My eyes return to the soldiers. They all wear looks of pity. They can keep their pity; I don’t want it.
I’m no longer skeptical.
“Exactly how long have I been gone I?” I ask Jace.
His eyes are sad when he says, “From our best estimates, one hundred and four years.”
I am 124 years old.
I stare at Jace, my nostrils flaring as I breathe through my nose.
One hundred and twenty-four years old.
My brain won’t process that. It can’t. No one lives that long.
The soldiers are quiet, and I hate that I have an audience. I’m so close to falling apart; I don’t want these strangers to see me when that happens.
I turn my hands over in my lap. My skin has retained the smoothness of youth. I run my fingers over my flesh.
Over a century old. I wonder where the years are hidden. They must’ve left some mark. All things leave marks.
All things, save for the king’s inventions. Those remove things—wounds, memories, … age.
An entire century went by, and I saw none of it. The king had kept me in a coffin, not dead but not alive.
I recognize the moment the truth settles on my shoulders.
Loss so big my body can’t hold it is expanding, expanding. It tries to crawl up my throat.
Had I thought before I was the loneliest girl in the world? If what these men are telling me is true, and I’m beginning to believe it is, I have nothing left.
Nothing.
The world has passed me by, and the people and time I belong to are now long gone. I haven’t seen anything beyond the metal walls of this car, but would I recognize the world outside? The people? A hundred years before I was put in the Sleeper, the world was a far different place from the one I lived in. I have every reason to believe that same logic applies to the future—present.
I rub my forehead agitatedly. Everything and everyone I’ve ever known is gone. Everyone except for the man I love, the man who did this to me.
My surroundings blur as my eyes water. But I will not shed another tear for that abomination. Not now, in front of these men, and not when I’m alone.
He deserves nothing but my wrath.
And what has he been doing this whole time while I rotted away?
I already know the answer.
He’s been killing, screwing, ruling.
Betrayal is giving way to rage. Everything I have ever cherished the king has taken from me, either directly or indirectly. My family, my land, my freedom, my life. And I gave him everything. My body, my heart, my soul.
I’m taking them back. I hope he’s enjoyed my stone cold heart for the century he’s owned it. Next time I see him, I’m going to carve it right out of his chest.
I level my gaze on Jace. “You said you wanted me to end your war?”
He must see the mayhem in my eyes, because he hesitates. Then, slowly, he nods.
There is nowhere Montes can hide where I won’t find him. And when I do find him—
“I’ll end it.”
The King
I sit down heavily on the edge of my bed and loosen my tie. The flight was long, the day even longer, but I can’t go to bed. Not yet.
I shrug off my jacket and roll up my sleeves.
Someone knocks on my door.
“Tomorrow,” I call. The world is going to have just as many problems then as it does now.
When the footsteps retreat, I move to the back of the room, right to the garish painting of Cupid and Psyche. I grab the edge of the frame and pull it away from the wall. It swings back with ease, and behind it is a door, barred to all, save for me.
I press my thumb into the scanner embedded next to it.
The light blinks green, and then the sealed off entrance hisses open.
I step into the narrow hallway sandwiched between the rooms of the palace, the cold air already settling into my bones. Above me the overhead lights flick on.
I used to believe that secret passageways were the things of spy novels, but during the course of my long reign, these hidden features have saved my life and land a time or two.
My shoes click against the stone floor, and I slide my hands into my pockets as I pass room after room on either side of the hall. One-way mirrors expertly camouflaged as decorations allow me to catch glimpses of my guests.
All those years ago, Serenity taught me a valuable lesson: trust will earn you a knife in the back and a shallow grave. This is my insurance policy against that.
Tonight, the rooms are all empty. I’ve been gone for a while.
Too long.
I’m drawn down the passageway like a moth to a flame. Even in sleep, Serenity calls to me.
The lights flicker on, one after another, as I gradually descend into the lowest levels of the palace.
It’s when I get to the entrance of her mausoleum that I feel the first stirrings of unease. One of the doors hangs slightly open.
I stop, my eyes studying the inconsistency.
This has happened before. There have been times in the past when I’ve forgotten to close the door tightly. A bad habit borne from the fact that no one but me accesses this place.
I push it open, all senses on alert.
More than a hundred marble steps lie between me and my wife. I take each one slowly, letting the peace of this place soothe my nerves.
The lights here are already on; they’re always on. I can’t bear the thought of Serenity laying here, alone in the darkness.
As I head down the stairs, the rest of the room unfolds before me. Grotesquely large marble columns hold up the cavernous ceiling, a domed roof at its pinnacle. Gold and indigo tiles are embedded into the walls of this place. And finally, the pool of water, the walkway, and Serenity’s golden—
All my breath slips out of me when I catch sight of her sarcophagus.
The lid sits askew.
I can’t move for a second; all I can do is stare. I’ve come here a thousand times, laid my eyes on that Sleeper a thousand more. Never once has the image changed.
I begin to move again. First I walk, then I run.
I reach her sarcophagus, her empty sarcophagus, and my worst fears are confirmed.
Serenity’s gone.
Chapter 3
Serenity
“So what are you planning to do with me?” I say, assessing the six soldiers from my bed.
As far as I can tell, these men didn’t wake me to let me go. The camera is proof of that, the weapons are proof of that. Hell, the way this situation is unfolding is proof of that. No one’s treating me like I’m a victim. They’re treating me like I’m an acquisition.
I give them hard looks. These men might be my rescuers, but they’re also my captors, no matter how agreeable they’ve been.
Jace leans back against the metal wall of the vehicle. “Right now,” he says, “We’re trying to lose the king.”
I lean back against the partition that separates the back of the vehicle from the front, getting nice and cozy myself. “And once you lose the king?” I ask.
“We’ll take you to our compound.”
Just as the Resistance did when they captured me. Yes. This is all very familiar.
“And then?” I ask.
The car rumbles and shakes in the silence.
“And then, once you’re ready, we’ll hand you over to the West, where you belong.”
“Where I belong,” I muse.
It rubs me raw to hear these men talk like they have my best intentions in mind. They have no idea where I belong. I have no idea where I belong.
The only reason these men are even mentioning the West is because they’ve either been hired by them or they’re going to get money from them when
they hand me over.
I don’t bother asking if I have any say in these plans. I already know I don’t. Of course they didn’t factor in the possibility that their slumbering queen might not agree with their schemes. That I might, in fact, violently oppose them. I’m sure they didn’t consider that I might have an opinion at all.
But I do.
From the moment my father and I arrived in Geneva all that time ago, I’ve been passed around between men. The king, the Resistance, and now these men. How cruel must I become before people will begin to see me as a formidable opponent?
“One problem with your plans,” I say.
Jace and his men wait for me to speak.
“Every time I’ve slipped from the king’s clutches, he’s retrieved me.” I meet each soldier’s eyes. “Every. Time.”
Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I swear the men shift a little uneasily in their seats.
“With all due respect, Serenity,” Jace says, “we are good at what we do.”
“I don’t doubt that.” The fact that they were able to retrieve me from the king’s Sleeper is proof enough. I’m sure Montes hid me somewhere secure. “But the king I knew never did like it when people took away his toys.” And I am his toy. I always have been.
“Maybe King Lazuli is not the same man you knew,” Jace says.
That, I am certain of. A single year can change a person. A hundred is enough to evolve a man into whatever thing he wants to become. I can’t even fathom the weight of all that time.
“Maybe,” I agree.
It doesn’t matter how much the king has changed; if he didn’t care about losing me, these soldiers wouldn’t be fleeing from him. They know that, I know that, and, unfortunately for them, the king knows that as well.
I fold my hands over my stomach and settle in. Hunting season has begun, and the only creatures that are sure to die are the six surrounding me.
The car falls into silence after that. I have plenty of questions, but I want to sort them out before I voice them.
A hundred and four years went by, and during that time the world still warred, the king still ruled, and while I slept, some portion of the people turned me into a mascot, if the crumpled sheet of paper I saw was anything to go by.
Even now, after all these decades—decades I can’t fully wrap my mind around—people know of me, which means the king has likely spoken about me.
No—more than just spoken. He’s commodified me, turned me into someone larger than life. Someone people can rally behind.
This is pure conjecture, but I know enough about politics and the king to assume my theory is true.
God, when I see that man, I’m going to gut him, navel to collarbone.
“So the world’s still at war?” I ask.
“Off and on for the last century,” one of the other men says. “The West and the East make flimsy treaties every once in a while, but they usually disintegrate after several years. A bad bout of plague swept through both hemispheres at the turn-of-the-century—that also led to a temporary cease-fire.”
War, plague, vigilante organizations—these are things I’m familiar with. Perhaps this world isn’t as different as I assumed it would be. I find that possibility unsettling. I don’t want to fit into this world if it means that everyone that lives here is suffering.
I run a hand through my hair. It might be slightly longer than I remembered, but it’s by no means as long as it should be. Nor are my nails, now that I look at them.
I squeeze my hand into a fist. I’ve been groomed, my body meticulously taking care of. And now I have to wonder: is my cancer gone? After all this time, has the king not found a cure? Or has he abandoned the quest altogether? Have my muscles atrophied?
I don’t feel weak; I feel strong and ruthless.
I won’t get the answers, regardless. These men don’t have them, and the man who does … I don’t want words with him.
Just revenge.
I’m getting restless.
Propped up in the hospital bed as I am, these men don’t see me as a threat. Dangerous, yes, but not a threat.
That’s good for me. It means that when I’m ready to act, I’ll have an extra several seconds to catch them off guard.
Now I just have to wait, and I hate laying here like an invalid. My legs are getting jittery. I haven’t walked in a hundred years. I need to feel the ground beneath my feet.
That’s not even my biggest concern, though. My anger has come calling. It causes me to focus on the soldiers’ guns and the knives a couple of them carry. It’ll be easy enough to divest them of their weapons. They haven’t locked me up, which was probably their biggest mistake. Once I make my move, I won’t give them the same concessions they’ve given me.
I squeeze my hands together and rein my rage in. Long ago the king taught me something important about strategy: often not acting when you want to is more effective than the alternative. I’ll wait for my opening, and then I’ll strike.
There are still things I want to know, questions I won’t dare ask these men.
What is the king like?
Does he have a new wife?
Children?
Is he still made of nightmares and lost dreams?
“How, exactly, did you want me to end this war?” I ask.
These men aren’t going to let me go. That much is obvious.
“The people love you. All you have to do is convince them to get behind us.”
These men think they can use me for their own selfish motives. They need me to win over people for them.
My earlier rage simmers.
“And I’m supposed to go along with this,” I say.
They’re not even asking for my permission.
You don’t ask a prisoner for permission.
“It’s what the people want,” Jace says.
Spoken like a true conqueror. People who want power convince themselves of the most implausible things. I don’t doubt the world wants an end to war, but I do doubt they see the First Free Men as the godsend Jace seems to think they are.
“And what happens when you and the West take over the world?” I ask.
“We intend to work together to rebuild it,” Jace answers.
Surprise, surprise, the First Free Men don’t want to abdicate the old rulers nearly so much as they want to become ones.
“And how do you intend to do that?” I ask. I work to control my voice.
“Serenity, I’m a soldier, not a politician,” Jace says.
And therein lies the problem.
“So you want to use me to help the First Free Men and the WUN achieve world domination, even though you and I don’t know what policies either will push once they take over?”
“They won’t abuse it the way—”
“Everyone abuses power,” I say.
I feel it again. That crushing weight on my chest. Greed and power, power and greed—they’re the most constant of companions. Once you get a taste of one, you must have the other.
“I’ll never do it.” I stare him in the eye as I speak. I have been used by everyone—the WUN, the king, the Resistance. And I’m so damn tired of it.
I won’t be anyone else’s puppet.
I’ve been so deeply immersed in the conversation that only now do I notice the muffled sounds of chopper blades and engines.
“Hold on boys, the king’s found us,” the driver shouts from the other side of the partition, the vehicle accelerating even as he speaks.
“You will do it,” Jace says. “Our leaders will make sure of that.”
I smile at him then. People keep making the mistake of thinking that I’m someone they can control.
Before I can respond, a series of bullets spray against the side o
f the car. The vehicle swerves violently, its rear end fishtailing.
I’m thrown from my bed into the lap of several soldiers. All around me I hear grunts and curses from the other men, none so loud as the driver’s. Even though the metal partition muffles his voice, we can still hear his words clearly.
“They’re coming in hot!” he shouts.
As if that’s not obvious.
I use the distraction to steal a gun from the soldier whose lap I’ve fallen into. He doesn’t have time to react as I unholster and aim it. Just as the car corrects itself, I press the barrel into his chest and fire.
The sound of the shot is deafening.
Now the men are scrambling, some trying to stop me, some still confused.
I lift my torso, swivel, and shoot three more men, all while bullets continue to graze the outside of the vehicle.
In seconds the van is filled with blood. Spraying, misting, dripping down limbs, pooling around dying men.
“What the fuck is happening back there!” the driver shouts at the same time Jace bellows, “Serenity!” I can hear the fury in the latter’s voice.
The car lurches again, and I’m thrown off the now wounded soldiers’ laps. My body rolls under the bed.
Two men left, plus the driver.
A moment later, the mobile hospital bed is thrown aside.
I bring my gun up. I don’t bother looking at Jace’s face. I fire off a shot that buries itself in his stomach. He stumbles back, his hand going to his wound.
“By order of the king, stop the car and come out with your hands raised.” The intercommed voice drifts in from somewhere outside.
The king found me, just as I assumed he would. Adrenaline floods my system. I didn’t enjoy killing these men, but I will enjoy killing him.
Rather than slowing, our vehicle accelerates.
The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) Page 2
