“We have no relationship,” I whisper back to him. Luckily, there’s too much going on around us for our conversation to gather unwanted attention.
His eyes linger on my face, moving to my scar, then my lips. “You won’t be saying that by the time you leave.”
I hold his gaze and suppress a shiver. As much as I want to fight his words, I fear they’re true.
My father takes a seat across from me. His eyes move between the two of us, but other than that, there’s no indication that the seating arrangement bothers him. I’m not deceived. He hates the king more than even I do.
Someone places a document in front of me. It takes me a minute to realize this is a peace treaty, a tentative contract drawn up listing the conditions that need to be met in order for the war to end.
King Lazuli’s arm brushes mine from where he sits to my right. My eyes flick to him, but he’s not paying attention to me. “Ambassador Freeman, Serenity,” the king says, nodding to each of us, “in front of you is a draft of the terms of your surrender.”
I see flashes of light go off as each media outlet allowed in here captures the beginning of the negotiations. Each one distracts me from the matter at hand.
My father pulls out the document the WUN crafted up that catalogues our terms of surrender. After reading it on the flight over, I can rattle off the essentials: Our people must be provided with medical relief, first and foremost. Then steps must be taken to clean the environment—too much radiation has seeped into the earth and the running water. It’s in our food, and until we can expel it, people are going to keep getting cancer.
Once those two requirements are met, then our secondary measures are to boost the economy and reestablish the social order that existed before the war.
The king takes the document from my father and flips through it. Suddenly he laughs. “You think I’m going to let your country revert back to the materialistic, wasteful state it was in before the war?” he says, his eyes moving over the page before lifting to meet my father’s gaze. The irony of his statement isn’t lost on me, here in this opulent palace of his.
Across the table, my father relaxes into his seat, looking at ease when I’m sure that’s the last thing he feels. “The WUN is not suggesting that. We merely wish to get our economy back on its feet.”
The king’s eyes flash. “Your hemisphere will never be where it once was.”
The negotiations draw on for a long time even after the king makes it known that he wants to cripple our economy. I shiver at the thought. Though pretty much anything would be an improvement from the current state of the western hemisphere, I know from history that there’d be long-term problems if the king decided to purposefully weaken our economy.
I page through the king’s document in front of me. Most passages are long-winded discussions of the terms of the agreement. I keep looking for the medical relief the king would provide for our people, but I can’t find any mention of it.
“Where can I find the terms of medical relief you’ll provide the WUN?” I finally ask, turning to the king.
He swivels his body to face me. “There are none,” he says.
I blink at him a few times. “None?”
“None.”
I stand suddenly. “You’d leave our people to suffer? To die?” I don’t know what I’m doing. It feels as though someone’s squeezing my lungs because I can’t seem to get enough air.
The king leans back in his seat. “Only some of them.” He gives me a challenging look.
My anger obscures my vision. I ball my hands into fists. “This isn’t a game!”
Silence.
No one moves.
And then a whole lot of things happen at once. The king stands, and judging by the vein throbbing at his temple, he’s pissed. Behind me several people push forward, and my guards press in close.
King Lazuli leans in, his eyes flashing dangerously. “Yes, Serenity, this is a game. One you’ve already lost.”
I’m escorted from the negotiations for the rest of the day. The king’s guards take me back to my room. They linger outside it, standing guard in case I try to leave.
Now that the anger has dulled somewhat, embarrassment and guilt quickly follow. I can’t act like that, even if I think I’m defending the WUN. No one’s going to thank me if the negotiations dissolve because of my emotional outbursts.
I hear the door to our suite open and, a few seconds later, a knock on my door. My heart hammers away in my chest. I stand, and my muscles tense. Knowing my father, he’s not going to yell, and his quiet disappointment is so much worse to bear.
The door opens, but instead of my father, King Lazuli stands in the doorway.
My eyes widen. “What are you doing here?” My earlier anger hasn’t simmered back to the surface yet. I’m too surprised.
He closes the door behind him and strolls into my room, taking a look around. “How are you liking the palace so far?” he asks.
I raise my eyebrows. “It’s fine.”
“Fine?” It’s his turn to raise his eyebrows. “Surely it’s more than just fine.”
Now my anger’s returning, like a dear old friend. “Okay, it’s more than fine. It’s absolutely repulsive that you can live around such opulence when the rest of this city is so broken. I’m sickened to hear you deny my people basic medical relief while you host dinner parties inside your palace.”
The king approaches me. “There it is. The truth: you hate everything about me.”
I suck in a sharp breath of air. “Yes,” I breathe.
King Lazuli holds the crook of his arm out. “Walk with me.”
I take a step back, eyeing his arm like it’s poisonous. I just admitted to the king of the eastern hemisphere that I hated him.
When he sees my hesitation, he says, “I don’t bite.”
“No,” I say, “you kill.”
“So do you, soldier.”
We stare at each other a moment. Not one fiber of my being wants to touch him, but I remember General Kline’s words yesterday. I need to play my part.
Reluctantly I slide my fingers through the crook of King Lazuli’s arm, and he leads me out of my room.
“Where’s my father?” I ask as soon as we pass his empty room.
“He’s still in discussions with my aides.”
“And you’re skipping out to what—give me a tour of your mansion?”
The king glances down at me, a small smile playing on his lips. “Something like that.”
I frown at his expression and a sick sensation coils through my stomach. I can practically smell the desire wafting off of him.
The thought makes me want to puke. I’ve been rude to him since we met. I stood up to him; I admitted that I hated him. He must truly be psychotic if that excites rather than angers him.
He leads me outside to the gardens. “How lovely,” I say, “you pay someone to cut your hedges into cute little animals. I’m so impressed.”
His lips twitch. “I’m pleased to hear you like them so much. I’ll have the gardeners shape another just for you. Perhaps a gun? Or are you more of a hand grenade lady?”
“How about you simply uproot the hedge you plan on shaping and watch it slowly die? That would be a more accurate representation of me and my people.”
The king sighs. “You do not know the first thing about power.”
“And you don’t know the first thing about compassion,” I bite out.
To our right, a large alcove has been cut into the hedge that borders the gardens. Inside it sits a marble sculpture. The king pushes me into the alcove.
My back bumps into the nearly solid surface of the hedge as the king presses his body against mine. “You think you know something about compassion? A soldier trained to kill?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Then prove it.”
I raise my eyebrow, still pinned between him and the hedge. Despite his closeness and his heated emotions, I’m not scared. I know how to take him down if I need to, and I trust him more when he’s not so composed.
“How exactly would you suggest I prove it?”
His gaze flicks to my mouth. “Kiss me.”
My breath hitches. “I think you’ve confused passion with compassion.”
“No, I haven’t.” His eyes glitter, and I have to remind myself that he’s a sick human being, because right now all I’m noticing are his expressive eyes and sensual mouth. “Compassion is showing kindness towards the man who killed your mother.”
“You want to see compassion? Fine.” I take the hand pressed against my shoulders and kiss his knuckles. “I’ve now kissed the hand of my mother’s killer.”
Before he has time to react to my chaste kiss, I bring my other hand up and slap him.
His head whips to the side. “I’m also a vindictive bitch,” I say.
Slowly he moves his face back to where it was. There’s a dull pink handprint across his cheek. His eyes flash, and I’m already learning that this is when he’s at his most dangerous. “And I don’t play fair,” he admits.
The words are hardly out of his mouth when he closes the distance between us and his mouth captures mine.
There’s nothing sweet or diplomatic about this kiss. His lips move roughly against my own, and his hand runs down the length of my side, as if even a kiss isn’t enough to satiate him.
I will my mind to go blank before I kiss him back. I press my eyes tightly closed as I force myself to wind my arms around his neck and lean into him.
As soon as he feels me respond, the kiss deepens. His lips part my own and his tongue presses against mine.
Oh God, I don’t think I can do this. It’s too much. I turn my head to the side to break off the kiss.
I swallow down my bile. “Enough,” I say, my voice hoarse.
He steps away from me, and I pull in a deep breath of air. The king’s staring at my lips, as though looking at them long enough might cause them to resume their former activity.
I gaze at him, feeling like a cornered creature. This is when I’m my most dangerous. He must sense it as well because he steps aside. I brush past him, and he catches my wrist. “I want to see you tonight.” His meaning is clear.
“No,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Not until you offer full medical relief to the WUN with no strings attached.” It’s a ballsy move, manipulating him like this. But this is why the WUN sent me.
“I could simply have you killed if you don’t agree.”
“Then kill me,” I say, tugging on my wrist. I am more than ready to leave the king and his empty threats. Chances are, he will eventually kill me, but not like this.
He doesn’t let go of me. “I’ll think about it,” he finally says, and I know he’s referring to the medical relief and not having me killed.
“And all I’ll do is think about visiting you until you make your decision,” I say.
The king tugs my wrist hard enough for me to stumble into him. “Stop toying with me,” he growls against my ear, his voice low and lethal.
I pull away from him. “Unlike you, I don’t play games, Montes.”
His eyes trail down my face to my lips. “And I get what I want. Always.”
I yank my wrist out of his grip and back away from him. I can see the cold calculation in his eyes.
“There’s always time for firsts,” I say, and then I walk away.
“What were you thinking?” Unlike my father, General Kline yells when he’s angry.
Next to me, my father broods. When he returned an hour ago, he looked at me and shook his head. That’s all it took for me to break down and apologize. I wanted him to be proud of me, not disappointed.
General Kline, on the other hand, could kiss my ass.
I flash him a vicious smile and hold up my index finger, signaling him to give me a moment. Seizing a nearby pen and sheet of paper, I scrawl a note on it.
The king came to my room after that incident, we went for a walk, and he kissed me. I’ve promised to do more if he negotiates medical relief into the peace agreement.
My cheeks burn as I hold the paper up to the camera, and my father looks away.
I’ve already told my dad about my little walk in the gardens. I can’t imagine what he’s feeling. Of the two of us, his is the worse task. He has to pretend to negotiate with a dictator while allowing that same man to take advantage of his daughter. At least I have some agency in the matter. He has none.
I pull the sheet away from the screen and hand it to my father, who will have to burn it later. This is the securest way to communicate.
The conference room in the bunker is quiet. I’m sure the situation doesn’t sit well with anyone in there. I feel like a harlot, trading sex for promises.
The general bends over the table and scribbles something onto a sheet of paper before approaching the screen.
Good job, Serenity. Hold him to that and leave the rest to your father for now. If you try to leverage anything else, he’s going to figure out what’s going on.
As if the king hasn’t already. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce what my role here was. I’m just surprised that it’s actually been working so far.
The general removes the note from the screen and returns to his seat a short distance away. “From now on, control yourself during negotiations,” he says gruffly.
I work my jaw, but nod.
Behind me, I hear a distant knock on the door. My dad and I glance at each other.
“I’ll get it,” I say.
I push out of my chair and leave my father’s room, making sure to close the door behind me. I pass through the apartment’s common area and open the front door.
Marco stands on the other side. “The king requests your presence at dinner,” he says, giving me a sullen look. The feeling’s mutual.
“Request denied,” I say, closing the door.
Marco’s foot shoots out and catches the door before it can latch shut. “You can’t deny the king’s request.”
“Well, I am.” I give Marco’s foot a good kick. He yelps and pulls it back, and I slam the door shut.
“What was that about?” my dad asks when I return to the room.
“The king requested my presence at dinner.”
“And?” my father asks.
There’s loud knocking on the other side of the suite door.
“I politely declined.”
My father raises an eyebrow while the representatives watch from the other side of the screen. “Are you going to answer the door?” he asks.
“No.”
My father lets a small smile slip out, just enough to tell me that I’m humoring him.
The general clears his throat. “You should go to dinner with him.”
“Well, I don’t want to.”
“That’s not a good enough reason, Serenity,” the general says.
I lean in close to the screen. “You want me to use my womanly wiles to secure a favorable peace agreement? That’s exactly what I’m doing,” I say. “Let me do my job.” The truth is that I’m not trying to play hard to get—I don’t know the first thing about attraction. I simply can’t stand the thought of being close to the king right now.
The following morning I’m back in the conference room, sitting across from my father while we wait for the king.
The king pushes open the conference room doors. He holds onto two documents; one he drops in front of my father, the other he drops in front of me.
He leans in next to my ear. “I expect to see you in my
room, tonight,” he whispers.
I stiffen, watching him as he takes a seat next to me. His leg brushes against mine, and I flinch from the contact. Across from me my father’s eyes move between the two of us.
“Here is a revised peace treaty that has been adjusted based on yesterday’s discussions,” the king says.
My father and I flip through the document, and I can’t help the way my hands shake, crinkling the paper. I already know what I’m going to find before I read it.
“Medical relief?” My father says, looking up from the document in front of him. His voice carries both confusion and hope.
“Serenity happens to be very persuasive,” the king says, glancing at me. My stomach clenches at his heated look. I try to tell myself that I’m merely nauseous at the thought of what’s coming tonight. But it’s more than just that. It’s that in some dark corner of my mind, the thought of being alone with the king excites me.
I close my eyes and breathe in and out. When I open them, my father’s gaze rests on mine for a moment. Just long enough for me to read the sheer panic in his own.
“You don’t have to do it, Serenity,” my father says. He’s sitting on a side chair in my room, his hands clasped so tightly together that his knuckles are a bluish white color. I’m flipping through the dresses I temporarily own.
“Dad,” I throw him a glance, “you and I both know that’s not an option.” There’s no telling what the king would do if I backed out after he’d held up his end.
My father scrubs his face and pushes himself out of the chair. “Come here,” he says, opening his arms.
I stop rifling through my clothes to look at him. His face is weary—old. And as he stands there with open arms, I realize that he might need my comfort more than I need his.
I walk into his embrace and he envelops me in a hug. He speaks into my hair. “I’m not okay with this.” His hold on me tightens. “I’ve been ordered—” My father’s voice catches. “I’ve been ordered to let this happen.”
The Queen of All that Dies (The Fallen World Book 1) Page 5
