The hours leading up to my memory loss, the Resistance attacked the king’s coastal palace. We’d been cornered, I’d been close to escape, but I never made it out. Marco, the king’s right-hand man and my nemesis, and I had been left to face the enemies with the last of the king’s soldiers.
With my free hand I rub the skin over my heart. That’s when I lost my memory. The king hadn’t administered the serum, Marco had—right before he blew his brains out.
I suddenly have context to attach to all the memories I acquired from that point on. The Resistance took me to one of their outposts, held me as they would any important prisoner of war, and tried to leverage me to their advantage.
General Kline … he’d been a part of it. Now knowing what I do, I can’t decide how to feel about seeing him. He was my commander, and had my life not unfolded the way it had, he might’ve one day been my father-in-law. I respected him, and I was close to him. That makes the role he played during my capture that much worse. And yet, I’m not without blame either. I did something to his son, and he still managed to be civil with me.
Then there was that final day of my imprisonment. Had the king not firebombed the outpost, I would’ve died.
“How did you find me?” I ask Montes as he walks us down the hall. The guards posted along the corridor eye me warily as we pass. I have a reputation among their ranks. I remember slaughtering them after my father died.
Montes doesn’t turn around when he replies, “The Resistance isn’t the only one with spies.”
“You bombed the place,” I accuse.
All those bodies, all that carnage …
“And?”
“Were you trying to save me or kill me?” It’s real rich of me to be critiquing his efforts right after I admitted I wanted to execute him.
But I never pretended to be a saint.
Montes stops and swivels to face me. “You were five floors belowground, and when my contact came to retrieve you, you put a bullet in his thigh. By the time my back up came to free you, you were gone.
“Death, Serenity, is the last thing I want from you.”
Montes resumes walking, tugging me after him. He leads me to an office much grander than anything I ever saw in the bunker.
I enter the cavernous room. There’s a wall of books to my left and a giant oak desk towards the back of it.
“Why did you take me here?” I ask, stepping away from him.
Now that I’ve got my memories back, the last thing I want to do is continue to tour the king’s palace. Once you’ve seen one palace, you’ve seen them all.
Montes saunters in after me. “You’ll figure it out for yourself soon enough.”
I give him a dark look. The king and his games …
I meander towards the desk. When I reach it, my fingers trail over the wood surface. There are several photographs resting on it. I lift one of them up. It’s a wedding photo of me and Montes. Not one of the official ones. Those I particularly relish—I’m glaring in most of them.
This is one of us outside at the reception. I’m smiling at something outside of the photo and Montes is beaming down at me. You would’ve almost thought we were happy in that moment.
I was terrified.
I set it down only to lift another. As soon as my eyes fall on the image, I drop it like it burns me. The heavy metal frame hits the carpet with a dull thud.
“Where did you get that?” I ask, my eyes locked on the photo. I don’t want to look at it, it hurts to look at it, but for the life of me I can’t tear my gaze away.
“Where do you think?”
Staring back up at me is a younger version of myself. In the picture I’m giving my father a side hug. He used to keep this photo in his office.
I can’t breathe. I’m not sure I can keep that photo here. Seeing his face makes my soul ache in terrible ways.
I miss him, but that’s not nearly a strong enough word to describe life without him. He was the sun; how do you go on living when something that huge gets extinguished?
And now to have him sit there day in and day out and watch this mockery of my life unfold. I don’t know if I can stand that.
Montes picks the frame up from the floor and returns it to my desk. He doesn’t say anything. He lost a father tragically too.
Resting next to the photographs is my mother’s necklace. I pick it up, a slight tremor running through my hands.
The gold pendant catches the light. Montes left me the few items that have any value to me. I don’t have many things to call my own, but what I do, I cherish.
“And my father’s gun?” I ask.
“I’ll give it back to you the moment I trust you not to shoot me with it,” Montes says.
“So you do think I’ll shoot you,” I say, studying the necklace dangling from my hand.
“You’re a woman that loves a good dare. I’m not gambling my life on your ability to prove me wrong.”
He takes the necklace from me and clasps it around my neck. I run my fingers over the delicate chain. My eyes drift around the room.
It dawns on me. “This office is mine.”
“It is—my queen needs a place to carry out world affairs.”
He’s given me an office before, not one that was outfitted with my personal affects. Not like this one. I don’t know what I’m feeling, but it makes me uneasy.
“Why did you do all this for me?” I ask.
“This is such a small thing.” He runs a hand over the veins of wood. His wily, conniving side disappears altogether. “You are my wife. I want to make you … happy.”
The man who always takes is now giving. And he wants me to be happy. Here. With him.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that will never happen.
Chapter 8
Serenity
Montes shrugs off his suit jacket and throws it over my chair back before rolling up his sleeves. My eyes linger far too long on his tan, corded forearms. I’d forgotten that underneath all those layers of fine clothing was a fit man.
He then grabs a cardboard box sitting off to the side and heaves it onto the desk. Tossing aside the lid, he pulls out the first file and drops it in front of the chrome computer situated in the middle of my desk.
“Here are reprints of the files you were working on. Any notes you had with the originals are, unfortunately, lost,” he says, sitting on the edge of the desk.
It’s hard to focus on anything he’s saying. He might be six feet and some change of a man, but his presence fills the entire room.
An unfamiliar part of me wants to step between those powerful legs of his and trail my fingers over the backs of his hands.
I could do it—I know he would welcome it—but I fight the impulse. He still feels alien to me.
I’ll have to lay with him tonight.
An odd combination of anxiety and anticipation flares through me.
The king watches me with those penetrating eyes of his, and I swear they can see into my mind.
I try to stay as far away from him as I can when I open the folder in front of the computer.
“Ah, yes, these reports,” I say, remembering them. I’d been reading through the files when the Resistance laid siege to the king’s palace. The reports had been largely skewed for the king’s purposes. I’m too ruffled to point that out. “Thank you,” I say instead.
“‘Thank you’?” He reaches out and catches my wrist before I can step away, then reels me in.
I end up between his thighs after all.
His other hand steadies my chin. “What’s going on in my vicious little wife’s mind?”
I try to jerk away, but he holds me in place.
“Montes, let me go.”
“Not until you tell me what you were just t
hinking about.”
I’m so close to kneeing him in the crotch.
However, neither of us gets the chance to see our actions through.
Not before another memory hits.
All I saw was crimson blood and all I heard were Will’s screams. The outer walls must’ve been thick to silence such agonized cries. The king’s wrath was just as frightening as I’d always feared.
I squeeze Montes’s thighs as a memory rolls through me. I’m being swept up in its tide.
“I’ll do whatever you want, Montes, just please, stop torturing him.” It was Will, after all. I might hate what he’d become, but torture … I didn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
I was halfway down the hall when I heard a bang. My body jumped at the sound, and a tear leaked out.
Gone. Will was gone.
Back in the present, I choke on a gasp.
“You killed Will.” After torturing him nonetheless. Death, at that point, had been a mercy.
I try to pull away again, and again Montes refuses to release me.
“Let me the fuck go.”
He ignores my command and instead forces me to look at that pleasing face of his. “Yes, I did have my men kill him,” he says, “and I’d make the same decision over and over again. In case you still don’t remember, your friend Will had his men shoot you,” the king says. That vein in his temple pulses. “He threatened you with torture.
“Anyone who thinks to torture you, Serenity, will be made an example of, and I don’t give a damn how well you know them.”
I stop struggling against him, though none of my ire is gone. “Well, I do.”
He sighs. “Out of all the slights against you, that’s the one you punish me with?”
He catches my fist before I can land the blow, and now he holds both my hands prisoner.
I try to knee him, but the angle is all wrong. The last of his mirth leaves his face. Using the grip he has on my hands, he yanks me onto the desk next to him and rolls over me. The file scatters and the computer monitor topples over as he pins my torso down.
That vein of his still throbs, and several loose strands of his dark hair brush my cheeks. He smiles down at me, but it’s not kind. “You try that again,” he breathes, “and you won’t like the results.”
But I have rage to match his. “It’d be worth it,” I say.
“For you, I imagine it might.” Slowly, the anger drains from his face. He doesn’t let me go, however.
Instead, he moves both my hands into one of his, and he uses the other to reaches into his pocket. Pulling out a phone, he types something onto the screen.
A moment later, the guard enters the room. I’m still pinned to the desk, and Montes appears to be five seconds away from having his way with me, yet the guard doesn’t bat an eyelash.
I renew my struggles against the king.
Montes readjusts his hold, his eyes trained on his man. “Please tell the staff to see to the earlier dinner arrangements we discussed.”
The guard inclines his head and bows. As his footsteps retreat from the room, the king returns his attention to me. All at once he releases my hands and straightens.
I work my jaw as I push myself up to my forearms. The urge to hit him is still riding me hard.
“You will dine with me.” You will surrender to me.
His mouth and his eyes say two very different things.
“No.” I’m not interested in either.
I stand and brush myself off. I’m wearing a dress someone else clothed me in. This entire day has been one unpleasant experience after the last.
He steps in close and tips my chin up.
“Yes, you will, even if it means having my guards drag you to dinner. Fight all you want, it won’t change my mind.”
Even if I didn’t already have a vendetta against this man, I would develop one quickly enough.
“I’ll drop you off at our room and give you time to rest and get ready,” he continues.
I step away from him. “Don’t bother. I’ll find it myself.”
I don’t head back to our room because fuck him. Instead I spend the next several hours figuring out the basic layout of the palace. When I was with Montes I didn’t want a tour of the place, and I still don’t, but there is use in knowing how a machine like the palace works.
This one is U-shaped with east and west wings. Montes already showed me most of the central building and the west wing. Those appear largely to serve formal functions.
The east wing, on the other hand, contains the king’s official business. I pass several doors fitted with placards of the king’s highest-ranking advisors. Another conference room, and a room that bears a sickening resemblance to the map rooms of the king’s other palaces. I leave before I can look at any of the crossed out faces too closely. The last thing I want to see is my father’s face among them.
I head back outside. A maze of hedges rise up on either side of a central pathway. Beyond them are a series of structures.
I squint up at the sky. Pinks and golds have replaced the earlier blue. I won’t have time to explore all of this place, not before the king drags me off to dinner. And I’m sure he will indeed drag me to it if I resist. Montes doesn’t make idle threats. Like me, he stands by his words, no matter how perverse they are.
I take in the many buildings that sit off in the distance. Towards the far corner of the palace grounds, I notice a series of long, squat structures. The soldiers’ barracks, if I had to guess. I have enough time to visit them, I think, before the king calls on me. So I head there next, ignoring the two guards that follow several feet behind me.
When I arrive, I can tell I guessed right. Several soldiers loiter between buildings, some laughing with each other. Of course, that all ends when they see me. Quickly, they stand at attention, bowing as I make my way through the barracks. I sense a good dose of that earlier wariness here. It’s just a feeling—perhaps the soldiers’ eyes are a tad too hard, their spines a bit too straight—but I know that I’m not entirely welcome. It doesn’t stop me, however, from moving through the buildings.
Mess hall, sleeping quarters, and to my utter delight, several training rooms. This, I belatedly realize, is what drew me out here. Amongst all the soft, painted faces, I feel hopelessly different. But this place that lacks adornment and smells like sweat, this I understand.
I run my hand over a metal dumbbell stacked against the wall, the grips worn down with use. I decide then and there that I won’t become what I detest. I’ll come here to train, and I’ll earn the guards’ respect or I won’t, but I will not lose the soldier in me.
From behind me, one of the guards now approaches. “Your Majesty, the king’s called for dinner.”
Chapter 9
Serenity
When I meet Montes back inside the palace, he doesn’t lead me to the dining room like I thought he might. Instead we head outside once more and cross the garden. The sun’s already set and the sky is deep blue. I feel summer in the breeze, and it stirs such intense longing in me. The last time I felt like this, I still had my mother.
As we move beyond the hedges, it becomes clear the king is leading me to another one of the buildings sitting at the far end of the grounds. It’s made of copper, marble, and most of all, glass. Hundreds of panes make up the dome alone. I’ve never seen a structure like this.
Montes holds my hand against the crook of his arm. I think he knows that if he lets go, I’ll pull away immediately. But the gesture’s strangely intimate
“Are you still angry?” he asks.
“When it comes to you, I’m always angry.”
“Mmm, you must not have recalled all your memories yet. For instance, the last time I laid between those pretty thighs of yours, you were far from angry.”
A bl
ush spreads up my neck at the memory I do, in fact, recall. “Do you always get enjoyment being lewd?”
“My queen, that is not lewd. Lewd would be telling you how your tight little pu—”
“Montes.” My cheeks are flaming now, and I can’t tell if I’m more embarrassed by his words or the fact that I still react like this. Both he and I are aware it’s a weakness of mine.
He glances down at me, his eyes luminous as they catch the light of a nearby lamp. “That’s not lewd, Serenity. That is just what it means to be your husband. And yes, I get enjoyment from making you blush. It’s so very … unlike you.”
He squeezes my hand. And as I feel his fingers envelop mine, I’m reminded again that with him, intimacy isn’t just a handful of memories. It’s something that’ll happen again, and sooner rather than later, if the intense look in his eyes is any indication.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
He must see all my nerves, all my anxieties, but I won’t hand them to him on a platter by voicing the words.
I don’t tear my eyes from his when I say, “I’m thinking that you’d give the devil a run for his money. In fact, he’s probably worried that you’ll set your sights on his territory next.”
The corner of Monte’s mouth lifts. “A good idea, Serenity. Perhaps I could consult you on hell’s layout? I hear you’re familiar with it.”
God, I hate this man.
I turn my attention away from him, back to the structure he’s leading me towards. We enter the building, and I realize exactly what it is.
A greenhouse.
My lingering irritation evaporates as my eyes sweep across the interior. I’ve never seen so many different plants so close together. Their leaves are waxy and their colors—I didn’t realize so many different shades of green existed. But it’s not just green. Pinks and yellows, reds and oranges, whites and purples and every color in between, each plant stranger and lovelier than the last.