The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3)

  I shouldn’t be concerning myself with Montes, who I feel at my back even now. I should concern myself with my own fate.

  I’m to stay here, in this beautiful, empty palace, full of these opulent, meaningless rooms alongside my terrible, tortured husband.

  When I turn, I see Montes standing on the threshold.

  He jerks his head to the side of the room. “Your clothes are in the closet. I’ll be in the shower. We’re in a drought, so if you want to conserve water, I’ll allow you to join me.”

  I narrow my eyes on him. “I’ll pass.”

  His monstrous eyes twinkle as he backs away. My nightmare won’t capture me today.

  “Then get dressed,” he says, unbuttoning his shirt. “We have a war council in an hour.”

  The King

  This shower might go on record as one of the fastest I’ve ever taken. I soap myself up, my skin quickly getting slick with it.

  Day two with the awakened queen.

  My heart beats fast, and for the first time in decades, I feel young again. Uncertain again. Of my feelings, of hers, of the situation we’ve now found ourselves in.

  She can’t escape, I ensured that, but I still don’t want her out of my sight. My paranoia is a beast that could swallow me whole if I let it. And I have ample reason to feel this way. I thought Serenity would be safe below my palace. She hadn’t been.

  And now she’s in my room. Our room. Ready to gut me alive. Everything that’s wicked in me thrills at her savage nature.

  I rinse off the suds.

  Life with Serenity begins again.

  This time around, it will be different. I’m not a good man, and doing the right thing has never come naturally to me, especially when it concerns my wife, but I’m trying. That’s why I’ve decided to keep including her in my official decisions. I want her involved in this war, not only because I have made her a key player in it, but also because my queen thrives best on the front lines.

  I turn the spigot off and step out of the shower stall. Grabbing a towel, I wrap it around my waist.

  I remember the call I got when they found her. All those dead men. She’d been untouched. That’s what happens when you corner my wife. That’s what happens when you throw her into the fray.

  I’m an idiot for trying to protect her this whole time. She was never the one who needed protecting.

  Everyone else was.

  Chapter 11

  Serenity

  Montes and I head back to the giant map room together. I cast him my fifth skeptical glance.

  “What concerns my vicious little wife?” he asks. He looks down at me fondly. It’s so strange, how kind this man can be when he’s been so cruel.

  “You’re wearing fatigues. And combat boots.”

  Like me.

  I found my own standard issue clothes in his room almost immediately. Granted, these are more fitted than the pairs I’m used to, but otherwise they’re essentially the same.

  That was my first shock—Montes stocking my dresser with fatigues.

  The second and bigger shock was that he wore them himself.

  “I am,” he says.

  “I’ve never seen you in uniform.” Not like this. Outfitted like a soldier. He looks good in it.

  He runs a hand down his shirt front. “Like I said, many things about me have changed.”

  I’m finally starting to understand that.

  He peers down at me. “You like this.” It’s not a question.

  My eyes drop to his clothes. “It depends.”

  “Depends?” He raises his eyebrows. “On what?”

  “On whether or not it’s all for show.” Wearing military attire doesn’t make you a soldier. Battle does.

  “I like what you’re wearing,” Montes says by way of answer, nodding to my outfit. “It’s a reminder that we will be sharing a bed tonight.”

  My face heats at that. “We shared a bed last night.”

  “Yes, but this time my willing queen will fall asleep in my arms. I wonder what else she will be willing to do …”

  “Just because I agreed to your terms doesn’t mean I’m willing,” I say.

  Montes gives me a knowing look. “Let’s save the lies for the politicians,” he says.

  I thin my gaze. “You better get some custom armor to wear below your belt, my king,” I say. “You’re going to need it.”

  That earns me a laugh. “I’ll look into it, nire bihotza.”

  Inside the king’s enormous map room, a series of long tables have been brought in and arranged in a U-shaped pattern. More startling than the addition of tables is the addition of people. Dozens upon dozens of military officers sit at the thick oak tables, most wearing uniforms and medallions.

  Several screens have been pulled down from the ceiling, covering much of the maps. More military officers watch from the other side of those screens.

  And amongst them all, I see many women.

  My heart beats faster. This is not the same king I remember. Not even close.

  When the officers notice me, the noise dies down until room becomes ominously silent. Then, one by one, they stand and salute.

  I lean into Montes, looking out at them all. “Did you pay them to do that?”

  He places a gentle hand on my back. “No, Serenity. Money can’t buy you that kind of loyalty.”

  Nor can fear, not with these types of men and women. I stare out at their stoic faces. If they’ve lived through enough battles, things like death and pain don’t scare them. That begs the question: how did Montes convince them to join his ranks?

  I flash the king a questioning look. Rather than speaking, he urges me forward. I nod to the soldiers I make eye contact with, still confused by the man and situation I find myself in.

  This is the first—being inside the king’s palace, surrounded by people that look just like me. It’s destabilizing.

  Montes stops us in the middle of the room, where everyone can see us. “Please sit,” he says. The acoustics of the room carry his voice to the far corners.

  Dozens of chairs scrape as they do just that.

  The king glances down at me. “I would like to introduce you all to my wife, Her Majesty Serenity Lazuli, Queen of the East.”

  The room is as silent as the dead. Most of the officers school their faces to look impassive. But their eyes say what their expressions don’t.

  I’m the apparition no one expected.

  “She’s well over a hundred years old,” Montes continues, “but she has slept through most of them.”

  He lifts his gaze to the room. “I have lied to you all, to the entire world. Serenity never died of her cancer. I had her sedated until I could find a cure for her. By the time that came to pass, I hesitated to wake her for other reasons.”

  My entire body tightens. I want to devour the words that will fall from his lips, but I have to rein my own emotions in. Whatever he says now is likely some official explanation rather than the actual truth.

  My husband is not exactly known for truth telling.

  “I was afraid of what would happen to her and the world if she was brought to life. Martyrs don’t last long in war.”

  It takes hearing Montes’s explanation to realize I wanted something else, something that burned hot. A reason worthy of a century of sleep.

  Not this anesthetized explanation.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you all in the process.” The king looks back down at me, and now I really don’t want his eyes taking in whatever reaction I’m wearing. “She’s my wife. I don’t want anything to happen to her. I thought that keeping her asleep and safe under my protection would be enough. But the enemy came in here, they stole her from me, and they were going to use her in the way the West uses all their subjects.??
?

  Montes’s jaw tightens. Now there are words to get behind. Now there is the king. Not the king I knew—that one was a man wearing a title.

  This is a title wearing a man, power and purpose given flesh.

  I can’t help but stare in silence. When did the West become the great evil, and this man a fighter for freedom? When did leaving me to sleep become a mercy rather than a death sentence?

  And how, exactly, does the West use their subjects?

  I find I really don’t want to know that answer.

  Montes steps away from me. “They came for my wife, trespassed inside my house, and tried to use her against us,” he says, pointing a finger to the ground. He pauses for effect. “They will try again. And again. And again. They will try to capture her until they succeed or we stop them.”

  He orates to the officers like they are clay to mold into whatever shape he desires. And he’s good. Really good. His adoration seems genuine, his pain seems genuine, his anger seems genuine.

  But is it?

  “They give us only one option: we must stop them. And we will.” Montes casts his gaze about the room. “This time when we make war with the enemy, we do it for good.”

  One of the officers stands, and he seems like the meanest of the bunch from the sharp set of his features. His eyes move from Montes to me. “What does Your Majesty, Serenity Lazuli say to this?”

  Suddenly, dozens of eyes are on me.

  And I realize I’m not just a woman wearing a title, either. Not to these people. I’m their hope given form.

  I walk forward, passing the king, my boots echoing as they click against the floor. I cast a wondrous glance around the room. I throw a look over my shoulder.

  The hairs on my arm rise as our gazes lock. Montes, in his infinite darkness, has done the most twisted thing of all: he’s fashioned his evil into something good men can get behind.

  I face forward once more. “I won’t pretend to understand these times or your ways,” I say. “But a hundred and fifty years is too long to be at war. I am prepared to do whatever is needed, whatever it is you ask of me, to end it, once and for all.”

  The officer who spoke stares at me for a long time. Then he brings his fist over his heart, and he thumps it against his chest. The action is savage. He pulls his fist away, then does it again. And then a third time.

  A chair scrapes back and the man next to him stands. He too places a fist over his heart and begins to pound it just beneath his decorated breast pocket. Then a woman stands and does the same thing. Then several officers.

  One by one, like a wave, they stand and thump their fists over their hearts until the entire room is echoing with the sound.

  I feel the devil’s breath against my ear. “There is no higher compliment, my queen, than for the officers to give you their honor.”

  That’s what this is?

  “What have you done?” I say, staring out at the sea of medaled men and women. I’ve already agreed to this, to be what the world needs me to be, but I’m still horrified by all that comes with it.

  I’m nothing more than a story to these men and women, a face to their beliefs. And they are all but ready to set down their lives for me.

  Those terrible eyes of his capture mine, but he doesn’t respond.

  It’s hard to believe everything that led me here wasn’t orchestrated by his hand. That my escape and the fallout from it wasn’t planned. Montes seems more omnipotent than ever, and the superstitious part of me wants to believe that he can see some endgame the rest of us can’t.

  But he can’t control me, I know that. His reluctance to wake me up has everything to do with that. And I won’t bow to him, no matter how drastically he’s changed his ways. A long time ago I forgot I slept in bed with the enemy. I paid a hundred years as penance.

  I won’t make the same mistake twice.

  Chapter 12

  Serenity

  “So let me get this straight, the Western United Nations is still called the Western United Nations, and it’s run by a group of representatives, just as it always has been.”

  The officers around me are nodding.

  After the meeting in the map room adjourned, Montes and I moved to a smaller conference room with a handful of the officers. All of them are helping me catch up on what I’ve missed.

  It’s an impossible task; it took me years to understand the intricacies of my time’s politics when I was studying as an emissary. It will take me years more to understand all that’s happened between then and now.

  “Some of these representatives are Montes’s old advisors.” This comes from the stern-looking officer that was the first to show affiliation to me in the map room. Heinrich Weber is his name, Montes’s grand marshal of arms.

  I’m surprised by how quickly he’s taken a shining to me, considering how much of a threat I am to the king.

  Or maybe he just doesn’t yet know my true relationship with Montes.

  “I believe you’ve personally met them,” Heinrich adds.

  A chill races up my spine.

  Wait, those old advisors?

  Some of them are still alive?

  I shoot a glance at Montes, who sits in the chair next to mine. He lounges back in his seat, his thumb running absently over his lower lip, those sinister eyes of his narrowed like he’s trying to figure me out. It was never me that was the enigma.

  “So there’s more than just one of you now?” I ask.

  More men that can’t be killed, each one more rotten than the last. Of course it’s the worst ones that have managed to cheat death.

  The corner of Montes’s mouth lifts up. “My queen, there has only ever been one of me.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  The officers in the room stiffen slightly. It’s not like before, when Montes’s subjects scuttled about, perpetually in fear of his wrath. However, the king still appears to command their respect, and I’m not very respectful.

  Now the other corner of Montes’s lips lifts as well. He always did enjoy my insults. And just as always, he seems more captivated by me than the matters at hand.

  To be fair, everything I’ve been learning he’s known about for decades. If roles were reversed, I can’t say I wouldn’t be sickly fascinated with him as well.

  I return my attention to some of the papers spread out on the table and the men and women seated around me. “Just what kind of people are these representatives as a whole?”

  “The worst kind,” Montes says.

  I raise my eyebrow and flash him a sardonic look. “Refresh me again on what the worst kind of leaders are.”

  Tell me how they are different from you, I challenge him with my eyes.

  I swear the air thickens as we stare each other down.

  “The representatives have a long history of neglecting their people. From our best estimates, there haven’t been significant efforts to clean out the radiation from the ground, so radiation-related medical issues are a big problem in the West. It doesn’t help that their hospitals are critically understaffed and understocked.

  “Food and clean water are also serious issues for them. And I haven’t even gotten into the ethics of their leadership.”

  The more he says, the deeper my frown becomes. I don’t know who I’m angrier at—the representatives, who abuse their power more egregiously than even the king, or Montes, who forced me to lay in stasis right when I was on the cusp of helping my people.

  “And what about you?” I ask.

  “What about me, Serenity?” He lifts an eyebrow.

  “How are you any better than the enemy across the sea?”

  “Within the last century, over ninety percent of the radiation has been removed from the Eastern Empire,” one of the officers says, coming to Montes’s rescue. br />
  “Radiation that the king put there,” I respond.

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but that’s just not true,” the officer says.

  I furrow my brows and tear my gaze away from Montes. “What do you mean?”

  “The WUN has dropped several bombs since you last ruled.”

  Sickly sensation runs through my body. “They dropped … more bombs?” When I worked with the WUN, that kind of warfare had always been off the table. When you start playing with nukes, you flirt with global extinction.

  The officer nods. “They hit a few major city centers in the East.”

  This is my land all over again, only everything about this story is wrong. My former enemies are the victims, and my homeland is the great evil.

  Shock and something like despair fill me. I can’t catch my breath. Is there no one decent left? Haven’t the innocent suffered enough?

  “What did you do to retaliate?” I ask.

  “A peace treaty was formed in light of the loss, so that we could redistribute our resources,” the officer says.

  A peace treaty?

  When I meet Montes’s eyes this time, I don’t like what I see there. It’s not haughty, or selfish, or wicked. Finally, finally I see what I’d always hoped to in those eyes of his—repentance, sorrow, loss—and I can’t bear it. The years should’ve made Montes more apathetic, not less.

  “Is that true?” I ask.

  “I have changed,” is all he says.

  I wait for him to say more. I find I’m desperate to know the secret to climbing out of the abyss our souls have fallen into. I’m even more desperate to know whether this is what happened to the king. He’s already admitted his wisdom grew, not his conscience.

  But Montes doesn’t speak, and I’m left with one horrible question.

  “How many have died?” I ask.

  No one in the room answers right away.

  Eventually, someone clears their throat. “Since you’ve been gone, the war has claimed over a billion casualties from the East, and about three hundred million from the West.”