn’t died, if she hadn’t become the queen, if Connor hadn’t left, giving her the time and space to fall for Teddy. If, if, if. It frightened Beatrice a little, that the world was built on so many small ifs that decided people’s fates.

No, she thought intently, that wasn’t true. From now on, Beatrice would choose her own fate.

“I know you’ve been through a lot this year, and it’s changed you,” Connor added, his voice breaking. “But can’t we find our way back to each other?”

Beatrice shook her head, looking up at him through wet lashes. It had been a long, hard road out of the dark haze of her grief, and she still wasn’t entirely free of the shadows. Maybe she never would be. But the only way she’d managed to make it this far was because she’d been leaning on Teddy, and now Samantha, drawing from their seemingly bottomless pool of strength.

She couldn’t go back the way she’d come. Certainly she couldn’t go back to being the girl she had been, when she was in love with Connor.

He loved her—Beatrice could never doubt that—but he’d never truly understood her, not entirely. Connor’s instinct would always be to protect her: with his life, if it came down to it.

Except Beatrice was no longer a girl who needed protecting. Connor wanted to charge in like a knight in shining armor, offering to rescue her. Whereas Teddy gave her the confidence to rescue herself.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I really do love him.”

She watched Connor’s breathing slow as understanding settled in, his eyes brimming with pain. She still hadn’t let go of his hand.

There were no windows in here, not even a clock. It was as if they’d escaped to some pocket of time outside time itself: as if the universe had ground to a halt, so that they could finally say what they needed.

“Teddy—he’s good to you?” Connor asked, and she sensed the words were costing him more than she would ever know. “He really deserves you?”

There was no coherent way for Beatrice to answer that, so she nodded.

“I figured. You couldn’t have fallen for him otherwise.” Connor attempted something like a smile, but it came out lopsided and wrong, or maybe it just looked that way through Beatrice’s tears. “I’m happy for you,” he said gruffly.

“You don’t have to say that,” she insisted. “I mean—I’ll understand, if you hate me.”

“I could never hate you, Bee. I just…I miss you.” There was no reproach in Connor’s words, only a weary, unflinching truth.

“I miss you, too,” she said, and meant it.

Beatrice’s tears were coming more freely now, but that wasn’t surprising. Nothing in life hurt more than hurting the people you loved. Yet Beatrice knew she had to say all of this.

She and Connor had loved each other too fiercely for her to let him go without a proper goodbye.

“I am…forever changed by you,” she added, her voice catching. “I gave you part of my heart a long time ago, and I’ve never gotten it back.”

“You don’t need it back.” His voice was rough with unshed tears. “I swear that I’ll keep it safe. Everywhere I go, that part of you will come with me, and I will guard and treasure it. Always.”

A sob escaped her chest. She hurt for Connor and with Connor and because of Connor, all at once.

This wasn’t how breakups were meant to go. In the movies they always seemed so hateful, with people yelling and throwing things at each other. They weren’t meant to be like this, tender and gentle and full of heartache.

“Okay,” she replied, through her tears. “That part of my heart is yours to keep.”

Connor stepped back, loosening his hand from hers, and Beatrice felt the thread between them pull taut and finally snap. She imagined that she could hear it—a crisp sort of sound, like the stem of a rose being snapped in two.

Her body felt strangely sore, or maybe it was her heart that felt sore, recognizing the parts of it that she had given away, forever.

“You’re such an amazing person, Connor. I hope you find someone who deserves you.”

Again he attempted a crooked smile. “It won’t be easy on her, trying to live up to the queen. For a small person, you cast quite the shadow,” he said, and then his features grew serious once more. “Bee—if you ever need me, I’ll be there for you. You know that, right?”

She swallowed against a lump in her throat. “The same promise holds for me, too. I’m always here if you need me.”

As she spoke, the steel panel began to lift back into the ceiling.

Beatrice straightened her shoulders beneath the cool silk of the gown, drew in a breath. Somehow she managed to gather up the tattered shreds of her self-control, as if she wasn’t a young woman who’d just said goodbye to her first love—to her best friend.

As if she wasn’t a young woman at all, but a queen.

The steel-reinforced doors lifted without a whisper of a sound.

They seemed so heavy that they should have groaned and creaked, like the portcullis of a medieval drawbridge being raised in battle. Yet Nina heard nothing except a low, hissing silence.

A Revere Guard appeared in the doorway. When he lifted his hand, the gossip rumbling through the room was abruptly cut off.