We stop in front of it, and one of my guards knocks.
No one answers the door and no one responds.
I cast a side glance at the soldiers. They don’t appear surprised about this.
What is waiting for me on the other side?
They pause for several more seconds, then reach for the doors.
As soon as they swing open, my breath catches.
If parties were once held in this room, they are no longer. A world map covers the far wall. The same hated strings and blacked out faces are pinned to it. But the two adjacent walls, those are filled from floor to ceiling with photographs and reports.
Conquering has become Montes’s obsession, though obsession is not nearly a strong enough word for this.
A century to transform a man into whatever thing he wishes to become …
Right in the middle of the room, staring up at his enormous map, his hands clasped behind him, is the one man I hate more than any other.
My tormentor. My lover.
The king.
Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.
My pulse pounds in my ears as my eyes land on his back.
There is no word for what I feel. It’s too big, the pain too acute. It burns up my throat and pricks my eyes.
In my mind, I held this man yesterday, felt him move inside me yesterday, heard him whisper that he loved me yesterday.
But my yesterday was 104 years ago.
“Your Majesty, the queen.”
The king’s body is just as still as ever; he gives no signs that he even heard the guard.
The moment stretches on.
Finally, “Leave us.”
That same smooth as Scotch voice echoes through the room, and it sounds grander than I’ve ever heard it.
Now, now I feel the weight of all the lost years. It might’ve seemed as though I went to sleep yesterday, but my ears know they haven’t heard that voice in an eternity.
Montes doesn’t turn around as the guards retreat. The door closes with a resounding thud behind them, and then it’s just me and the undying king.
I don’t move. I barely even breathe.
I’m falling apart.
From hate to love to hate once more. My hardened heart was not made to withstand such vast and ever-changing emotions. It’s cleaving me to pieces.
Why did he do this?
Why?
WHY?
“You bastard,” I whisper.
The king’s entire body flinches at the sound of my voice.
“Are you even going to face me?” You fucking coward.
I hear the scrape of his heel, and then he’s turning.
I thought I’d be ready to face him, I thought that this pain-laced fury churning inside me would obliterate any other feelings the sight of him would bring.
God, was I wrong.
Our gazes lock, and it’s all right there—the love, the hate, the sorrow and happiness we hold for one another. All that time can go by, yet everything between us is just as raw and intense as it’s always been.
My monster. My husband. He’s utterly unchanged. He still has the same olive skin, the same dark hair, the same seductive lips and dark, dying eyes. And judging by the way he stares at me, that obsessive love he once harbored might not be completely gone.
He takes a step forward and nearly goes down to one knee, his legs are so unstable. At first I think something’s wrong with him. It takes a moment to realize it’s the sight of me.
“Serenity,” he says, straightening.
Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.
My chest rises and falls faster and faster.
He takes another step towards me. And then another. He doesn’t tear his gaze away from me. Not for a second. His face is impassive—all but his eyes. Those depthless eyes that have witnessed so many of his terrible deeds, they devour me. They move over my outfit, and then my face.
Here they linger, touching each one of my features. But it’s my scar they finally rest on.
I swore I wouldn’t shed another tear for this man, and yet I feel one slip out anyway.
Damn my heart. Even after everything, I love him, and it’s ripping me apart.
“You came here to kill me.” There’s such resignation his voice.
“You motherfucker,” I say. “You left me to rot.” My entire body trembles. Had I once thought I was the colder of the two of us? I’ve gotten no reaction out of him, and here I am breaking apart in his midst.
The king blinks several times, his eyes a bit too bright. “Your hate—I’d … forgotten.”
He’s still coming towards me, and I can tell he wants to touch me. I begin to move, one of my legs crossing behind the other as I circle the king.
“I was your wife,” I accuse.
“You still are my wife.” That voice of his—so sure, so commanding.
“No, Montes, you forfeited that right a long time ago.”
Suddenly, he’s no longer casually strolling. He strides forward. “You will always be mine, and you will never—”
As soon as he is within range, I cock my arm back and I slam my fist into his face.
He staggers, his hand reaching up to his cheekbone.
I stalk forward, and then I sock him again. And again. Pain radiates out from my knuckles, and I relish it.
Montes falls, and I follow him to the ground. My fists have a mind of their own. They land wherever they can, and the meaty slap of skin meeting skin echoes throughout the room. My tears fall along with them. I didn’t realize I could feel like this—angry and desolate—all at once. And with every blow, I wait for that flood of relief to come. I’m meting out my revenge.
But this doesn’t feel like revenge. The king keeps taking the hits, and he doesn’t raise a hand against them, not even to protect himself.
“Fight back, you bastard,” I growl.
He laughs, and those white, white teeth of his are now stained red with his blood.
My husband is insane.
We both are.
Finally, his arms come up, but only so they can encircle me. He pulls my body flush against his. “God, I fucking missed you, Serenity.”
And then he kisses me.
Chapter 6
Serenity
I taste his blood on my lips. This is not how the reunion is supposed to be going.
It was supposed to end swiftly with his death, but in an instant I’ve gone from killing the man who betrayed me to kissing him. Unwillingly.
One of his hands comes up and palms the back of my head, making it impossible for me to pull away.
I move my own hands to his neck, and I begin to squeeze.
He releases me, but he doesn’t try to pull my hands away, just stares up at me with those too bright eyes as I choke the life out of him.
“Death in a dress.” He barely gets the words out, but I hear them all the same.
I close my eyes, feeling two more tears slip out, and squeeze tighter. I remember the exact moment he first said those words to me.
“Why do you think I wanted you in the first place? Death in a dress. That’s what you were when you descended down those stairs in Geneva. I knew you’d either redeem me or you’d kill me.”
With a sob, I let Montes go, casting myself away from him.
I cover my face with my bloody, shaking hands. I can’t do it.
I can’t do it.
I love him. To kill the thing I love … that might just destroy the last bit of my conscience, and there is so little of it left.
I feel another tear drip down my cheek, and I taste it on my lips. Tears and bloodshed, that’s all this relationship has giv
en me. All that this life has given me, really.
His hand touches my cheek. “You didn’t do it,” he says.
I drop my palms away from my face and open my eyes.
He watches me, and there is no indifference in his gaze. Quite the opposite. Whatever he feels for me, the years haven’t dulled it, though they might’ve transformed it into something else.
It’s not anger that’s riding me now. It’s a hurt so vast I can’t see any end to it. I could fit entire galaxies into the space it’s carved out for itself inside me.
I stand. I look around me. The room had, in all likelihood, once been used for entertaining. But not anymore. This man’s vices are devouring him from the inside out. I’m nothing compared to them, just a desperate, angry girl who’s been under someone else’s thumb for far too long.
I can’t be around this. I just … want out.
I back up.
Montes leans back, his arms slung over his knees. If I didn’t know him better, I’d say he was completely at ease. But he never did like me walking away from him, and I can see the controlled panic in his eyes.
“The queen I remember never leaves until she’s made a threat,” he says, watching me back away from him.
He remembers more than I thought he would.
And now, of all things, he wants me to threaten him. Because that’s intrinsically something I would do.
I pause, only for a moment, and exhale, suddenly very weary.
“Not for lost causes,” I say.
And then I leave him.
The King
I don’t move until the door closes behind her. But once it does, I can’t seem to move quickly enough.
I pull my phone from my pocket and dial the head of security. “Serenity is not to leave the palace grounds under any circumstances.”
My guard is quiet for a beat too long.
“Understood?” I say.
Finally, he says, “Understood, Your Majesty.”
I click the phone off and bring it to my lips.
For the first time in a hundred years, my soul flares to life, my heart along with it. And it hurts so fucking bad.
No one’s ever been in my situation, so I couldn’t have foreseen that love doesn’t function as other things do. It took decades for it to fade, and an instant for it to come roaring back.
As far as my heart is concerned, no time has passed.
And yet, Serenity was nothing like my memory. None of my imaginings could’ve made her so perfectly flawed.
I can now recall the exact color of her irises—somewhere between gunmetal gray and a frigid ice blue. And her anger—part of the reason I didn’t stop her from laying into me was that I was mesmerized by that inner fire of hers. My beautiful storm.
I touch the side of my face tenderly. The skin’s beginning to swell.
I breathe harshly through my nose to beat back a shout. I did leave her in a machine to rot. She couldn’t protest, so I didn’t listen. And now she’s back with a vengeance.
The fool I was who first laid eyes on her all those years ago did one thing right—he saw redemption within his reach, and he snatched it up for himself.
And then he sabotaged it again, and again.
I’m still brooding when I hear a knock on my door twenty minutes later. I already know who’s on the other side. I squeeze my phone tighter as a wave of anger washes over me.
I should’ve known.
He should’ve told me.
I pull myself together, breathing in and out through my nose to calm myself down.
I knew this was coming.
“Come in,” I call.
This is something else I’ll eventually have to explain to Serenity, something else she’ll want to kill me for. And maybe this time she’ll be successful.
I rub my face. Redemption has always been within my reach. I’m just too damn guilty to accept it.
Serenity
I thread my hands behind my head and pace once more inside my room.
I’ve only ever had one job: to take out the king. I failed at that task time and time again.
I can kill easily enough. There are six dead men who can attest to that.
And no one is more deserving of death than the king. The man has done so many unconscionable things.
My stupid, idiotic feelings.
And what now?
A century ago, I had a purpose. Marriage for peace. A voice for my people and all those who were downtrodden. I might not have wanted the life I was forced into, I might’ve lamented it, but at least then I understood it.
I don’t understand this.
The future, the lost, obsessive king and the war he still futilely fights. Why life has made a joke of my existence.
I take a deep breath.
I never had much time for pity. I still don’t.
The king and his world have moved on. I’m no longer needed to hold together two hemispheres.
My gaze travels to the window.
I could leave.
I could leave. Not as someone else’s prisoner, but on my own.
The thought is heady. Freedom has always been just beyond my reach. To finally have it … It would almost make up for my tragic, broken heart.
But if I did leave, I would need boots, fatigues, weapons, food, water and a means to get more. That would take time to acquire, and there’s always a possibility that outside these walls, I will be recognized and fought over as a pawn to be played in this war.
It would be a hard life. A life where I couldn’t make much of a difference, a life where I was expendable.
A life without the king.
I walk onto the balcony and spread my arms over the marble railing. The ocean stretches out as far as the eye can see.
That life might be what I want, but my existence really was never about what I wanted. I was woken to save the world.
And the best way to do that would be to stay here and work with the very man who destroyed my heart.
I draw in a breath through my nose.
If that is what is needed of me, then that is precisely what I will do.
Even if it breaks me.
Chapter 7
Serenity
Not too long after I come to my decision, there’s a knock on the door. I cross the room, my skirts swishing around my ankles.
When I open the door, my hand tightens on the knob.
Montes stands on the other side, his hands in his pockets. The gesture is so reminiscent of how he’s always been that my knees weaken.
It’s too soon. It physically hurts staring at his face and feeling like things can never be the same between us.
I may have decided I can’t kill Montes, and I may have decided to help fix all those things the king and his war have broken, but I’m not ready to be civil with him. Not yet.
He just stares at me for a long time, not saying anything. His face has already begun to swell, and that leaves me cold.
Fuck love.
I turn on my heel and head back to the desk I was working at. I’ve been jotting down notes on what I must learn to help the people I now live amongst.
I hear the sound of his footfalls behind me.
“Are you here to torment me?” I say over my shoulder.
“How did you know?” he says. “That’s precisely what I had in mind.”
“You haven’t lost your silver tongue,” I note.
“Serenity.”
I glance up from my writing, and my gaze meets the king’s. Had I noticed how tormented his eyes were? How weary they appeared? But even as I watch, that weariness dissipates. In its place I see a familiar spark in them.
“What you have done is unforgivable,” I say.
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He moves leisurely towards me, every step deliberate. It feels like the whole world extends outward from him, like the very universe shaped itself around this man. The king’s always been larger than life, but now, if anything, he seems grander and more unnatural than he ever was.
He shakes his head. “No, Serenity. When it comes to us, nothing is beyond forgiveness.”
I feel my nostrils flare. “You think this is still a game. The world, your power, my life.”
He shakes his head again. “No.” He keeps those tormented eyes of his trained on me. “I really don’t.” His voice carries weight. His years, I decide, are sometimes worn in his words.
“Are you planning on putting me back in there?” After the words leave my lips, I swear I don’t breathe. It matters very much how he answers this.
Montes steps in close. “No,” he says, searching my face.
I shouldn’t believe him, he’s deceptive to his core, but I feel the truth of his words.
He reaches up, as if to touch my face.
“Don’t, Montes, unless you want to lose that hand.”
His entire face comes alive at my words. “You haven’t changed at all.” He says this wondrously.
He always did like the broken things inside me.
His hand is still poised.
“Don’t,” I repeat, raising my eyebrows to emphasize my point.
“Can’t I touch my wife?”
He said those words once before, and this time around they level my heart. Even after all these years, he remembers them.
“What are you doing, Montes?” I ask.
Is it not enough for him to destroy my life?
“Winning you back,” he says.
And then, despite all my warnings, he lays his hand against my cheek.
The King
She slaps my hand away. “I am not some prize to be won.”
God, her anger. It makes the blood roar through my veins.
I am alive. Alive in a way I haven’t been in decades.