Page 187 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
I do want to share with him—he’s done so with me, and generously.
But he is a man with twenty years more living than I’ve done. There are parts of myself that are unexplored. I thought it meant they didn’t matter. That they weren’t driving me. I think now that I’m wrong. I think there’s more to me, to the reason I did this than I can easily untangle.
“It was a chance to do something big,” I say. “I’ve had plans all of my life, to do something to get out of the life that we have here. Not that it’s a bad life. We aren’t destitute, even though we certainly don’t have anything extra. But it isn’t enough to truly change anything. To travel, to go to a university out of the country. To…to dream. It’s a strange thing, because in some ways my mother and sister dream bigger than I ever have. You can’t control someone else’s heart. The audacity to believe that you can love someone at the same time they love you, and that it will continue on forever… That’s bravery. You can’t control that. You can’t plan for it. I chose things that I could plan. But every year I fell short. Every year I couldn’t quite get there because there was something else we needed money for. And I know that you’re looking at me, and considering twenty-two very young, but for what I want to do time is passing me by.”
I find a deeper part of myself, a deeper honesty than I’ve had before. I wasn’t being entirely self-sacrificial. I was stuck. I didn’t want to be. I have a sudden, clear insight into that. “And part of me just thought…to hell with it. At least this is big. And who knows where it will take me. I know where all of my planning will take me. Up each and every slow, incremental step. But I was tired of taking steps. I wondered what it would be like if I could fly.”
It seems foolish now, because of course being a queen gives you power, resources, money, but it doesn’t give you a normal life. It has given me something different, but it is something with a lot more weight than I imagined. A testament, yet again, to the things that I failed to give importance to.
Certainly, somewhere in there, is the humanity of Lucian himself.
He was a symbol to me when I arrived. A legend. He is a man to me now, though I can’t say that means I have him figured out.
“And then I clipped your wings,” he says, looking at me with something like sorrow in those blue eyes.
“But your story makes me understand something,” I say. “Your wings are clipped too. You’re bound to this life. To all the things you have to do. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. “My grandmother got abandoned by my grandfather. My mother was abandoned by my father. By Eve’s father. I worry that Eve will also be abandoned. All of these things made me afraid to dream in many ways. Planning, yes. Dreaming, no. Maybe that’s why I’ve never liked fiction. Because it feels like a dream.”
He shifts, looms over me, brushes his knuckles against my cheek. “Will you dream of me, sparrow?”
What else is a caged sparrow with clipped wings to dream of? But I don’t ask him that.
Instead, I kiss him. I kiss him with every ounce of desire that is in me. Not just the desire that I feel for him, but this reckless, endless desire that I have for my own life. This need to soar. To succeed. To do something and be something. This impossible paradox, that now I’ve become a queen, but won’t recognize my dreams. That now I am more important to the world in some ways, but my own life has become smaller and smaller.
Smaller.
But…
He lifts his head and looks at me, and I grip his face and kiss him, push him onto his back and climb over top of him. I sit astride him, looking down at all his masculine glory. As he allows me this power. As he allows me to assume this position, this role. That’s what it will always be. What he allows. Because he could push me off at any moment. He could claim the dominant position. He is allowing me to feel powerful. Can I accept that? Can I accept a life where everything is what he allows?
I don’t know what other option I have. Not now.
His hands span my waist; he moves them up my body, thumbs grazing over my nipples. For all that he has made my life smaller, he has made it so much bigger too, and that is another thing that’s hard for me to reconcile.
Without Lucian, I would never have felt my body like this. I would never have realized how much this part of me mattered. I had locked this part of myself away. I was so afraid.
I already want so much. I would never have been able to bear life if I wanted more. If I wanted a man to look at me and think that I was beautiful. If I wanted to be touched, kissed, held. If I wanted to be someone’s wife.
It was out of reach enough to want to make it to university. I could never have borne the weight of more dreams.
They are dreams. Whatever I’ve spent all these years telling myself. I’m a dreamer. I just didn’t want to be.
Suddenly, I’m overcome by the weight of those desires. Of everything that I want.
Everything that I can’t have. No one can have everything, I suppose. This man, this king, has been denied so many things. Tortured, isolated. How long has it been since someone has loved him?
The question terrifies me so I push it away. Shut it down deep. I don’t want the answer to that question. I don’t. I don’t want to be confronted by it.
I don’t want to have to think about it.
Thinking is the enemy right now. Why can’t I just keep on feeling? God, but the feelings are overwhelming. They’re expanding in my chest, moving all through my body. I want him. I maneuver my hips, arch them back so that I can take him inside me. It’s not close enough. I want him, and it’s driving me. Tearing me to pieces. I want more, and I don’t know what to call that. I want more from everything. For myself, from him, from the world.
I feel like I’m being remade into something new, and it is painful. Unimaginable. And yet it’s also beautiful and wonderful and the most glorious thing I’ve ever experienced.
Lucian is unlike anyone I’ve ever known. Awakening things in me that are strange and wonderful and brilliant.
He has shown me the power in feeling.
