I push him. “You did that on purpose.”
Now he’s not bothering to curb his laughter. “I did.”
“That’s what I get for trusting you.” The usual venom is gone from my words. I find I enjoy Montes’s teasing at the moment.
“C’mon,” he says. “I promise no more nasty surprises.”
He leads me to a hose. Like many things here, this mundane piece of equipment is something of a novelty. I’ve seen and, on a couple occasions, used hoses before, and the WUN still had some running water when I left it, but no one waters their lawns anymore.
Montes turns it on and angles the spray at my toes.
“Lift your foot.” I do so. He grabs my ankle and rinses the dirt off. I have to brace myself against his shoulder to keep my balance. It’s oddly intimate. He lets go of my right foot and beckons for the other.
I study his features as he rinses me off. He’s caring for me, I realize. This is what friends do, what family and lovers do. I must indeed be a strange, strange girl to covet these moments with the king more than the fancy dinners he arranges.
He releases my foot, and then we’re moving again.
The king’s palaces have always looked ominous to me, and tonight’s no different. Beneath the stars, we have no ranking, no responsibilities, no civilization, but inside this building that all changes.
We cross the threshold, and I bid goodbye to the few threads of freedom I found outside. I let myself lose count of all the twists and turns that take us to Montes’s room.
Our room, I correct as we step inside.
I hover near the door. A big four-poster bed looms in front of me. I have to get in it with the king. I sober up instantly.
Most of my memory has returned. I know what we do in beds like this one, but I still feel like a stranger in my own body. And after our dinner in the greenhouse and our walk through the gardens, I’m feeling strangely vulnerable.
The slick sounds of material sliding off jolts me. I glance over at Montes just as he removes his last article of clothing. His deeply tan body is fully on display, and I’m having trouble fighting my own impulses. It takes most of my energy just to pretend he’s not every bit as lovely as he knows he is.
He pads over to me. His hands brush my hair off my shoulders. “Scared?”
How have I ended up here? With no family save for Montes, the very person that took them all away from me.
“Of you? No.”
It’s my conflicted emotions that scare me. They’re sucking me under, and I’m afraid that once they do, I won’t like the woman they fashion me into.
“Then come to bed.”
It’s not a request, it’s a dare, and he punctuates it by pulling loose the tie around my dress. The fabric parts with a little encouragement from the king, and then my outfit slides off.
Montes circles me, his hand trailing across my flesh. With a flick of his wrist he undoes my bra. His fingers move to my panties, and he hooks them around the thin bands of material and yanks them down before returning once more to face me.
I blink, startled, as we stand naked across from one another.
Montes’s eyes dip down and then he’s backing up towards the bed. “Come, Serenity.”
I hesitate, but even this is a lost cause. He’s my husband. This is a part of the package.
Following him to bed, I slip beneath the sheets and keep my back to Montes. My muscles tense. I’m not going to fall asleep anytime soon.
An arm snakes around my waist and Montes pulls me against his chest. I can feel every naked inch of him pressed along my back.
He breathes in my hair, nuzzling the shell of my ear. “I will never let you go, and I will never let you die. You will be mine, always.”
Hands glide over my legs. Am I in a dream or out of one? I can’t tell.
I crack my eyes open. Early morning light filters into the room, and my lips crack into a smile. As long as I live, the sight of it will never grow old.
Montes’s lips brush against mine, stealing my smile. The kiss is quick, gentle, and his mouth’s gone before I can react at all.
He moves down my body, his hair tickling the skin of my chest as he drops lower.
I push myself up onto my elbows. “What are you doing?”
Montes skims a kiss along my ribcage, his rough cheek scraping my flesh. “Waking my wife up.”
This isn’t terribly out of character for him, but I’m still not used to it.
He presses my torso back to the mattress. His hand stays against my sternum until I stop resisting. His other slides lower. And lower.
I catch his wrist.
I’m so, so terribly conflicted, mostly because I enjoy doing this with the king.
“Let go, Serenity,” he says, gazing down at me. His eyes are too dark, his skin too tan, his teeth too white. His features are unnatural, just like the rest of him.
“You first,” I say.
Ever so slowly, he lifts his hand from my skin and holds it up in surrender. I don’t trust him to play by any sort of rules when it comes to being physical.
A knock on the door interrupts us.
He sighs. “Grab a robe.”
“Why?” I ask, but I’m already pushing myself out of bed and heading towards what looks to be a closet. The sheer quantity of clothing inside it has me reeling back. I’m not seeing a robe. This really would be easier if someone thinned out the clothes in here by a factor of ten.
I grab the first item I do see and don it. Too late I realize I’ve slipped on one of Montes’s button-downs, and now the door’s opening.
The king flashes me a heated look at my outfit. I want to knock the expression off his face. For his part, he’s managed to slide on a pair of lounge pants.
A group of women enter the room, and—oh God. No, please, no.
They’re carrying canvas bags in colors ranging from pink to black. I’ve seen those bags before. This doesn’t bode well.
“What’s going on?” I take a step back.
“Press conference in … ” he strides over to a dresser and picks up a watch resting on it, “three hours.”
“You’re telling me this now?”
“Someone has to keep you on your toes.” He flashes me a grin, like this is all good fun.
As soon as I reestablish myself here, I’m getting my own schedule.
The women bustle over to me, and my earlier fears are confirmed. They’re here to primp me up.
“I can do this myself.” I speak to the room in general, but it’s Montes who answers.
“I didn’t ask if you could.”
They usher me over to a chair and get to work, touching my face, running their hands through my hair, brandishing sets of jewelry for me to try on.
The only things I tend to accessorize are my weapons.
Montes pulls up a chair next to me.
“Oh, staying this time are you?” I try to turn my head to him, but that earns me a firm tug on my scalp and a gentle admonishment from the hairstylist hovering over me.
I give myself fifteen minutes before the last of my patience runs out and I turn violent.
“I need to prep you on your speech.” I can hear mirth in his voice. My trigger finger itches.
“What speech? Wait, my speech?” Just when I thought all of the morning’s nasty surprises were over.
“The video of you returning to the WUN has been leaked. The world’s seen the footage of you.” The footage of me drenched with my enemy’s blood.
And my father’s.
“They also know that the Resistance captured you—albeit, briefly. The terrorist organization released video and a statement on the event, and I spoke about it shortly after you were taken.”
For a girl who�
��s lived underground for the last five years, there’s an awful lot of media attention on me—and most of it bad.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask. I’m legitimately curious how the king handles affairs like this.
“What would you say if you were still an emissary for the WUN?”
“I’d tell them that you were the devil.”
Above me I hear at least one woman suck in a breath.
“That’s not what I meant,” the king says.
“I know.” And I do. “You want me to debrief them on my experience?”
“You don’t actually have to worry. We have a speech already written for you. All you’re going to do is read from the teleprompter.”
“You’re seriously trusting me with a microphone and your subjects?” I badly want to look over at Montes just to read his face.
“Our subjects. You’ve been practicing for this for the better part of your life, Serenity. This isn’t just my world; it’s your world and it’s their world. Do right by it.”
Do right.
Montes’s words linger with me even as we slide into the car that will take us to the press conference.
What is right?
I don’t know anymore.
I glance over at the king, who’s flipping through a stack of papers one of his aides gave him.
He is so sure of everything, and I am sure of nothing. I can’t tell which is the worse fate—to question everything, to be paralyzed by indecision, or to question nothing and move through the world blind to any other way of existing save for your own.
My thoughts are whisked from me as we leave the palace grounds. This is the first time since the king retrieved me that I see the world outside.
I place my hand against the window. Fields of weeds and wild grass float by. Wherever we are, it’s far from any broken city. A morning mist clings to the ground, but with each passing minute it dissipates a little more.
“Where are we?”
I don’t expect Montes to answer. He didn’t last time. So I’m surprised when he does.
“We’re in what used to be known as England.”
I remember England from the history books. It was one of the first countries to fall. By the time my father and I flew to Geneva for the peace talks, the Northern Isles were one of King Montes Lazuli’s most secure regions. The Resistance didn’t have a great foothold there, which might be one of the reasons why the king and I are currently here.
It strikes me all over again how intent Montes is on keeping me safe. It’s been this way since he learned of my cancer. The thought leaves my throat dry.
I grab a water bottle nestled in the center console of the car and take a drink of it before going back to staring out the window.
Nearly an hour goes by in that car. Sometimes we pass through villages that look completely unaffected by the king’s war, and twice we pass through bigger towns that show only the barest hints of repair—scaffolding along the sides of some buildings and a temporary wall erected around a block. This might just be general maintenance. It’s been so long since I’ve seen how normal cities function that I can’t be sure.
When we reach the city, everything gleams. If there was once war here, the evidence has been painted and rebuilt away. People here stand by the side of the road, waving as we go by. They actually appear … excited to see the king’s procession of vehicles.
That’s a first.
The car slows to a stop in front of what appears to be an enormous coliseum. We’re shuffled past the waiting throngs of people, down a series of halls, and out to an outdoor stage.
“This is all you now,” the king says. He peels away from me while the organizers direct me from the wings of the stage towards the podium.
I almost stagger back when I catch a glimpse of the crowd. There are thousands of them. The seats are all full. It’s a far cry from the last speech I gave.
Covered in blood, my body shaking. My father was dead and I had to inform the WUN.
The crowd roars as they catch sight of me.
These aren’t the same people who waited for me to disembark all that time ago. These people are foreigners with entirely separate histories. This new world of mine has been theirs for far longer. What could they possibly want from me? What would I want from me?
A leader. A real one. The world doesn’t trust Montes.
They continue to cheer as I approach the dais. Their applause is a terrible, terrible sound because it’s a lie. I’ve killed their comrades, their sons and daughters, their friends and neighbors.
I draw in a shuddering breath at the podium, and it echoes from the speakers. Montes stands only a handful of feet away, back in the shadows hidden off to the side of the stage, but we might as well be separated by oceans.
My eyes find the teleprompter. Just as quickly, they leave it. If I’m going to give a speech, the words will be my own.
I clear my throat. “I’m honored that you’ve cheered for me, given that most of you have seen the footage of me stepping onto former WUN soil.”
Any remaining noise dies out at that, and I can see PR people gesturing wildly to cut off my mike.
I curl my hands over the edge of the podium and bow my head. The pain is right there. All I have to do is give it a little attention and I’ll fall apart. Luckily for me, I have no interest in indulging it. I’ve spent the better part of a decade too busy surviving to afford the luxury of living inside my sadness. I won’t start today.
“Several months ago, you were my enemy and my husband, the king, was the one man I most wanted to see dead.”
More wild gesturing comes from the wings of the stage, but Montes must be refusing their requests because no one comes to drag me off.
“I was born in Washington D.C., the daughter of an American congressman. When I was ten, I watched my mother die. The aerial attack came from the sky. A few years later, a nuclear blast wiped out my city. Aside from my father, everyone I’d known and loved was gone in an instant.”
My words are met with utter silence.
“I’m telling you this because many of you have similar stories. They might be older, but they’re no less painful.”
The ominous silence turns to murmuring. People are listening, some nodding.
“I may have married the king, but I am not him. I am one of you. I hurt like you, I love like you, and I can die like you.”
The words flow out of me. I don’t know if anything I’m saying finds its mark, but this is the best I have to offer.
“I’ve seen what war does to a place. It brings out the worst in us. But the war is over. It’s time for us to not simply survive, but to thrive …”
The crowd’s talking and shifting. People point to the erected screens and I follow their gazes.
I see myself, my face angled slightly away from the camera. Dripping from my nose is a line of blood. I reach up and touch it, staring at my fingers.
The noise of the crowd rises. People are shouting, and they’re repeating one word over and over—
Plague.
Chapter 11
Serenity
“It’s going to be okay.”
Five words every soldier fears.
You can rephrase them, elaborate on them, parse them down, but the meaning is always the same: you’re fucked.
It doesn’t help that the royal physician—Dr. Goldstein, the man who administered the antidote to my memory loss—says this while wearing a hazmat suit. He’s already swabbed my cheek and taken a sample of my blood for testing, and now he’s cleansing my arm for a shot.
What no one’s mentioning is that the king’s pills should’ve prevented me from catching plague in the first place. Or that the plague has run its course in this region of the world.
“Wh
at are the odds that the shot will work?” Montes asks from where he holds me down alongside his guards. I’ve obviously been a little too transparent with my hate for doctors.
I don’t fight them too hard, however. The king and his men have quarantined themselves with me inside this room in the palace, and judging from the bits and pieces I’ve gathered, they could be at risk.
Even the king.
It’s unlikely, considering that prior exposure to the virus means their bodies should have the immunities needed to fight it, but it’s not impossible.
The doctor’s shaking his head. “Decent, though I’d need to see her bloodwork first.”
He slips the needle under my skin, and now I do jerk my limbs.
“She can take a bullet, but not a shot,” the king murmurs. I think he’s trying to lighten the mood. He shouldn’t bother. I know the odds. Despite what the king said last night, Death and I are old friends, and he’s decided to pay me a visit.
Two hours later it’s clear the shot hasn’t worked. I’m drenched in sweat, yet I have the chills. No wonder this plague killed so many. It has a swift onset and it escalates quickly.
My head pounds, my brain feeling far too swollen for the cavity it rests in. For once, there’s no nausea, just an ache that’s burrowed itself into my bones.
Montes sits at my side. “You’re okay,” he says, taking my hand.
My teeth chatter. “Stop saying that.”
His lips tilt into a smile, and he brushes the hair back from my face. “This wasn’t how I imagined getting you on your back.”
“You’re such an asshole,” I say, but my lips twitch at his words. He understands that I don’t want pity. I’ll drink up his strength.
Unlike the others, he hasn’t bothered donning even a mask. My eyes prick. Illness unwinds the last of my defenses. The immortal king risks his own health to be by my side. I’m too sick to wonder about this, but not too sick to be moved by it.
The Queen of Traitors (The Fallen World Book 2) Page 8
