On the night I secured the votes that made Adrian Vale king, my mentor asked why I had bargained for a crown instead of a country. I told her I loved him. Six years later, Adrian stood beneath the palace chandeliers and called my work "a private contribution," then announced that the queen would have no part in the decisions shaping our future. The insult was public. The marriage behind it was not as simple as the portraits suggested, and neither was the promise I had once made to protect his throne. I could still save the Crown, but doing so would cost me the life I had built beside him. When the last vote was counted, would I choose the man I loved, or the woman I had been before I loved him?