In fact, the only thing that pain didn’t silence was that soft, terribly polite voice she’d been ignoring for so long. The little voice inside her, standing square in front of her subconscious—the one she’d so determinedly pretended didn’t exist.
Until now.
Now, in this new, perfect silence, that voice was loud.
Loud, and calm and absolutely, irrefutably, certain:
This is a mistake.
The sting in her palm eased. Her fingers, so tight and firm, loosened.
And in the silence—in the only moment Ana could remember feeling in control since she’d discovered she was a princess—she let her bouquet fall to the ground.
She imagined she heard it hit the footpath, but that was impossible.
Because, of course, it wasn’t really silent.
Now she heard the noise. All the noise, and then even more noise, when, rather than retrieving her bouquet—as if dropping it had been an accident—she gave it a gentle kick to dislodge it from her satin-clad toes.
Her bridesmaids—colleagues from her old life at the library—hurried towards her, their faces matching studies of concern.
But she just shook her head, held up her hand—she wanted them to stay put—and turned and got back into the vintage Daimler she’d only just exited, slamming the door behind her.
Her driver—one of the palace drivers—caught her gaze in the rear-vision mirror.
His gaze ever professional, he simply asked a question: ‘Where to?’
‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘Not here. Anywhere but here.’
She swallowed as the gravity of what she’d just done began to descend upon her shoulders.
Yet she had no doubts.
This was the right decision.
‘Fast,’ she added.
And with a satisfying screech of tyres her driver complied.
* * *
Hours later, the Vela Ada royal family’s private jet landed at a small airport somewhere in Northern Italy. Ana didn’t know exactly where, and she really didn’t care. It was an irrelevant detail: being somewhere far from home was her number one priority.
Far from home, very far from the media and far from Petar.
Petar.
She could just imagine his fury once he’d realised he’d been left at the altar…
Actually, come to think of it, she couldn’t.
As she was hastily rushed through passport checks and customs, far from where all the non-dignitaries had to queue, she digested the realisation that she actually couldn’t say if Petar was the type of guy to shout and yell, or to be totally stoic, to try to cover for her, or blame her. She had no idea at all.
He certainly wouldn’t have expected Ana to be a runaway bride. To be fair, Ana hadn’t expected it either.
But she would have expected the man she was going to marry to notice she’d not been quite herself as the wedding had approached. She hadn’t said anything, but surely Petar should have known. Surely he should have noticed she was saying the right things but deep down inside didn’t really believe any of it. Shouldn’t the person who loved you notice when things weren’t right, even if you hadn’t entirely realised it yourself?
Well, Ana had no actual personal experience to base that on, but she had a pretty good idea that was what love was about. She’d seen proper love before: in her grandparents, her friends. In the movies, even. And she and Petar did not have it. She’d been an idiot to tell herself otherwise.
So here she was.
She hadn’t really travelled much since Prince Goran had died. She’d initially felt rather fraudulent travelling as an international dignitary. She had, after all, spent twenty-nine years as a commoner, and certainly not a wealthy one. She was normal, and more used to budget airlines and cheap rentals than private jets, a security detail and VIP treatment.
But she was grateful for it now. Thanks to hastily managed diplomatic discussions, no one knew she was even in Italy, beyond trusted palace staff and select members of the Italian government. No one would be able to find her here. Not Petar. Not the media.
She was in a car now, white and nondescript. A member of her palace security detail was driving; another sat in the passenger seat. That was it—just the two.
She’d never had a full entourage of security personnel, unlike King Lukas and Queen Petra, or Lukas’s brother, Prince Marko, and Marko’s new wife, Jasmine. Not that Ana minded. She was absolutely comfortable with her status as a second-tier royal—the status she would’ve held even if Prince Goran had acknowledged her at birth. Partly because she was only the child of the late King Josip’s brother, but also because Prince Goran had never really had a high profile in Vela Ada.
Was it because after his brother, King Josip, had his two children—Lukas and Marko—he’d felt the sting of being devalued to a very unlikely heir to the throne, after being the ‘spare’ for much of his life? Or maybe he’d been grateful not to be in the public eye? Ana had no idea. Her mother had never spoken about the type of man Goran had been—Ana suspected because her mother believed if you had nothing nice to say, you said nothing at all.
‘You feeling okay, Your Highness?’
Ana met her driver’s gaze in the rear-vision mirror and nodded. When his gaze swung back to the road, Ana’s lingered on the mirror, and she realised the wedding make-up she still wore was smudged. She rubbed under her eyes in a half-hearted attempt to fix her appearance. But really it was a wasted effort. She was out of her wedding dress, at least, but she still wore her fancy bridal underwear beneath her jumper, coat and jeans. Her hair was still in an elaborate low bun too, although she’d tugged out the diamond-encrusted combs, causing loose strands of hair to hang haphazardly.
Anyway, did it really matter if she looked terrible? She’d just jilted her fiancé—she probably deserved to.
For the first time since she’d dropped her bouquet, she felt tears prickle. Annoyed, Ana moved her attention to the view outside the car.
All she could see was darkness. It was late November, and the sun had long set. Wherever they were, there were minimal street lights, and the sliver of a moon gave little away.
‘Your Highness?’
This time it was the guard in the passenger seat. He was looking at her left hand, which she realised she was tapping loudly against the door handle. Did he think she was going to throw herself out of the moving car or something?
The idea made her grin, but her guard’s hand moved to his seat belt, as if he was planning to throw himself across the luxury sedan to save her. She stilled her hand.
‘Oprosti.
