I can’t do this. My hate is all I have left; I don’t want to know that the object of it is no longer worthy of my wrath. And, hypocrite that I am, I’m not ready to hear that leaving me inside the Sleeper was a personal sacrifice he made for the greater good.
The king is the selfish one. Not me.
Dear God, please not me.
“I think I’ll eat alone.” I grab a bread roll from the basket that rests between us and stand. “Enjoy dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Montes catches my wrist as I pass him.
I look down my arm, at those long, tapered fingers that completely engulf my wrist. “Let go.”
The vein in his temple throbs. “Sit. That’s an order.”
The king and his orders. He always did like to lord them over everyone. That hasn’t changed.
I lean in, getting close to his face. “Fuck you and your orders.”
I twist my wrist out of his hold and stride away.
“Serenity!” he calls after me.
But I don’t stop walking, and I never look back.
Chapter 9
Serenity
Self-doubt has never been one of my character traits, but now as I pad through the empty halls of the king’s castle, I can’t help but feel it.
When it comes to the king, I have always assumed the worst. Perhaps my assumptions are no longer correct.
Perhaps he’s no longer the most abominable person on the planet.
Nodding to the guards posted on either side of my door, I slip inside my bedroom. As soon as the door closes behind me, I lean against it, my head tilted towards the ceiling.
I must be the worst sort of person to be angry at this possibility. If my father were here, he would be shamed by my selfishness.
But my anger always did a great job of masking every other emotion I felt, and right now the main emotion that lurks just beneath it is worry.
How long did I hold out against the king when he was wholly wicked? What will I do now when the king’s wicked side is tempered by something just, something good, something I might actually agree with? Believe in?
That is something I fear.
I don’t want to fall asleep.
Despite the guards’ promises, I’m still concerned that the king will change his mind and force me back into that Sleeper. I should be thankful for the leaked footage. Now that the world knows I’m alive, Montes can’t easily hide his little secret once again.
But it’s more than residual concern that keeps me awake. I don’t want to go back to sleep after sleeping for a century.
My wants don’t seem to matter; my eyes still begin to repeatedly drift close. I fight it until I can’t any longer, and then I decide to change for bed. I pad towards the closet, my skirts swishing around my feet.
I stare into the empty closet.
The room I’m staying in still has no clothes.
I mutter an oath beneath my breath and begin unzipping my dress. Just or unjust, the king is still a wily fucker.
The gown slips off of me, sliding to the ground, and I’m left in the lacy lingerie the king provided me with earlier. I step out of the gown pooled at my feet and head for the enormous bed.
Halfway there, I hear a dull thump from the side of the room. I twist around, my body instinctively tensing. My eyes find the source of the noise, my body stiffens.
The surface of the mirror is vibrating once more. As I watch, the vibrations slow, then eventually vanish altogether.
I walk over to the mirror. It’s unusually large, taking up a quarter of the wall. I wait for the noise to repeat itself, my eyes fixed on the smooth surface. When the seconds tick by and nothing happens, my exhaustion creeps back up on me.
Ghosts I’m not afraid of. Far too many already haunt my mind.
I pad over to the bed and slide in. It’s only once I’m amongst all those sheets made of fine fabrics that I notice how empty the bed feels. It’s about to swallow me up it’s so large. I’ve gotten used to the king’s body pressed against mine. I never realized that once something like that is gone, you feel its ache like a phantom limb.
I don’t want to think about him deep in the night, or pine for his presence the way I’m sure many ladies of the court have.
Monsters like the king don’t sleep in beds, they sleep under them. And I don’t yearn; I exact vengeance.
The King
I enter her room late that evening, long after I know she’s fallen asleep.
If I thought it would work, I’d wait for her to invite me herself. But I’m not a complete fool; another hundred years would go by before that would happen. Serenity is vindictive enough to deny both of us this for as long as she seeks to punish me.
I’m not a fool, and I’m not some chivalrous knight here to defend her honor.
I’m her morally depraved husband.
So I’m bending the rules of propriety.
I shrug off my button-down and slacks and round the bed.
Serenity stirs as I slip under the covers. The sheets are warm from her body heat. There were days long gone when I would’ve ruined entire cities for something as simple as this.
I’d gotten so used to her inhuman coldness as she slept in that sarcophagus. I’d nearly forgotten that Serenity has always been fire and heat and blood and ignited passions. My injuries are a testament to that. The excitement that thrums through my veins is a testament to that.
Those grave robbers resurrected more than an ancient queen when they took Serenity. My heart and my spirit slept with my wife, and those two have now woken. Just as I feared they would.
“Montes,” she murmurs in her sleep.
I still at my name.
No time has gone by for her. She hasn’t felt that century like I have. I forced myself to exist without her, the fates’ punishment for all those years I took from everyone else. Maybe I finally paid my penance.
She rolls against me, her body nestling into my side, her arm wrapping around my torso.
I close my eyes and swallow down what feels like a shard of glass in my throat. Her skin is all over me. I rasp out a pained breath. Nothing has ever felt so good.
My arms come around her hesitantly. I’m never this tentative, but tonight my mythic queen is in my arms, and I haven’t been a husband in a very long time.
I move my hand to her hair and stroke those golden locks. I have to breathe through my nose to control my emotions.
I’m not dreaming.
Nothing should feel this good.
I shouldn’t be here. I did this to her, to me, to us. And it’s not over. Even once she forgives me—and she will, that I’ll make sure of—there are my enemies. We’re back to square one, where she was my weakness. Only I, in my infinite stupidity, have made her more than my weakness. I have made her a vital player in this war.
My men have been alerted to look for and eliminate threats, and already they’ve taken care of dozens. But more will come, and I’m no longer smug enough to think I can neutralize all of them.
Even now with her cancer gone, death looms over Serenity. I’ve brought this upon her—just as I have every one of her other misfortunes.
“Nire bihotza, I’m sorry,” I whisper, my lips brushing the crown of her head, my shaky fingers running down her arm. “I know you’ll never believe it, but I’m so, so sorry.”
Serenity
I stir, my body stretching out. The first rays of dawn slide through the windows. It’s almost enough to rouse me.
Almost, but not quite.
Montes’s arm tightens around my waist, and I settle back into him. For once my king isn’t up earlier than me. My lips curl and I drift back asleep against him.
Sometime later, I wake again, my body stretched along Montes’s. I blink, taking in the
room.
The drapes are the wrong color. The room is the wrong shape and size.
I furrow my brows, confused. I begin to sit up, only to have my king groan and pull me back into him.
Right as I feel the firm press of his skin along mine, everything comes roaring back to me.
The king, that slippery bastard, snuck into my bed during the night. He’s been holding me this entire time.
And while I slept, my body has been encouraging him along.
I try to move away, but his embrace only tightens.
I flip over to face him. His eyes open slowly, heavy with sleep, and his hair is ruffled. That ache that’s taken up residence in my chest only increases at the sight.
“You have no right,” I say, my irritation overriding that horrible burn that imperfect love produces.
He stares at me from across the pillow. I can see my bruises on him, and it shames me all over again that I put my mark on his skin. And then I am ashamed to be ashamed, for if anyone deserves to get roughened up, it’s the king.
“You are my wife,” he says. “Spouses share a bed.”
“Get. Out.” I’m beginning to shake as irritation gives way to anger.
Montes’s thumb rubs little circles into my back. The man looks downright content. “My roof, my rules,” he says. “We go to sleep and wake up together.”
“Oh, do we now?” I say. “I wonder what happened to that rule when you put me in a box for a hundred years.”
He searches my face. “I never did it to make you suffer.”
No, he did it to save me from death.
“Is the cancer gone?”
I feel Montes’s hand creep up my back and into my hair. He hesitates briefly, then nods. “Everything is gone. The cancer and all other ailments you might have suffered from.”
The king made good on his word.
“How long did it take?”
“Three quarters of a century.”
Seventy-five years. He waited over seven decades for me to heal.
Seven decades.
Most people I knew never lived to be half that age.
“And was it worth it?” I ask.
His eyes turn heated. Fervent. “Nothing has ever been more worth it.”
“And yet you never woke me.” I slept three extra decades, and I probably would’ve slept more if I’d never been captured.
Montes pulls me up and onto his chest.
“Yesterday I gave you my repentance,” he says, his voice rough. “Today you’ll get everything else.”
“You going to have to do a little more than repent for a single day, considering you took thirty thousand of them away from me.”
An amused smile curls the edges of his lips. I hadn’t meant for that to be amusing.
“I’ll give you thirty thousand more,” he says.
“I don’t want thirty thousand more. I want you to let me go.” I push against him. That only serves to tighten his grip and rub our bodies together.
His jaw clenches, and his eyelids lower just a smidge. “If you keep doing that, you’re going to be coming rather than going.”
“I will hurt you,” I threaten.
“But you won’t kill me, and that really is what’s important.” His thumb skims under a bra strap. “I rather like this on you.”
I grab his hand. We stare each other down.
“Montes, you don’t get to do this with me,” I say. “You gave that up a long time ago.”
He leans in close enough that I can feel his breath tickle my skin. “I gave nothing up. Be upset at me for making you live when you wanted to die, but don’t blame me for this.”
He moves the hand I still hold captive to my face, touching my scar. “You fought for me, killed for me. You wore my crown and carried my child. Don’t distort what you mean to me, what you’ve always meant to me.
“And I’m going to keep you in this bed until you understand something: I won’t let you go. Everything you are is mine, and everything I am is yours.”
“That is something I’ve always known,” I say.
Ever since the day my father died I’ve understood. So long as the king lives, I will never be free of him.
Chapter 10
Serenity
“Do you have anything besides lace that I can wear?” I ask, sitting up and frowning at the empty closet across the room.
Montes gets out of bed. I try and fail to not stare at his backside as he strides away from me.
You know what? Screw it. The man has always taken liberties with me when he shouldn’t. I can look at my husband all I want.
He grabs his button-down he’s thrown over a side chair and tosses it to me.
I finger the material. “This isn’t funny.”
“My men have restocked my closet with clothes for you, but wearing them comes with a condition.”
A century was not long enough to stamp out the conniving side of this man.
I raise an eyebrow.
“You wear the clothes I provide, you sleep in my bed. Willingly.”
My hold tightens on his shirt, wrinkling the material.
Everything with this man comes down to strategy and what he can take. Fortunately for him, I’ve made a habit of sleeping with the king even when I didn’t particularly like him. I have few qualms about repeating the process.
“Fine,” I say. “But when you wake up and your balls are missing, just remember that you asked for this.”
A slow, smoldering smile breaks out across his face. “And when you wake up with me between your thighs, just remember that you agreed to it.”
“You really do have a death wish.” The audacity of this man never fails to astound me.
I slide out of bed. Ignoring the shirt he offered me, I put yesterday’s dress back on. I can feel his eyes on me as I slide it over my hips.
“What?” I say, pulling the straps up.
His eyes pinch at the corners again, like I amuse him.
Rather than answering me, he grabs his shirt from the bed and pulls it on. I bid goodbye to his abs as he buttons it up.
I find myself watching him just as acutely as he watched me.
He doesn’t bother tucking in his shirt or slipping on socks and shoes before coming back to me and taking my hand.
Montes brings it to his lips, kissing the split knuckles that hit his flesh.
I take a deep breath. He’s going to keep doing this, whether or not I fight him. So I bear it and try to ignore the brush of his lips.
When he’s done, he tugs on my hands and leads me out of my room.
“I don’t know anything about you,” I say as we walk. “I don’t know who you are.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says.
“It does,” I counter. “Do you have a wife?”
He’s quiet for a moment, and the only sound is the soft tread of our bare feet and the march of the soldiers that trail us. “She wants to know if I have a wife. I think she’s more interested than she lets on.”
All that time managed to go by, and yet he still remembers how much I hate it when he refers to me in the third person. “Montes.”
“No, my queen,” he says, his voice somewhat offended, “there are no others, save for you. There never have been.”
I am mortified at the relief I feel. Am I so ready to forgive this man who’s betrayed me at every stage of our relationship?
“Kids?” I ask.
He flashes me a skeptical look.
“Oh, don’t act like you’re a saint.”
That vein in his temple begins to pulse. “No wives. No children, Serenity.”
I take that all in stride, perversely enjoying the fact that I have upset my king. He h
as a hard look about him, the expression he wears before he damns someone to death.
My attention diverts from the king when I catch sight of the palace walls. Some of the cloths that covered large frames have now vanished. Now I realize why they were hidden in the first place.
My face stares back at me from half a dozen different places, the grandest of them is the photo from our wedding that once rested in my office. It’s an odd picture to be so grand; it’s not stiff and formal. But the tenderness captured in that moment—albeit, tenderness I distinctly wasn’t feeling at the time—is almost overwhelming on such a grand scale.
The other photos are an odd combination of shots I never saw.
“I couldn’t look at them until now,” the king admits next to me, noticing my interest.
“Why did you put them up in the first place?” I ask, distracted.
“I had hoped they would bring me happiness. But I was wrong.”
My gaze sweeps over the walls again. Not all of the frames have been unveiled. It all seems so very deliberate.
“What about the ones that are still covered?” What else is the king hiding?
Montes peers down at me. “Those are a story for a different day.”
A story I’m bound to not like, I think as I stare into his handsome face. The secrets the king keeps are both huge and terrible. At this point, however, I must be impervious to the king’s terrors. There’s not much more that can frighten me; I’ve already endured all my fears.
We stop outside a set of double doors. Montes opens one of them for me and we head inside.
His room.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’m not sure it’s this. His room looks essentially the same as the one I stayed in last night. Beautiful, but lacking personality.
This man keeps all those fathomless bits of himself locked tightly up. Not even in his room does he set his personality loose.
The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) Page 6
