“Alright,” he says carefully. “I’ll be in my office.” Giving me a final, poignant glance, we part ways.
I turn around and stride back towards the medical facilities.
Being sneaky is not a forte of mine. I tend to storm into situations guns a-blazing. Unfortunately for me, the king knows this. I just have to hope that other tasks keep him busy enough to ignore my inconsistent behavior.
When I run into the royal physician, she glances up from the paperwork she holds.
“Did you forget something?” she asks.
“My jacket,” I say.
“Let’s go get it for you,” she says, dropping the file on the desk near her. I head back to the room with her.
Something has niggled at my mind for some time, something that I might be able to make use of.
“How many Sleepers does the king have?” I ask as we walk.
“Here?” she says, tucking a wispy strand of white hair behind her ear. “Seven I believe—of course, that’s not including the one you were in. Globally, there are twenty-four, again, not including yours.”
“And how many of them are occupied?” I ask.
The doctor glances over at me sharply. She doesn’t appear all that enthusiastic to answer it.
“Three here, not including yours, and eight others worldwide. Many of the remaining Sleepers are periodically in use depending on the needs of the people.”
“How many of those contain long-term occupants? Like me.” I began the conversation casually enough, but now there’s no masking the fact that I’m probing with a purpose.
She licks her lips. “Two.”
“I want to see who’s in them.”
“Your Majesty, I don’t see how this is—”
“You don’t need to understand my motives,” I interrupt her to say. “All you need to do is follow through with my request.”
“You didn’t come back for your jacket, did you?” she asks.
“I didn’t,” I confirm.
The doctor doesn’t slow when we pass the room I had my checkup in.
“I’m only authorized to show you one,” she cautions.
That makes me all the more eager to find out who’s in the remaining Sleeper.
“Fine,” I say. “Show me the one.”
I stare down at the occupant of the king’s Sleeper.
I was right.
“How long has he been here?” I ask, glancing up at the physician. I’m sure she has a busy schedule, and this is the last place she wants to be, but she is patient, acting as though she has all the time in the world to spend answering my questions.
Then again, if I served the queen, I might make time for her as well.
“For as long as I can remember. And for as long as the doctor before me can remember.”
I have no doubt this man has been resting here for just as long as I had. Over a century.
The room he’s housed in is not nearly as grand as the temple made for me, but time and lots of money have clearly gone into the richly painted frescos that adorn the walls around us. This is as beautiful a crypt as I’ve ever seen.
I frown as I return my attention to the man, visible through the Sleeper’s porthole.
I’m not the only beloved person Montes kept alive. Marco rests inside the machine—the original one—his face expressionless.
I’d wondered for a while now how the king managed to clone Marco. Where he got the DNA. Now I know.
It just goes to show you how twisted my life has become that I pity the man trapped in this box, I pity him and his fate. Doomed to remain alive even though there is nothing sentient left in his body, not after the bullet he took to the brain all those years ago.
Death must come to all men. It is our due.
Marco hasn’t been able to claim it, though his soul has long since left this place.
I still hate the man with a vengeance, and I haven’t been kind to his doppelganger, but there are some dignities even my enemies deserve.
When the time is right, I will give this man the death he deserves.
Chapter 47
Serenity
The next day, when I walk into my office, an unassuming envelop sits on my keyboard along with a small packet of matches.
I pick up the envelope. Serenity is scrawled along the front of it.
I open it and pull out a sheaf of paper made from thick cardstock.
Rendezvous in your office at 02:00. Burn this message after reading.
Lowering the note, I look around. Someone slipped into my office to drop this off. My hackles rise at the violation of space.
My attention returns to the note.
The first communication from the representatives.
Grabbing one of the matches, I strike it against the desk and bring the flame to the note, watching it burn.
How absurd to think that we could meet in my office. There are cameras in here. I stare up at one of them pensively.
Unless …
It takes me fifteen minutes to find the head of security, who’s outside with some type of technician, discussing models and makes of camera equipment.
“Your Majesty,” he and the technician bow when they see me, “it’s an honor to finally meet you.”
“Likewise,” I say, trying not to sound too impatient.
“What can I do for you?”
“I would like to go over the last several hours’ worth of footage taken from my office.”
He appears baffled by the request. “Of course. Right this way.”
He leads me to a small auxillary building a short distance away. Inside is a bank of monitors, all showing different images of the palace and the surrounding grounds. He pats the shoulders of the two men manning the desk. “Would you two mind handling Steve? He’s on the northwest end of the palace.”
They get up, startling when they see me behind their boss. Placing a fist to their chests, they bow and murmur, “Your Majesty.” Quickly, they exit the room.
Once they leave, the head of security pulls one of the vacated chairs up and taps on a screen. “This is one of them, and—” he taps on several others, “these are the other three.”
Pulling out a keyboard, he begins typing. “You said you wanted to see footage from the last hour?”
“The last several hours would be even better.”
He pats the chair next to him. “Take a seat. We’ll be here awhile.”
It’s dummy footage. All three hours of it.
I never see who placed the envelope and matches on my desk, and I never see myself enter and retrieve the letter. Someone went in and tampered with the video feeds.
Even after all this time there are holes in the king’s security.
Someone’s betraying the king.
We come to the end of the footage.
“That’s it,” the man says, rubbing the gray scruff of his beard.
He gets up, prepared to leave.
I stand with him, my eyes still locked on the bank of screens. “I want to know the weaknesses in the palace’s security, should there ever be an attack.”
“Your Majesty,” he seems startled, “I assure you, no such thing will—”
I cut him off. “I haven’t survived based on luck alone. I want a thorough understanding of this place—how many officers are stationed around the grounds, their hours, tasks, the weaponry they carry, what sorts of emergency exit strategies the king and I have at our disposal. And today, I want to start with the rest of the security footage and audio for the entire palace.”
“But your Majesty, the security footage alone will take hours, possibly even days, to go over.”
“Then we better get started now.”
The King
I rub my lower lip as I watch Serenity through the very cameras she’s inspecting.
My vicious little wife has taken a keen interest in the palace’s inner workings.
She’s a strange creature; this could just be one more way she feels she has some control over her situation. But it could also be something else.
Something that could come back to bite me in the ass if I don’t watch her.
Does she believe an attack is imminent?
Or does she have other reasons?
I already know she visited Marco’s Sleeper yesterday when she’d claimed she needed to retrieve her jacket.
I squint at her image.
I steeple my fingers and press them to my mouth. I have to acknowledge what I’ve always known: I have made Serenity larger than myself. She’s only rising to the role I’ve given her. Not just as queen, but as some sort of savior.
I call in Heinrich.
When he enters my office, I nod to my computer screen, where the footage of Serenity still plays. “Keep an eye on her, and give me updates on everything she does.”
My grand marshal inclines his head.
“Is that all?” he asks.
“Yes.”
I watch his back as he exits.
“Oh, and Heinrich?”
“If she begins to do suspicious things or breaks palace code, let her.”
“Even if it involves your men?”
I nod. “Even if it involves you.”
Serenity might be sneaky, and right now she might be secretive, but I have my men’s loyalty.
I want to see what she’s up to.
Serenity
I rub my eyes then pinch the bridge of my nose.
By the time 2:00 a.m. rolls around, my brain feels like it’s about to explode with all the information I’ve gleaned today.
Blueprints of the palace and the surrounding grounds are spread out in front of me. Already I’ve begun circling areas where I know cameras are installed. Some of them will need to be rigged.
I roll up the blueprint and set it aside.
A few minutes later I hear a gentle knock on the door. My pulse speeds up in anticipation.
Time to meet one of the West’s moles.
Withdrawing my gun from its holster, I approach the door. Whoever has been planted amongst us, I don’t trust them any more than I would an enemy aiming a weapon at my head. Traitors are the worst sort of people.
I would know. I have become one myself.
I open the door. I can’t hide my shock when I see who’s on the other side.
“You?”
Marco.
He brushes past me, and I quickly shut the door behind him.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says.
The king’s wife and his closest friend are conspiring against him. It makes me sad, and it makes me feel sorry for Montes, who is so desperate for companionship.
I force my feelings back so I can say, “The king’s taken everything I’ve ever loved from me.” It’s the truth, and yet it feels like a lie when I say it now.
Marco takes in my office, then rotates to face me.
“What has he done to you?” I ask. The original Marco was many things, but he wasn’t a traitor.
“Trinity,” the man in front of me says, like her name is explanation enough. “He never loved her, not in any sense of the word.”
There hasn’t been enough time for me to understand intricate inner workings of the king’s house. And when it comes to vendettas the devil is always in the details.
“When she died, Montes didn’t mourn her. If anything, he was relieved,” Marco says. “She looked just like you, but it never mattered to him. She was just a copy, a poor man’s Serenity. I loved her, and he let her die. I can’t forgive him for that.”
Love and hate, they are so very interconnected.
“The disappearances,” I say. “You’re the insider that’s been telling the WUN of our plans.”
All those leaders that had disappeared. We couldn’t figure out how the West had known we were going to meet with them.
I swear I see a flash of remorse in Marco’s eyes, and then it’s gone.
“I am,” he admits.
I fight the urge to grab my gun. If it weren’t for this man, countless people would still be alive and several regional leaders wouldn’t be undergoing God knows what at the hands of the West.
This man is worse than the Marco I despised.
It takes me several seconds to get my emotions under control. “So you’re going to help me kill the king?” I finally ask. Saying the words aloud makes it all the more real.
He nods.
I move father into the room. I’m getting that prickly sensation at the back of my neck, telling me that something about this situation isn’t right.
“Why haven’t you done so before now?” I probe.
“I’ve considered it, as have the representatives. But the king has many ways to sidestep death, and I don’t have the clearance or the connections to make sure the king dies and stays dead.”
But I do.
I run my tongue over my teeth.
“How do you intend to kill him?” he asks.
Now for the tricky part, the part I’ve been toying with since I awoke. A plan I’d finalized on the flight back here.
The king is going to die with just as much panache as he lived.
“We’re going to burn the palace to the ground.”
Chapter 48
Serenity
“We need to call Styx,” Marco says as our meeting winds down.
I pull my head back. “Why?”
All I want to do is to crawl into bed.
“He has access to many of the East’s military warehouses.”
Shit, does the king know this?
Of course he doesn’t.
And now I hate deception because it ties my hands.
“We’re going to use the East’s weapons against them?” I ask skeptically.
“Would you rather use the West’s?” Marco challenges.
It’s a loaded question.
“The West has already promised me their firepower,” I say, leaning against my desk.
“They are an ocean away. It will be easy for the king to defend the palace against them.”
I begrudgingly agree with Marco’s assessment.
He gestures to my computer. “May I?”
I work my jaw, then jerk my head yes.
Sitting down at my desk, he sets up the screen for a video call.
Within minutes Styx Garcia’s face fills the screen.
I frown, my nostrils flaring at the sight of him and all his scars. This is the last thing I want to be doing, surrounding myself with these two men.
“My beautiful queen,” Styx says by way of introduction, ignoring Marco altogether, “what an honor to speak with you again.”
I feel my upper lip curl. I’d forgotten just how much I disliked this man.
“You answered quickly.”
Styx’s gaze finally moves to Marco. “I was expecting the call.”
My neck prickles again. This shouldn’t be how it plays out; I should be the one coordinating. Instead I feel like a lamb being led—led to slaughter.
“Did you enjoy your visit out West?” he asks. “The representatives were very eager to see you once I told them that you wanted to arrange a meeting.”
“A videoconference would’ve sufficed,” I say sharply.
“I am just the messenger,” he reminds me.
He does have a point.
“Pretty woman, I hear you’re going to be a widow soon,” Styx says, smiling slyly.
I narrow my eyes at him. That only makes his smile grow.
“Marcus seems to think we need your help,” I say.
“You do need my help. The moment you kill the king, your men are going to turn on you.”
“And you have men willing to defend me?” I ask skeptically.
“Aye, every one of them would die for you,” he says. He hasn’t blinked since he picked up the call, and it’s beginning to unnerve me.
“She also wants to burn the palace down,” Marco adds.
The news brightens Styx’s eyes. “Ah, my queen, I have explosives for days.”
“Explosives that belong to my husband.”
Styx cocks his head at my accusatory tone.
“Yes,” he says carefully. “And my own.” He leans forward. “Speaking of your husband, he’s still trying to kill me.”
“It’s a good thing he doesn’t know the extent of your depravity,” I play with the strap of my holster, “otherwise he might put more effort into it.”
“It’s a good thing he doesn’t know the extent of yours,” Styx replies.
Another good point.
“My queen, I will lend assistance to you. And when that day comes, I’ll be there to congratulate you in person.”
I need to scrub off the evil that shrouds me. I’ve never done something like this before. I wonder what my father would think. I bet he would be proud. I bet, if he were still alive, this would be the moment he’d think, she has finally understood my lessons.
I head back to my room, quietly tiptoeing back in. I shouldn’t have bothered. The lights are on, the bed still made.
The king isn’t here.
I’m alarmed and relieved and disappointed all at once. I want to see him, but I don’t want him to see me. I can’t hide nearly enough of myself from his penetrating eyes.
Rather than get into bed, I head out onto the balcony. It’s become the place I go to when my heart is all twisted up and my mind is addled.
Immediately I hear the sound of the surf.