The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) (4 page)

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 given 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.

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.

To think I lived without this for so long. Unfathomable.

I see hate burning in her eyes. Time has distorted most of my memories of her, but I’m almost positive I’ve never seen this particular brand of it. This fierce thing I’ve bound to my side is dying from the inside out.

That
I can’t take.

I don’t give her time to protest before I place both hands on either side of her face.

Now that this fateful day has come, and I have to deal with the fallout of my choices, I find I’m eager for it. Desperate, even.

Serenity tries to pull away, but I won’t release her.

I shake my head. “Fight all you want, my queen, you’re not going to escape me.”

“Fuck you, Montes. Let me go.”

She’s about to get violent. Even if I hadn’t remembered other interactions that spiraled out of control like this, I would be able to sense it.

This terrible angel of mine. I welcome her vengeance.

I squeeze her face, just enough to get her attention. “Serenity, listen—”

She renews her struggles against me. “No,” she says. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear about your suffering.”

I nod. “I know,” I say quietly. “But you will.”

I can tell that this pisses her off, but when I fail to let her go, she stops fighting against me. I think, deep down, she wants to hear me out.

“There is nothing—nothing—I have ever treasured more than you. I let myself forget.” I can feel my eyes begin to water, and any other time—
any
other time—I would fight back the reaction. But I won’t with Serenity. Let her see her frightening king strip away his barriers for her.

“But you need to know that no one ever made me happy the way you did, and no one ever made me feel the burdens of my war the way losing you did.”

Humans should not be able to feel what I have for this woman. Flesh isn’t strong enough to house this much sadness. If I wasn’t so afraid of death and the reckoning that waits for me on the other side, I’d have exited this world long ago.

She’s blinking rapidly. Despite the firm set of her jaw, my bloodthirsty wife is just about as exposed as I’ve ever seen her.

Breathing quickly through her nose, she wraps her hands around my wrists and removes mine from her face.

“I listened,” she says, “but now you need to listen to me: you never gave me a choice in any of this.

“I watched my mom die when I was ten after one of your bombs exploded outside our house. I became a killer when I was twelve because your war destabilized my country. I became a soldier when I was fifteen because my people were dying, and you were winning. I had to take on my father’s job when I was sixteen because our government no longer had the ability to hold elections.”

Her voice shakes; I can tell she’s fighting tears.

“I was forced to seduce you,” she continues, “the single man I most hated and feared in the world so that my country could know peace. I saw my father die protecting me from you, I held his murdered body in my arms. Even then, once I escaped you, you made me marry you. And then, when you realized I was dying of cancer, you forced me to sleep in that hellish machine of yours for a hundred years. A
hundred
years.

“So tell me again, Montes, what do you know of suffering?”

The room falls to silence as I take in her pain.

“I know that it makes you come alive, Serenity,” I say softly.

She flinches at that.

“I know that loneliness its own kind of loss, and I have been lonely for a long time.” I want to reach out and touch her skin again just to assure myself she’s real. It’s been so long since I’ve touched anyone. “I know that I want your suffering. I’ll cherish it, just as I do everything else about you.”

I can see her body trembling as she frowns at me.

The footfalls of several men interrupt us. A moment later, they pound their fists against Serenity’s door. Of all times to be interrupted, now might be one of the worst.

I see Serenity’s face shut down. All that anger, all that pain, all that vulnerability gets sealed off. Whatever moment the two of us had, it’s now gone.

“Come in,” I call, not glancing away from her.

Half a dozen soldiers crowd the doorway.

“Your Majesties,” one says, bowing, “footage of the queen has been leaked.”

Serenity

Montes and I
stand in front of a large screen in one of his conference rooms. I try not to think about how little has changed inside these walls. The king’s conference rooms are virtually identical to the ones I remember.

And then there’s the role I’ve slipped back into seamlessly. I didn’t even realize when I strode down the hall next to Montes that my actions were out of place until I saw him cast me several glances.

He hadn’t had a queen to co-rule with him in over a century. Of course the situation must be strange to him. But he didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t about to relinquish power when that was my reason for staying.

I run my tongue over my teeth now, my arms crossed, as I watch Jace and his team lift the golden lid of what appears to be a coffin.

The camera pans in.

Goosebumps break out along my arms.

There I am.

My body is still, my arms folded over my chest.

If I still had any doubts about what happened to me, I no longer do.

My eyes are closed, my skin startlingly pale against my golden hair. And my face is serene. It’s an expression I rarely wear.

I’d been like that for a hundred years. Forced somewhere between death and life.

When Jace and his men lift me out, my head rolls listlessly against one of their shoulders.

I grimace at the sight. I was utterly helpless.

Next to me, the king begins to pace. This shouldn’t be as terrible for him as it is for me, and yet I get the impression it is.

Another clip directly follows this one. In it, I’m still asleep. The camera focuses on my eyes. They move rapidly beneath my closed lids. That footage cuts out, replaced by a close up of my hand as my fingers begin to twitch. That, too, cuts away.

This time when the camera settles on me, I’m fully awake.

“Who are you?”

My voice doesn’t sound nearly as confused as I know I was. These men were foolish to not have their guns out and pointed the entire time I was under their care.

“Where is Montes?”

I glance over at the king just as he bows his head and closes his eyes.

Remorse is a strange emotion on him, and I find it both angers and placates me. I want him to feel guilt, but then, what I really want, what I can never have, is for him to have made a different choice and us to not be where we are.

The video ends, and the room is left in silence.

“Take it down, along with any new instances that pop up,” Montes finally says.

The soldier stationed near us bows and leaves. I watch him go, my eyes narrowed. Somewhere in the time that’s lapsed, Montes has gotten rid of his aides and his advisors, along with the men and women of court. Now all that’s left are military personnel.

I turn my attention back to the screen. “This situation is bad because … ?”

“Before this, the world didn’t know you still lived. They’re have always been rumors, but not proof,” Montes says. He nods to the screen. “Now there is.”

The King

I knew this
was inevitable, I had just hoped to put it off a little longer. All those years ago, when I’d made Serenity a martyr, I never imagined my actions would have such ripple effects. Not until the years melted away and I had to face the reality of waking my wife up.

The world will come for her. Everyone on this godforsaken earth wants to be saved. What that video shows is something just as unnatural as me. From miraculous beginnings come miraculous endings.

“Montes,” Serenity says, “I saw one of the posters.”

I mask my surprise. So she knows to some extent that she’s famous. I barely have time to process that before she continues.

“What, exactly, do people expect of me?” she asks.

Serenity says this like she’s actually considering doing something to meet their expectations.

I turn from the screen.

“They see you as a figure who fights for freedom,” I say. “I imagine, if presented with the real woman, they’d expect you to do exactly that.”

“They want me to end the war,” she clarifies.

I hide my surprise once more. How much does Serenity know? And who told her? My men? Those on camera? The situation is already spiraling out of my control.

“I think that’s safe to assume,” I say carefully.

This is history repeating itself. The instant Serenity’s back in the game, people want to play her.

My enemies will either try to capture her or kill her. They’ve obviously tried to do so already. And there are so many enemies.

The prospect leaves me short of breath. All those reasons I left Serenity deep in the ground come rising up. There she was safe. Awake, she has a target on her back.

“Well then,” she says, breaking my reverie, “that makes this simple: you and I are going to end this war.”