The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) (29 page)

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.”

Montes finishes wrapping my wound, tying off the gauze.

“So eventually,” he continues, “I let Marco pass along information on your resting place. And thus set in motion all that has happened.”

He had woken me. It took him years to wait for the right moment, but that’s exactly what he did.

You know the thing about strategy?
he said all those years ago.
It takes knowing when to act and when to be patient.

What he’s saying reframes everything.

He’d been planning an end to war for a very long time. “How could you have possibly known what was to come?” I ask.

“I discovered what you did—that the key to winning the West was taking out the representatives. And only victory would do that.

I never imagined sending you in—it was always going to be Marco—but then you made a deal with the representatives and I couldn’t undo the situation—short of calling the whole thing off. Much as I wanted to do that, I had faith in you.”

My throat works. There aren’t any words that can convey everything I feel, so I wrap my hand around my monster’s neck and kiss him instead.

He believed in me enough to put both our lives on the line. Enough to ignore his controlling nature and his obsessive need to shelter me. I can think of no greater show of love from this man.

Once I’m patched
up, the king and I gather at the city’s central square, the same place I stood at only weeks ago. Like then, cameras hone in on me. A microphone rests in front of us.

I know I am a sight—bloodied, dirty, tired. The king, for all his unearthliness, looks little better.

My eyes move over the city.

Much of it lays in ruins, the buildings smoldering, the wall encircling it little more than rubble.

I wish I could say that everyone who stared back at me was happy, that this felt like some great milestone for them, but the truth is that this city was home to many people, and now there’s nothing but destruction here.

There are many people beyond this city who won’t be pleased, and there will be many more who won’t know how to react.

But then there are the multitudes that will be freed from work camps and multitudes more living on the edge of survival who will now begin to receive aid. The neglected cities of the West might finally, finally know peace.

But beyond that, there is one thing that can bridge everyone that lives in this time.

I lean into the microphone. “Citizens of the world: the war is over.”

Chapter 58

Serenity

My gunshot wound
takes an agonizing month to heal. It’s the first serious injury since I met the king that’s healed without the aid of the Sleeper.

I insisted on it. He acquiesced.

I think we’re finally getting somewhere.

He kisses it now, his lips running over the scar, his hands sliding up my sides.

The scar that cuts down my face I’d always thought of as a permanent tear for the lives this war took. I wear this latest one with pride, because it marks the day it ended. For good.

Even as the king and I sit out here in the sand yards away from one of his island homes, the surf crashing close to our toes, my mind is pulled to the future.

We only get one more day before we head off to the Western hemisphere and begin the toiling task of rebuilding this broken world.

I’m starting with medical relief and efforts to clean any remaining radiation from the earth and groundwater, the very things that a long time ago the king tried to deny my people. Then will come subsistence, much of it government-subsidized.

Montes is not too thrilled about this last one, but I still sleep with my gun, and he’s a smart enough man.

True infrastructure will eventually be put back in place. Continents, regions, cities—they all need local leadership. The end of the war marks the beginning of the arduous task of rebuilding the governments the world lost long ago.

The king smooths my brow, tiny granules of sand sprinkling down my forehead and nose as he does so.

“I can tell you’re going to be a bigger workaholic than I am,” he says.

His face is cast in shades of blue from the moon above. I cup it, letting my thumb stroke the rough skin of his cheek.

Montes’s gaze turns heated. “Say it.”

The heart is such a vulnerable thing. Encased beneath skin and muscle and bone, you think it wouldn’t be. But it is. Even ours.

I still have to grapple with the words; I drag them out kicking and screaming.

“I love you,” I say.

Montes closes his eyes.

“Again,” he says.

I’m not sure how many times he’s heard these words in his lifetime. I imagine whatever the number, it’s far smaller than the amount he needed to hear them.

We have plenty of time to rectify that.

“I love you,” I say.

Plenty of time, but not forever.

I won’t take the king’s pills, and I’ve asked him stop taking them as well. I don’t know if he has, but I haven’t seen the pill bottles around.

People aren’t meant to live as long as us. And people aren’t meant to experience the horrors we have.

Bloodshed, death, hate—I used to wake every morning to this. It’s actually quite odd not to. Perhaps that’s why I’ve thrown myself into my work, so that I don’t forget.

High overhead I catch a glimpse of the stars.

I’d always imagined the dead resided in the heavens, and here and now I feel both closer and farther from them than ever before.

My eyes search the night sky, looking for one constellation in particular. I smile when I find it.

The Pleiades, the wishing stars. I hear an echo of my mother’s voice even now, pointing them out to me.

The king rolls onto his side, placing a hand on my abdomen. He follows my gaze up to the star cluster.

“Have you ever heard the story of the lost Pleiad?” Montes’s fingers are gathering the material of my shirt, lifting it as he talks.

I narrow my gaze on him. “If you’re about to lie to me …”

Montes has developed a bad habit of teasing me. Apparently I’m gullible. Considering, however, I’m also violent, he never takes it too far.

He laughs. “
Nire
bihotza
, I’m not. This is
true
. Apparently there are seven stars—Seven Sisters—but you can only see six of them in the night sky. The seventh is ‘lost’.”

We’re both quiet for a moment while I ponder his words. The night air stirs my hair. Mine and the king’s.

He leans in close to my ear. “It’s because I caught her,” he whispers.

My eyes return to the constellation.

“Make a wish,” I whisper.

He stares at me for several seconds, then softly says, “I don’t need to anymore.”

Montes is no good man, and I am no good woman. We grapple day in and day out with our demons. Long ago, I married a monster, and the king’s war made one out of me. And all our terrible edges fit together, and together we’ve become something else, something better.

The world is at peace, and for once, so am I.

After all this time, I finally found serenity.

Epilogue

5 years later

The King

I flip over
and stare down at my queen. Often I wake early—a habit I’ve developed over the decades. I used to spend those early hours working, squeezing another hour in if I could. It used to fuel me when I needed a distraction from my lonely life.

Now I tend to use the time to marvel over the fact that this
is
my life. After all the turmoil, all the violence and poor decisions, somehow the wrongs were made right.

Serenity made them right.

I run a hand over the swollen slope of her stomach. This is something else to marvel over.

Only a few more weeks. It’s just simply not possible to be this excited.

Or this petrified. Or this protective.

I’ll be a father for the first time at the ripe age of 174. I can barely fathom it.

“Mmmm.” Serenity stretches beneath my touch.

“
Nire
bihotza
, today’s a big day for you,” I whisper.

Her eyes snap open. “Shit.”

She sits up, her gaze moving to the windows. The sun is just rising. “What time is it? Did the alarm not go off?”

“Ssssh. It’s still early. Go back to sleep.” She hasn’t gotten enough of it. I don’t believe being eight months pregnant is particularly comfortable.

Instead of going back to sleep, her hand lazily combs through my hair. Then it freezes. She leans forward and peers at my hair more closely.

“You have a gray hair,” she says this wondrously.

My grip on her tightens just a fraction as I nod. I’d noticed it a week ago. This is also something that petrifies me.

I know Serenity’s wanted me to stop taking my pills for a while now. At first I couldn’t—old habits die hard and all that. And then one day I woke up and realized that I wanted to get old with this woman. I wanted our skin to sag together and our faces to wear wrinkles together the same way Serenity currently wears her scars.

So I stopped.

“I’m surprised I haven’t gotten any sooner,” I say, “considering who I’m married to.”

She swats me. “You should just be thankful I’ve stopped sleeping with my gun.”

I roll over her. “Oh, I am.”

And then I decide she doesn’t need sleep nearly as much as she needs me.

Serenity

Today I wear
my hated crown.

One final time.

Five hundred men and women gather in the room before me and the king, regional leaders from all over the world.

It took Montes nearly a hundred and fifty years to conquer the world. It took me only five to give back.

“Today marks a turning point,” I say to the group spread out before me in the auditorium.

From this day forward, our world won’t be ruled by monarchs. The road ends here. With us.

I remove the crown from my head. Next to me, Montes mirrors my movements. I would’ve thought he’d fight this more, but the man is weary of ruling. At last.

I don’t spare the headpiece more than a passing glance.

“Today we hand the world over to you.”

There will be a single government made up of regional leaders appointed from each territory. All will work and vote together on issues that afflict the world.

Like every government that came before it, this one won’t be perfect—it could even be a disaster. Only time will tell.

I look over at Montes. My beautiful monster.

I wasn’t looking for redemption in this man—or from him, for that matter. But that’s what I got.

I return my attention to the hundreds gathered in this room.

There’s a place for me here, in this future I never expected to be a part of. I no longer straddle two hemispheres and two time periods. Instead, I am the woman that loves both the West and the East, the woman that will always fight for the blighted and broken, the impoverished and the oppressed. I’m the woman that came from the past to help the future.

I’m no longer the loneliest girl the world, the woman who fits in nowhere.

Now I’m the woman who fits in everywhere, and I’m the woman that believes in freedom and justice, and above all—

Hope.

To my readers

To say I
am sad to leave this world and these characters is an epic understatement. I’m not sure I’ve enjoyed writing a series quite as much as this one. And the things it made me feel! I hope I’m not alone in that.

Everything about these characters and this world got under my skin, essentially from the start. When Montes first came to me, he was wholly wicked, and Serenity wholly good. They were never supposed to fall in love. It wasn’t just Serenity who fought it, it was me. But, as you know by now, these characters did fall in love, and the story became something else entirely from what I’d planned.

I hope you enjoyed reading
The Fallen World
series. I’m sorry to say that I don’t plan on revisiting this world again. However, I do have plans in the future to write a four book post-apocalyptic series, though only time will tell when I’ll release those! Until then, I hope you’ll consider
joining my newsletter here
so that we can share more stories together in the future.

Until then—

Hugs and happy reading,

Laura

Keep a lookout for this new paranormal romance series by Laura Thalassa and Dan Rix

Blood and Sin

Coming soon!