“You killed your clone?”
Smoke curls around Montes. He looks for all the world like some terrible deity come to feast on the violence. Only, he’s here to save me, to avenge me.
He gives me an indulgent look. “You’ve killed dozens and dozens of men and you’re worried that I killed my twin? My queen, you are a strange creature. But to answer your question, the body was braindead to begin with. I didn’t want to chance another version of me ever getting loose.”
That was something we could agree upon.
He continues. “I’d planned on faking my death for some time—”
BOOM!
I’m nearly thrown off my feet as the explosion rocks the ground, the sound of it deafening. Montes grabs my arm, bracing me.
The roof above us groans sickeningly, and more glass shards rain down on us.
I glance at the king.
“Is Heinrich still planning on bombing—?”
Montes nods sharply. “We need to go.”
Chapter 57
Serenity
The two of us dash out to the front of the building, the hot breath of air from the blasts whipping my hair about. From here we have a panoramic view of the walled city.
There are fires everywhere, and people are running, panicking.
More bombs go off, one right after another. I see chunks of the seaside buildings blown out from the side of the mountain. A few of them are blasted so far out I see them hit the water.
As I watch, one of the walls circling the city goes down with a thunderous boom. A plume of dirt and debris billow up into the air.
Troy indeed.
I’m breathing heavily, all but ready to cease fighting, when I remember.
The regional leaders and their children. They might be in the dungeons below the building.
My pulse accelerates. Oh God, they’re trapped.
I begin to back up.
Montes looks over at me, a warning in his eyes when he sees what I’m doing. “Serenity—”
“The prisoners—they’re below the building.” I can’t even fathom how close I came to forgetting, swept up in the action as I had been.
“Call Heinrich, tell him to hold fire.”
I don’t wait for Montes to respond. I swivel on my heel, dashing back the way I came, drawn back to the dungeons below the building.
The king curses, and I hear martyr amongst the oaths.
I don’t care what he thinks. There are children down there.
I head back through the main entryway, hopping over dead bodies. The king isn’t at my back, so I take it he’s getting ahold of Heinrich rather than chasing after me.
Ignoring the elevator, which could be out of commission, I storm down the stairs, descending deeper and deeper into the earth.
I ignore the prickly sensation that breaks out along my skin as I feel the walls press in on me. My boots echo as they slap against the ground.
When I see royal detention center stamped over one of the levels I descend to, I exit out the nearest doorway.
The light from the stairwell pours out onto the dungeon’s floor. Beyond it, lightbulbs are spaced thirty feet apart.
I slow, my boots echoing. I try not to shiver as I head farther into the wet, subterranean chamber. This chill never gets any easier to bear.
I move down the first row of cells. There are at least three more rows, and several more floors. I’d better hope the king gets ahold of Heinrich soon, or else I’m a dead woman.
A pebble skitters in the distance.
I readjust my grip on my gun. “Hello?”
My voice echoes. I hear whispers in the distance, then silence.
“My name is Serenity Lazuli. I’m here to help.”
“Serenity?” someone calls out weakly.
I jog towards the voice, with is one row over.
The family is in a cell at the far end of the row, where the shadows seem deepest. A man, a woman, and two children huddle in the corner of it.
The regional leader of Kabul and her family.
“Nadia, Malik?” I ask them.
Nadia nods her head jerkily.
“I’m going to get you all out of here.” My eyes drop to the lock. It and the rest of the cage is made out of iron.
“Back up,” I say, lifting my gun. This is no safe extraction, but I’m out of options.
I fire off two shots before the lock splits open.
For once, this feels like the right thing, saving instead of killing.
I swing open the cell door, and the family files out.
Malik clasps my hand in his. “Thank you, thank you.” His whisper is hoarse. I don’t want to imagine what these four have been through since they got here.
I nod to them. “Go to the end of this hall and up the stairs as quickly as you can. I have to get the rest of the prisoners out.” I pause. “There are other missing regional leaders. Do you know anything about their whereabouts?”
“They’re not on this floor,” Nadia says. “We were it.”
That’s good to know.
We separate at the stairwell, Nadia and her family going up while I continue downwards.
I only just exit the stairwell when I hear sobs, coming from somewhere deep within.
“Hello?” I call out, striding down the first row.
The crying cuts off, but the prisoner doesn’t respond.
I tense when I hear footfalls behind me.
“I knew I would find you here,” a familiar voice says.
I turn.
Styx Garcia stands between me and the only exit out of here. He holds a gun, its barrel trained on my forehead.
I don’t know why the terrible ones always fixate on me. I suppose they think I’m a challenge. But I’m not.
I’m just death.
I adjust the grip on my own weapon. I have no idea how many bullets—if any—I have left.
“You fool,” I say. “You should’ve never come back for me.”
“You know why I like you?” he says, his eyes unnaturally bright in the dim light. “Because even when you’re cornered and held at gunpoint, you still have this confidence. I’m sure if I stripped you, I’d find a pair of brass balls between those pretty little legs.”
I begin to lift my weapon.
“Ah-ah,” he says, cocking his gun. “Lift that thing any higher, and I will blow your face away.”
I don’t believe he’ll shoot me in the head. I’ve seen too much of this man’s fucked-up interest in me to think he’d give me the easy way out. He wants me alive.
At least, for a time.
“… And if you’re dead, then who will free these prisoners?”
I lower my weapon back down.
“Good girl,” he says, and it’s so damn patronizing. “Now drop the weapon.”
My jaw tightens, but I don’t release the gun.
He takes a step forward, and my hand twitches. If he gets much closer, I will risk death to bury a bullet in that scarred flesh of his.
“Drop it,” he repeats.
“You’re a dead man, Styx,” I say. “You’ll never leave this place alive.”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
The gunshot echoes down the cellblock.
I grunt and stagger back as the bullet hits my upper arm. I feel it enter, feel it rip through sinew, then exit out the other side. My gun arm.
My other hand goes to it just as the blood begins to pour out of the wound. I hiss out a breath at the pain.
“You should worry about your own life, my queen.” He says my title like an endearment. Considering he just shot me, he’s doing himself no favors.
Styx heads down the cellblock, toward
s me. “Ever since I was little, I heard about the great Serenity Freeman, a child of the West, sacrificed for the lusts of the East.” His eyes are far too bright as he speaks. There’s more than just a touch of madness in them. “I saw the footage of you bathed in blood. I saw your horror and your violence. I saw your sacrifice. It made me want to be a soldier.
“And that scar.” He lifts his gun and drags the barrel of it down his cheek, tracing the phantom path of my scar as he stares at mine.
I’m beginning to sweat from the pain, and the cold subterranean air is only getting colder with the blood loss. It drips between my fingers and down my wrist onto the dank ground.
“It was inspiring,” he continues. “The strong carry scars.”
I had imagined Garcia dangerous before, when I first saw his mutilated face. But now there’s the extra knowledge that his scars might’ve been inspired by mine.
I begin to lift my injured arm again, the handle of my gun slick with blood.
“You aim that weapon and I will shoot you again.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
He closes the last of the space between us. “I won’t kill you,” he says softly, confirming my earlier thoughts. He studies me for a moment, and then his gaze drops to my injury.
He presses his gun into my wound. “But you might wish I had by the end of it all.”
I stagger back, but now he grabs me with his other hand, keeping me rooted in place.
I try to jerk away from him as the barrel of his gun digs into the ragged flesh. My jaw clenches through the pain, and my nostrils flare.
“The representatives are gone, aren’t they? All but me. That makes me the sole ruler of the West.”
He presses harder, watching me the entire time. He’s so busy keeping eye contact that he doesn’t notice me lifting my gun. This evil, crazed man. He’s so lost in my pain that he’s not paying attention to things he should.
“How would you like to be my queen?”
The edges of my vision darken.
Aiming for his groin, I pull the trigger.
Click.
Fuck. Whatever ammunition I had, it’s now gone.
The sound breaks Styx from his trance. He glances down at my gun, aimed at him. His grip tightens as he realizes I meant to kill him.
I pull my head back, then jerk it forward, head-butting him.
He releases his hold on me and staggers back, placing a hand to his forehead.
I follow him, reaching for my father’s gun. This ends now.
My fingers barely skim the handle when Styx lifts his gun and shoots at my holster.
I jerk back in surprise as the bullet whizzes past my hand, only just missing it.
Styx storms forward, gun now trained on my chest, his expression murderous. “And I thought we were finally coming to an understanding, my queen.”
He yanks my father’s gun from its holster and tosses it aside.
I know he’s about to hit me. I can see how badly he wants to pull his hand back and pistol whip me. My muscles tense.
But he doesn’t hit me, and I get a glimpse of how he’s managed to gain this much power. For a psycho, he has a good measure of control.
Instead, he presses the barrel against my temple. “Where were we?”
I stare unflinchingly back at him. I think he wants me to be scared, but he’s picked the wrong girl to try to frighten. I don’t fear men like him.
I hunt men like him.
“Ah, yes, I remember,” he says. “You could be my queen, but only—if—you—behave.” He punctuates the last words by tapping the barrel his gun against my temple.
I glare at him as the blood that still coats the end of his weapon now smears against my skin.
He drags the barrel down, further smearing my blood across my face. He draws it over my cheekbone and across my mouth.
Then he pauses.
He taps my teeth with his weapon. “Are you going to behave?”
“Fuck. You.”
He smiles. “Dear, sweet Serenity, let me rephrase: you will behave, or I’ll start giving you more scars.” He leans in close. “And I will make them very, very distincti—”
The gunshot takes us both by surprise.
Styx and I stare at each other, and I have no idea how I look, but the thirteenth representative appears shocked. He glances down between the two of us.
There’s nothing. No bullet holes. No blood. No pain.
But then Styx staggers forward, his body slumping against mine. And I realize, there is blood, it’s just not mine.
I disarm Styx easily enough, and then I’m holding both his upper body and his gun with my good arm. Behind him I see a man, who’s nothing more than a shadow against the light spilling down into the prison from the stairwell.
But I know who it is. I would recognize that silhouette anywhere.
Montes prowls forward slowly.
“No one threatens my queen.”
The king’s voice is poison-laced wine. It’s the same voice that asked me to dance in a gilded ballroom over a hundred years ago. It’s the same voice that broke the world.
The voice that shattered my heart before he claimed it.
He shoes click against the cobblestone floor, his gun still smoking as he approaches us.
I release Styx, whose body slides out of my arms. The thirteenth representative groans as he hits the ground.
“For months I had to listen to you disrespect my queen.”
Shit. It had been months.
He stops at Styx’s feet. Using a booted foot, he forces the injured man onto his back. A line of blood trickles out of Styx’s mouth, and his breathing is labored.
Punctured lung. I’ve heard the sound enough times.
“And you thought you could just take her?” Montes continues. “From me?”
This is out of my hands. The king has few demons left, but the ones that survived his transformation—those, he’s about to feed.
Montes steps up to me. His face goes grim when he sees my wound. “Are you okay?”
I run my tongue over my teeth, then nod.
He pulls me to him and kisses my forehead. He doesn’t chastise me for running down here. I think Montes knows exactly how to fan the flames of my love.
When he lets me go, the atmosphere in the dungeon changes to something dark and violent.
The devil has come to feast.
Montes towers over Styx. “I was ready to torture you before, but now …” He crouches down. “I could hurt you, then heal you, then hurt you some more. On and on until I die.” He pauses. “I’ve lived for a century and a half. I could make you immortal, only so that you’d live lifetimes of torture.”
What Montes is suggesting is beyond horrific.
Styx’s gaze moves to me, and for once I actually see fear on his face. He never believed he was going to lose his power. And now he’s facing a man and a fate that might be worse than death.
The king aims his weapon. “We could start now.”
“Please—”
The gunshot cuts Styx’s plea short.
The representative’s body goes still, and I realize that sometimes Montes’s empty threats are not just lobbed at me. The fresh bullet hole carved between the Styx’s eyes is proof of that.
And that’s how the thirteenth and final representative falls.
We free the rest of the prisoners, and then there’s the gruesome task of carting Styx’s body topside, where twelve others are already laid out.
Only then do the West’s soldiers believe leadership has fallen. And only then does the military cease fire.
As soon as Montes and I are well out of range, Heinrich lights up the Iudicium.
Now, an hour lat
er, the building the representatives reigned in is nothing more than a pile of stone and ash.
It probably wasn’t necessary, but I’d insisted on it. I didn’t want that monument, where so many evil men gathered, to remain standing.
I lean against one of the West’s military vehicles that’s long since been abandoned. Montes has fished out a first aid kit from inside it, and now he bends over my upper arm, bracing it with one hand and cleaning my wound with the other.
I keep jerking away from him every time he wipes the antiseptic over it.
“This would all be over with much sooner if you let a proper medic tend to you,” the king says conversationally.
I refused any other type of medical care. The bullet had just skimmed my skin; it was nothing more than a flesh wound.
“I don’t want a proper medic. I want you.” I won’t lie, I’m enjoying my husband taking care of me.
Montes dips his head back towards his work, but not before I catch the edge of a smile. I think he’s enjoying taking care of me too.
“You know,” he says, grabbing a roll of gauze, “it was all intentional.”
I furrow my brows, not understanding.
“How and when you woke up,” he clarifies.
Now he has my full attention.
“After Trinity died, Marco did want revenge.”
My eyes move to the king’s right-hand. He’s busy discussing something with the cameramen who are setting up a stage and a screen.
“He spent decades gaining the West’s trust, then decades more solidifying that trust. He leaked information approved by me. It benefitted me to have Marco feed them certain select pieces of classified information because in return, I learned of their plans.
“I created my double around that time,” Montes says, “thinking that ultimately I’d need to fake my death. That was also when I began making plans to wake you.
“I didn’t want to expose you to this world,” he says.
My mouth tightens.
“I was afraid that after all that waiting, you’d still just be killed like Trinity,” he continues. “I couldn’t bear that possibility. But you needed to wake up and the war needed to end and those two things were appearing more and more mutually inclusive.”