Page 194 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
I hurt myself on him constantly. What he says, what he doesn’t say, what others say. What I can’t ask, what I won’t ask. I’ve been dumped into a relationship—a marriage—with no previous experience with such a thing and sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.
But I don’t want to let go of him either.
When we finish the tour, and arrive at the main research building, he stops me just before we enter the building. He puts his hand on my cheek. “Thank you, sparrow.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, trying to dampen the smile rising on my face just slightly. Because I don’t want to look overly pleased with myself.
But I am.
Because no one has given him gifts. But I have. Because I know him. Or at least, I’m starting to. But there’s still so much to him… He is a cavernous vault. Containing a whole dragon hoard, I assume. Of years, experience, knowledge. He doesn’t want me to access it. He doesn’t want anyone to; it isn’t personal. He’s told me things, so many things, but I want more. I want all of him.
I don’t even know what all of him is.
I wonder if he does.
I’m introduced to so many venerable experts of the field that I’m dizzy before we even begin to tour the facility. It’s everything I could’ve ever imagined. Part of me breaks inside, imagining what it would’ve been like to live here. To study here. To talk to these people, every day, share information as we make new discoveries. To go out onto the quiet greens, to stare at that same pond that Tolkien did, not to think about a fantasy world, but think about our own. That isn’t my life. It’s not going to be.
I had a dream. And I have to let it go. Admitting those things to myself is difficult. I wanted it. Enough that it hurts. It’s not going to happen. I don’t want being here to be a sad thing. It’s a dream of a kind to even get to stand here. It’s something more than what I was going to get. And I just have to be grateful for the afternoon.
We don’t travel back to London. Instead, we go to a country manor house, which has been beautifully outfitted for our use. As ever, with Lucian, there is a splendid feast for dinner, and I find myself trying to taste it, trying to enjoy it, as I reflect on the afternoon spent partway in a dream.
“Are you well?”
“Just sad,” I say. “But thank you.”
“Why are you sad?” He sounds genuinely concerned.
“Because it was a little window into a life I might’ve had. And I’m just trying to let it go. It’s something that I wanted. It’s something that I dreamed of for myself. It was wonderful. As wonderful as I thought it would be. Sometimes when you see something in real life it doesn’t measure up. But this did. It was everything and more. Part of me is glad that a place like that exists. Something that’s every bit as magical and brilliant as you think it might be. But part of me is sad. Because I have to let it go. You are right. I’m as much a romantic as anyone in my family. I just romanticize different things.”
“You can’t have it because of me,” he says.
“That’s right,” I say, looking up at him.
“You know, you make a wonderful impression on everyone, everywhere we go.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You were upset, that night in France, when the diplomat said that I needed to hang onto you.”
I’m surprised that he noticed that.
“I was.”
“Why?”
“Because I realize that almost everyone in that room knew something about you that I didn’t. Not just people you live with in a palace, but these people across the world. And consequently, they know things about my marriage that I don’t. They met your previous wives, didn’t they?”
He’s silent for a moment. “They met Colette. I don’t think anyone ever met Andrea.”
“Colette,” I say. I test her name out. That was his first wife. I know her name; everyone does. She was princess of one of the other Mediterranean islands in the Sun Belt. Their wedding was supposed to be a celebration, a demonstration of unity, ushering in a new era. Instead, within two years she was dead, and many people blamed Lucian.
After all, there had long been rumors about his madness. His rages.
A beautiful queen, who never bore the king a child, dies in a country that verges on medieval, and people begin to suspect the medieval thing.
“We were very young when we got married,” he says. “Younger even than you. I was twenty-one. She was nineteen.”
“Oh,” I say. He’s silent. And I need to know, even if part of me doesn’t want to know. “Did you love her?”
