At that moment she knew that because Mikloš had kissed her, because she had found the man she had given her heart to, she would never marry anybody else, whether he was the King of Salona or any other Crowned Head.
Until this minute she had never even begun to think about what being in love would mean in the future.
Because she knew that she would not be allowed to marry anybody who was not Royal, it meant that she was doomed to a life of loneliness she could hardly bear to think about.
And yet the only alternative was to marry a man she would hate and who had no real affection for her as a woman.
‘How can I contemplate anything so horrible – so unnatural?’ she asked herself.
She knew that what she had felt when she first heard of the King’s proposal was now, because she was in love,
