“What did you do to her?” I say.
This psycho.
He grimaces. “I didn’t do anything to her, Serenity. Or can you not tell that from the photos?”
I close my eyes because I can’t bear to gaze into his dark, anguished ones. I don’t want to know if he loved her. Not on top of all the deception and pain he’s given me.
“Why not just wake me up?” I ask. My heart is primed for breaking. I really know nothing but destructive love. So he can tell me whatever pretty words he thinks are going to soothe me, but I doubt there will be any to make this better.
He gives my neck a light squeeze. “Nire bihotza, look at me.”
I open my eyes, not because I’m interested in following his demands, but because I’ve never hid from unpleasant truths, and I don’t plan on starting now.
“Haven’t we already established that I was a fool to not wake you up?”
“We can always establish that more,” I say.
Montes cracks a smile, but it quickly disappears. “There was a while where I felt like I’d gone insane from loneliness. The Sleeper was still repairing your body at the time, though I will admit that by then I was afraid of seeing you again. But I was even more afraid of the possibility that you would never get out of the Sleeper, never be healed. So I cloned the two people I missed most.”
“You depraved son of a bitch.”
Montes played God, deciding who got to live and who didn’t.
He frowns, his features hardening at my words, but he doesn’t try to defend himself further.
“What happened to her?” I ask.
It’s taking a lot not to lash out like a wild animal. My basest nature wants to. But at this point, throwing a fit like a child won’t change the past.
I take a deep breath.
“She was killed,” Montes says releasing me reluctantly.
“How?”
“She was captured much the same way you were. The West was planning on using her as their puppet.
“She was not like you—not at all.” He says this last part quietly.
“We recaptured her.” He looks away and rubs his eyes. “But the plane was shot down.”
There’s real emotion there. Real anguish.
He takes a deep breath. “They thought I’d cloned her to end the war.” Montes shakes his head. “It’s a good theory, but I had the real thing the entire time.”
I search his face. “You cared for her.” Just saying those words is a bullet to the gut.
His expression doesn’t alter, but it does intensify. “I couldn’t stand looking at her.”
He reaches out and tries to touch my cheek. I step away before he can. His fingers curl into a fist.
“There was only ever one of you,” he says. “I didn’t want anything else—not in any sense. Once I realized that, I stayed as far away from her as I could. She suffered because of it. But I tried to care for her.”
Some bitter combo of disgust and relief flow through me. I find I don’t want to be replaceable, and it’s a dagger through the heart to know that he must’ve created her with that in mind. And then there’s the unbidden pain that comes when I think of this woman he created after me, created and then abandoned. All she got for it was death.
He must see me withdrawing because he seems desperate to close the space between us.
I back up, shaking my head. “You ruin everything, Montes. Everything.”
I turn my back to him and walk away.
I can’t be sure, but I swear I hear him whisper, “That’s all I know how to do.”
Chapter 28
Serenity
London’s gone, as is Paris, Cairo, Delhi, Beijing. On and on the list goes.
Today, in the hours before we leave, they show me the footage of it. What little there is left.
I stand in the middle of the Great Room, dozens of men and women as my witness. They didn’t need to be here; it’s all old news to them. But I think they want to remember, or to try to see it all with new eyes.
I watch the bomb that rips apart the Eiffel Tower. The steel beams that had held for over two centuries now buckle and collapse.
The footage cuts away, only to be replaced by the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. Or at least, it was.
I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see man’s greatest achievements blown away in an instant because someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to destroy the world.
I force my feet to stay rooted to the floor. I owe it to both the people of the East and the West to watch.
“Do you see that glint?” One of the officers has a laser pointer that he aims around a section of the frame taken up by sky.
The bright concentrated section of light flashes in the middle of it. The camera catches similar flare-ups of light glimmering along the windows of the Burj Khalifa. But this one … This one has no business being in the middle of open sky.
“This was one of the first instances where the West used retroreflective material to camouflage their weaponry,” the officer says.
I don’t get a chance to ask what retroreflective material is before the side of the skyscraper explodes into flame, rows of windows and debris scattered to the four winds. Plumes of dark smoke bloom almost immediately.
The footage is time lapsed, and the next frame shows the building still smoldering, a dark halo of ash and dust enveloping it. We watch this for about thirty seconds.
And then, somewhere in the middle of it, the building begins to fall.
I don’t breathe as I watch the world’s tallest building collapse onto itself. It happens in a matter of seconds, one story after the next swallowed up by gravity and rubble-filled smoke. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I feel a tear slip out of my eye. It’s the atomic bomb all over again. Destruction so vast and so terrible that my very bones ache for humanity.
And then it’s over, and I know that within those few seconds, thousands upon thousands of people died. I can hear the observers’ screams through the speakers. And though their language is different, and though I’ve never set foot onto their land and never walked the earth during their lifetimes, I ache for them.
At some point, we are all the same.
“That’s enough,” Montes says.
The screen shuts off.
I feel my dark king at my back.
“Are you ready?” he asks me.
I turn and take him in. His eyes aren’t giving away his mood. But he must feel it, this smoldering anger that burns at the sight of so much carnage.
Behind him the officers wear grim expressions.
I nod to all of them. “Let’s end this.”
The plane we board has all the accoutrements I remember. Plush central seating, a bedroom, and a conference table, each sectioned off into separate segments of the cabin.
A dozen men board along with us, one of them Marco. He catches my eye and gives me a tiny, playful wave.
I thin my eyes in response. Divine intervention better strike this plane. That’s the only way Marco will leave it unscathed.
“Play nice,” Montes whispers in my ear.
“I’m not nice, my king,” I say disparagingly.
“Well, you’re going to have to learn how to be. Marco is my right-hand.”
“He can just get used to me.” I am, after all, the queen. The title has got to be good for something.
Montes flashes the man in question a penetrating look. “I think he’s all too ready to do that,” he says, his lips thinning.
Before I’m able to respond, he begins to herd me to the back room. I catch sight of Marco once again, and he watches us, his eyes filled with some emotion I cannot place.
“What are you doing?” I say, rel
uctantly moving towards the small bedroom.
As soon as we both cross the threshold, Montes slams the door shut. “Getting you alone.”
I bump into the bed, and now I think I have an idea of where the king’s mind is at. I can still hear the muffled conversations of Montes’s men as they get settled.
“If you think—”
He cuts me off with a kiss, holding my face hostage as he does so. It’s long and drawn out, and I know he’s making a point, especially when he backs us up until we both collapse onto the mattress, my body pinned beneath his.
Only then does he release my mouth. “That is not why I brought you in here, though I would enjoy fucking you senseless …”
“Montes.” I’m still so pissed off at him after last night. Kissing me only serves to make my anger burn hotter.
“Do you trust me?” he asks. He has me trapped beneath him.
How does he expect me to answer?
“No, not with most things.”
“And should I trust you?” he asks, his face just inches from my own.
“Not with most things,” I repeat softly.
“Can you trust that I want to keep you alive?” he asks.
If there is ever one thing I can be sure of, it’s Montes’s obsession with my life.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he says. “We’re going to dangerous places, and there will be people who want you dead. So you understand my concern.” He doesn’t release me. Instead he threads his fingers through my own. “You are not going in there unarmed.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You’re giving me a gun?”
“Can I trust you not to shoot me with it?”
“No.” I need some target practice anyway.
He sighs, but there’s a twinkle in his eyes. “If you shoot me, there will be very severe repercussions.”
“I’m quaking,” I say, but I’m excited. I feel naked walking around without my weapons. Being raised on violence has taught me to always be prepared.
Montes releases me and pushes off the bed. He heads to an overhead compartment. Opening it, he pulls out a box. I hear something heavy slide inside it.
A gun.
I stand, my hands itching to touch the heavy metal.
He turns, cradling the box. “Don’t make me regret this, Serenity.”
I meet his eyes. “You won’t.” You will.
When he hands me the flimsy packaging, I sit down on the edge of the mattress, opening the lid carefully.
Nestled inside is not one gun, but two, each tucked into a belted holster. I recognize one of them immediately.
“It’s over a hundred years old, Serenity. The thing jams fairly often.”
I run my fingers over my father’s gun. So it’s not reliable. But Montes would only know that if …
When I look up at him questioningly, he watches me, arms folded.
“I fired it on many occasions,” he explains.
When I wanted to be close to you.
The king omits much of what his heart wants to say, but I glean it off of him anyway. And it’s twisted that this weapon, which has ended many lives, is a bridge between the king and me. But everything about our relationship is twisted, so it fits.
“The bullets are also long out of production.”
I unholster the gun and run my hands over it. From the looks of the thing, it’s aged about as well as I have. Which is to say, not at all.
But it’s a relic, nonetheless.
Just like me.
“So you gave me another gun,” I say, re-holstering my beloved weapon and reaching for the other.
“Everything about its design is essentially the same as the guns you’re familiar with,” the king says, crossing his legs at the ankles as he leans back against the wall. “And those bullets are the most common ones on the market.”
So I can get my hands on more if we find ourselves in a tight situation.
I loop the belt and holsters around my pants. Once everything’s secured, I glance up at Montes.
“Thank you,” I say. I mean it, too.
I’m still upset and unnerved about my twin, but for once, I’m going to bury the past. I have bigger worries on the horizon.
The king levels a serious look at me. “Don’t die on me.”
“So many demands,” I murmur. “You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, Montes.”
“I didn’t marry you because you were a pretty thing. I married you because you were a wicked one.”
Was that a compliment?
“You married me because you’re a bastard.”
“Yes,” he grins, though it lacks any mirth, “that too.”
It takes only a couple hours to fly from the king’s seaside palace to Giza. Only a couple of hours’ time, but there appears to be lifetimes of differences between the land we left and the one we arrive in.
Giza is only a handful of miles from Cairo, one of the cities that the West apparently destroyed. But as we descend and the buildings come into view, I realize just how war-torn and desolate Giza itself is. Half the buildings are in various states of disrepair.
When I step out of the plane, hot, dry desert air greets me, and the very feel of it is nothing like what I’m used to. I squint as a hot gust of air blows my hair around.
The king steps up to me and presses a hand to my back. Several men wait to greet us on the ground. From what I’ve picked up, these men are the territory’s dignitaries, and they will be our guides while we’re here.
They take one look at me and begin to bow, their hands clasped together as they do so, like I’m some desperate, answered prayer of theirs.
Montes puts pressure on my lower back, urging me forward. I dig my heels in instead.
“They’re acting like I’m a god,” I say to him. I can’t quite take my eyes off the people in front of us.
“You are a queen and a rebel fighter, and you’ve been dead a hundred years only to turn up alive. To them you might as well be.
“Now,” he continues, putting more pressure on my back, “you need to meet them and act like it.”
When I approach them, one by one they clasp my hands and kiss my knuckles.
“It is an honor to meet you.” The man who speaks has a heavy accent, yet his English is crisp and sharp. The result is a lilting speech.
“I am honored to be here,” I say honestly.
“Where is Akash?” Montes asks, glancing about the group.
From what I read, all of the king’s lands have regional leaders. Giza and its surrounding land is managed by Akash Salem.
“Your Majesties,” the man who first spoke now sobers, his easy smile disappearing. “On our way here, we received worrisome news concerning Akash and his family.”
“What about them?” I ask.
No one seems to want to be the one to break the news. Eventually, however, one does.
He takes a deep breath. “They’re missing.”
Chapter 29
The King
“How could this have happened?” I pace up and down one of the rooms in the royal house we’re staying at. We’ve been here mere hours and already I’m itching to drag my wife back onto our plane and return to my palace.
If my regional leaders can be taken, then so can Serenity.
“Akash’s servants were found slaughtered and there were signs of forced entry,” one of my men says.
My eyes cut to my queen.
She sits in an armchair, her expression stormy. She’s been sitting there brooding since we entered the room.
“Serenity,” I say, my voice softening.
Her gaze flicks to me, returning from wherever she wandered in her mind.
“Are they dead?
” she asks.
One of the men behind me shakes his head. “We don’t know, Your Majesty.”
She looks to me because she knows I won’t euphemize the situation.
“If it’s the West,”—and it surely is—“they’ll be tortured. All of them. Even the kids.”
She flinches at that. Buried beneath all my queen’s violence is something soft and righteous.
“How old?” she asks.
“Eight and five,” one of the dignitaries says.
She gets up from the couch, and everything about her looks heavy. Evil does that; it weighs you down, makes you weary. I know all about it.
Serenity removes her father’s gun from its holster, and everyone tenses just a fraction. She flips it over in her hand.
“How easy we kill,” she murmurs. She sets the gun on the table in the center of the room. “It never solves our problems.”
Something about her words and her voice has my hackles rising. Only recently Serenity discovered the art of scheming. It’s a talent of mine, one I fear she’s taken a liking to as well.
“We will get them back,” she swears to the room.
“Serenity,” I cut in.
There are some promises we cannot make, and that is one of them.
“We will get them back, Montes,” she reiterates, her eyes glinting.
I stare her down. We might get them back, yes. But they might not be alive by then.
“Leave us,” I tell the men.
Once the room clears, I approach her. “You can’t save everyone,” I say.
She leans her knuckles against the tabletop and bows her head. “I know,” she says softly. She lifts her head and I see resolve in her eyes. “But I owe your subjects, our subjects, safety for their allegiance.”
It’s almost too much, seeing her like this. She might be the best decision I’ve ever made.
“How did our plans get leaked?” she asks.
The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) Page 16
