“Do you think they were aligned with Estes? With the Resistance?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter.” The king’s quiet voice raises the hairs on my forearms. “They’ll all die, along with every single person they have ever loved.”
The King is slipping into violence.
Whether it’s the personal cost this war is finally having on him, or that he just can’t bear to lose what he worked so ruthlessly hard for, he’s falling deeper into that abyss.
“Leave the innocents out of this, Montes.”
He turns his head to me slowly. “You are my equal in many ways,” he says quietly, “but I am the man who conquered the world, and you will not tell me how to carry out my will.”
What he is proposing is abominable. I know he’s done this before, leveraged loved ones to force a person’s cooperation—hell, he’s done it to me—but even bad men have a code, and targeting innocents goes against that code.
I push up from my chair. “Yeah? Well you better make damn sure you kill those innocents. Because the survivors, they’ll turn out just like me.”
I walk away from him, my boots clicking against the floor. As far as I’m concerned, this meeting is over.
“In that case,” he calls out to my back, “I have no need to worry at all.”
His meaning is clear: I, and anyone like me, are fickle with our vendettas.
He is so wrong.
Swiveling back to him, I pull out my gun, cock it, and fire. The bullet buries itself into his right shoulder. It all happens so fast he doesn’t have time to react until blood is blooming onto his expensive suit.
Shock and pain mingle in his eyes as he clutches the wound. Blood drips over and in between his fingers. “You shot me,” he gasps out.
Normally I’m not this stupid. To draw blood from the king but refuse to kill him—that sort of thing doesn’t go unpunished. With all that I’ve endured, I’ve just guaranteed myself more pain. But these days, pain is the only thing I really feel. Without it, I might as well not exist.
I holster my weapon. “Look into my eyes, Montes.”
He’s clenching his teeth, his breath coming in quick pants, but he makes eye contact.
“This monster, the one you created, the one you love so much, this is what I can do.”
I can hurt those I love.
Montes doesn’t need to know that my windpipes are tightening up at the sight of his agony. That even now I have to steel myself from running to his side and soothing the very hurt I caused.
But I don’t do that. I need him to know the extent of my depravity.
Soldiers burst into the room right before I say my final piece.
“You don’t want more of me around,” I say, “and you should never, ever forget exactly what I am.”
Chapter 31
Serenity
I’m on house arrest until the king’s released from the Sleeper. That pretty much means I just have a shit ton of soldiers guarding me at all hours. And my gun’s been confiscated. Again.
Because there are no more advisors to help govern the world, I find myself running the globe by myself.
I want to laugh that I did what so few could: I shot the king and received a promotion for it.
That all ends the day Montes is removed from the Sleeper. It’s my turn to sit at the king’s side and wait for him to wake. Of course, guards flank me. They no longer trust me alone with the king, but since he’s given no orders to punish me for my crimes, they can’t stand against the queen until the king wakes.
They won’t let me touch him, but my fingers twitch with the need. I try to tell myself it’s just curiosity, that I want to feel the smooth expanse of skin where his bullet wound was. But if I’m being honest with myself, what I really want is to stroke his dark hair back from his face. I want to run my fingers over the stubble that’s grown on his cheeks and chin.
His eyelids twitch, then one of his fingers moves the barest bit. It takes another several minutes before his eyes flutter open. They immediately lock on mine.
Before he can help it, he smiles, and it’s free of any duplicity. He’s just happy to see me. His attention shifts from my face to the soldiers that flank me.
His eyebrows draw together.
I help him out. “I shot you. You’ve been recovering in the Sleeper.”
His expression grows distant as he searches for the memories.
Montes sits up. “Wife doesn’t bluff,” he mutters. He looks to me again, and I can see him trying to make sense of me. His gaze flicks to the guards. “Leave us.”
They hesitate.
“I gave you a direct order. Leave.”
Reluctantly, the guards do so.
“Am I no longer on house arrest?” I ask.
Montes’s eyes burn. “Oh, your punishment is far from over.”
The King
I stare into my wife’s mesmerizing blue eyes. I’m still wrapping my mind around the fact that she looked me square in the eye and shot me. But I always knew what I was marrying. I’d seen the bodies in my palace back when she was just the daughter of an emissary.
I will admit that I had underestimated her. I didn’t believe she would hurt someone she loved.
“I know what you were trying to prove back in the map room,” I say. “I could’ve passed on the demonstration, but I understand.”
She leans back a little in her seat and I think I actually managed to make her uneasy. I doubt she expected her tyrannical husband to see her side.
“Have you been in the Sleeper?” I ask.
“Montes,” she warns, “I’m never going in there again.”
Her tumors are growing, the cancer has spread to her brain, and while I’ve been recovering, she grows closer and closer to the grave.
“You are,” I insist.
“I will shoot you again before that happens.”
She doesn’t realize it, but she just sealed her own fate.
I reach out and cup her face. For a girl who has lost much, she seems awfully entitled. Queenship suits her all too well. “You won’t shoot me again,” I say, my thumb rubbing the corner of her mouth.
She glares at me, her lower jaw working. She might as well have just agreed. Whatever proclamations she’s made about her lack of a conscience, hurting me cost her.
I frown to keep from smiling. I’m pleased beyond measure. I never meant to tame this creature, and to some extent she’ll always be a wild thing, but she’s given in to me—to us—far more deeply than I initially imagined she would.
A knocking on the door interrupts us.
“Come in,” I say, not bothering to look away from my wife.
“Your Majesties,” the soldier bows low to us, “I have word on your former advisors.”
My mind is still a bit foggy from the effects of the Sleeper, but it sharpens at that statement.
“What about them?” I say.
“We think they’re attempting to take over South America.”
Serenity and I storm towards my conference room. It doesn’t slip my notice that she’s having trouble keeping up. She may be in denial, but I’m not. Her body is shutting down; her muscles and organs aren’t working as they should.
Her illness has robbed me of the last of my fury. I cannot find it in myself to be angry with her when I fear for her life. I have no intention of punishing her, but what I do intend—she’ll think it punishment.
I’ve been in denial, thinking that because Serenity acted strong she physically was. But no longer. As soon as I deal with this freshest calamity, I’ll deal with her.
When we arrive at my conference room, several of my aids have already pulled down a large screen from the ceiling. A slideshow of photos and grainy video clips stream across the screen, many of them cap
turing my advisors in the middle of treasonable tasks.
Some of these men had been on my council for decades. We shared more than power and ambition.
Over the next twelve hours we hear from the band of traitors. The message is written in red. South America’s militia and the Resistance turned on my soldiers. My government officials have almost all been summarily executed.
Serenity stumbles back when she hears the news that the Resistance has sided with my councilors. She should know by now that the Resistance holds no allegiance to her, that they crave power just as much as I do. Just as much as my former advisors do.
I rub my mouth with one hand and cradle my elbow with the other. I’ve nearly worn a hole in the rug where I’ve been stalking up and down. It’s taken me most of the day to grow detached. Strategy doesn’t come to those blinded by emotion. My young queen knows that on the battlefield, but she still struggles with it inside these walls.
I stop and stare up at the footage still being projected on repeat.
“Ready as many troops as you can—I want them coming from the air, the water, and the land,” I say. “We’ll need to disable their lines of communication first—satellites, radio towers, and whatever electronics we can. And then we’ll descend on them.”
This needs to be stopped immediately.
Serenity
It’s nearly four in the morning by the time we finally make it back to our bedroom. I roll my shoulders. My muscles are tight from holding them rigid for so long.
Just when the king thought his pretty war was over, it reared its ugly head again. And for once, the king didn’t orchestrate the bloodshed. In fact, most of the violence that occurred since the war ended has been reactionary, and all these events have been set off by a single catalyst—me. The moment the king found something other than his power to care about, the world began to plot.
One of the king’s hands touches the back of my neck and he rubs the base of it. I lean into his touch.
My eyes fall to the bed. I’ve been running on nothing but caffeine and adrenaline for the better part of the day. My body still buzzes with the need to do something. It doesn’t understand that in this situation, I can’t fight or flee. Instead I have to watch from afar as more men fight and die senselessly.
The last thing I want to do right now is sleep.
Montes’s hands slide down my back. He kisses the juncture where my neck meets my shoulders as he squeezes my waist.
My mind still remembers all the black deeds he’s done, but my body is pliant beneath his hands, and my heart forgives, even though it shouldn’t. Even though it knows a man like Montes never changes, not really.
I’m someone who will never really change, either. And what we have, it works. This twisted love that’s endured so much more than it ever should’ve.
“Are you tired?” he asks.
It’s a loaded question. I already know where his mind is.
“No,” I say.
Montes’s fingers grip the edge of my shirt and, pulling it over my head, he trails kisses along my now bare shoulders, and then my arms. He removes my bra and his hands smooth over my skin.
“Neither am I.”
He releases me to remove his own shirt and toss it aside. The look he flashes me is all predatory. He makes quick work removing the rest of his clothes, and then he saunters towards me.
I back up until my skin brushes the ivory and gold wall trimmings. Montes follows, pressing his sculpted torso against mine. Already the sensation of skin meeting skin has me turned on.
His dark eyes are trained on mine, and as that alluring stare of his bores into me, he reaches a hand between us and flicks open the top button of my pants. The zipper goes next. His hand delves into them and—
“Montes.”
“Are you going to take your boots off, or am I?” That silken smooth voice of his is now coarse, husky with the first stirrings of passion. I like him the most when he’s like this—untamed.
When I don’t answer him, he crouches at my feet and begins unfastening my boots. He slides one off, then the other. My socks go next. Lastly, with one quick pull, he draws down the last of my garments.
Montes rises to his feet slowly, drinking in my nudity. My own eyes appraise the tight, flowing muscles that wrap themselves lovingly around his frame.
We’re both naked from head to toe. My heart gallops as he grabs my hand and draws me to the bed.
Sometimes, when we’re together, we’re feverish. I don’t have time to reflect on what exactly my heart’s caught itself up in. But now, every move of ours is deliberate, and it gives me far too much time to savor each drawn out second.
With those depthless eyes trained on me, he drapes his body over mine.
“My vicious, hardened queen,” he murmurs, cupping my cheeks, his thumbs stroking the skin beneath my eyes. “You are not so terrifying in my arms.”
I know I’m not.
Devoid of my gun, my clothes, and my anger, I’m nothing more than a troubled, broken girl. And here in the king’s arms, when all his intensity bears down on me, it’s easy to pretend that nothing else besides his skin and mine matter. He’s my Romeo, and I’m his Juliet, and even though we’re star-crossed and our time’s running out, we might fall into each other’s eyes and live forever in this moment.
He enters me, and where there was two, now there’s only one. Montes rocks his hips against my pelvis, moving languidly in and out.
The whole thing’s gentle and slow, and he watches me the entire time.
The king has a growing habit of making love to me. It’s more than a little disquieting, and it makes me feel like what he sees when he looks at me and what I see in the mirror are two very different people.
His chest slides along mine as I pull him closer.
His Serenity seems like a better person than the horrifying one I’ve known since war changed me.
Montes picks up the pace, and I begin to lose the last of my composure.
A wicked grin spreads across his face. “Say it.”
I already know what he wants. “No.”
He squeezes one of my hips. “Say it.”
When I don’t respond, he leans his forehead against mine. “Do I have to do it first?”
My eyes widen. I’ve never considered that the king could fall in love with me. Caring for me? Yes. Obsessing over me? Yes. Loving me? Not in the truest sense. Love takes too much selflessness for that.
But now he’s essentially admitting as much.
He likes that he’s shocked me.
He rubs one of his thumbs over my lips. His eyes move to mine.
“I love you,” he says.
Instinctually, I cover his mouth with my hand, like I can push the words back inside him.
My eyes prick with moisture.
I don’t want to know this. I don’t want to feel hope like this. Happiness like this. He’s going to ruin it, or I’m going to.
He moves against me, just enough to remind me of how intimately connected we already are at the moment.
His ruffled hair hangs down around his face. He removes my hand from his mouth and presses a soft kiss to my lips.
“I never meant to,” he whispers against me, “but I do.”
A tear drips down my cheek, and he kisses that away too.
“Tell me you love me,” he breathes against my cheek.
I shake my head.
“Stubborn woman,” he says, thrusting into me harder, “I will get you to say it.”
He forces my orgasm out of me with several long strokes, perhaps just to prove how easily manipulated I can be. I don’t care. I hold him close as my climax works its way through my body.
He comes on the heels of my orgasm, his body slick with sweat as he moves a
gainst me.
Once we break apart, Montes gathers me to his chest and holds me there. “Stay with me, just like this,” he says, kissing my shoulder.
I press my hand to his heart as I lay against him and savor the thump of it beneath my palm. This is where happiness sneaks up on you, and you forgive evil people for unforgivable things because they give you a taste of a future you always thought was beyond your reach.
I wait for the king’s breath to even before I whisper my secret in the dark. “I love you too.”
Chapter 32
The King
Serenity and I have maybe been asleep for an hour when I’m awoken by one of her rattling coughs. The thing has got ahold of her body. Her entire frame shakes as she desperately tries to clear her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she says in between the hacking coughs.
It’s only after she says that, that I realize my hold on her tightened the moment I woke. She’s clearly too sleepy to realize she’s apologized to me—something she’s made a point of avoiding at all costs—and my constricting grip is only making it harder for her to catch her breath.
I relax my hold and begin rubbing her back soothingly. I’m still not used to the tight ball of fear that’s made a home for itself in my stomach, or the slow release of its poison.
I’m also not used to being caring, affectionate. The previous women I have been with can attest to that. But with Serenity, it comes naturally, perhaps because I know just how unused to it she is as well. It’s easier to give another something that’s never been demanded of you.
She’s still coughing, and at some point several droplets of her sickness hit my chest. Concern trumps any disgust I might have. She hasn’t stopped coughing; if anything, it sounds like it’s getting worse. She rolls away from me.
I pull her back against my chest and press my lips to the back of her slender neck. “Nire bihotza, I’m not letting you go.” I’m not sure whether I’m referring to this moment, or the larger trajectory of her life. She’s mine. Her life is mine, her heart and her soul are mine.
The Queen of Traitors (The Fallen World Book 2) Page 23
