The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) (5 page)

Chapter 8

Serenity

The vein in
the king’s temple begins to throb.

It’s pretty blasé of me to just announce this like Montes hasn’t been trying to do the very thing for the last century. I also don’t mention that ending the war and winning it are two very different things.

The bastard obviously doesn’t like my idea. But just when I think he’s going to put up some sort of fight, he nods slowly.

Those dark eyes of his gleam, and I worry that whatever he’s agreed to is somehow different from what I’ve proposed. That terrible mouth curls up into a terrible smile the longer we lock eyes, and that terrible face I feared for so long—I’m going to have to deal with it until this is finished.

I’m seriously concerned that I’m getting played at this very moment.

“Tomorrow, we’ll begin,” he says, picking his words carefully.

I stare at him a beat longer, then it’s my turn to nod. “Alright.”

The tension between us evaporates when Montes extends an elbow. “Dinner?”

I huff out a laugh and shake my head. I walk away from the king and his elbow. We are so far beyond chivalry.

In a few long strides he’s caught up with me.

He places a hand on the small my back as we exit the room.

“You
will
lose that hand if you keep touching me,” I say, not looking over at him.

“You’ve always liked my hands too much to do them any harm,” he says, but drops his hold anyway.

“I don’t like much of anything about you right now,” I say.

As of today, I finally,
truly
begin to understand my father’s lessons on diplomacy. Sometimes you have to ally with your enemies for a higher cause. That means not throttling Montes, despite the almost overwhelming urge to do so.

“We’ll see how long you say that,” he says.

You know what? Fuck diplomacy, and fuck this.

Even as I swivel towards Montes my arm snaps out. My knuckles slam into his jaw, and even though they’re already ripped up and even though his face is already bruised and swollen, the hit is incredibly satisfying.

He stumbles back, clutching his jaw.

“You can wait another hundred and four years for me to like you, asshole. It still won’t be long enough. Just be happy I didn’t kill you when I had a chance.”

That dangerous glint enters his eyes as he rubs his jaw. He closes the distance between us until chest brushes mine.

“Yes, about that,” he says, his head dipping low. “You didn’t kill me when you could’ve. I wonder why
that
is,” he muses, his gaze searching mine.

“One massacre was enough for the day,” I say.

He leans in even closer, bending his head so his lips brush my ear. “You can say it or not, but you and I both know the truth.” He straightens enough to look me in the eye. “You can’t kill me, even now, even though I deserve it—and I
do
deserve it.”

I pull back enough to get a good look at him.

The king I knew took, and took, and took because he felt it was his right. And now, what he is essentially saying is that what he did wasn’t his right.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Have you grown a conscience?” It’s an almost preposterous thing to consider.

“Age gives you wisdom, not a conscience,” he says as we wind our way through his halls.

“And where was that wisdom when it came to me?” I ask.

His eyes look anguished when he says, “It was wisdom that kept me from waking you,
nire
bihotza
, not the other way around.”

Montes leads us
outside, where a small table overlooking the sea waits for us. Oil lamps hang from poles around us, already giving the area a warm glow as the sun finishes setting.

I glance over at the king. This Montes … he isn’t exactly the same man I knew. And the change has me confused.

Confused and intrigued.

He pulls my chair out. I ignore the proffered seat and take the one across from it.

He smiles at the sight, though I swear his eyes carry a touch of sadness.

Someone’s already set out a bottle of wine.

The setting, the table, the wine—it all harkens back to those instances when the king tried to seduce me and I was unwilling. Or maybe this is just how the king eats, beholding the sea and the sky and everything that he hasn’t managed to ruin yet.

“Re-creating our previous dates will not win me back.”

He grabs the wine bottle and begins to open it, appraising me as he does so. “So you admit that I can win you back?” The cork pops.

“That’s not what I said.”

He begins filling my glass with wine, his eyes pinched at the corners like he finds is whole thing very humorous. “It’s what you don’t say that interests me most.”

I pick up my glass. “I’d prefer it if nothing about me interested you.” God, it’s such a lie.

Montes meets my eyes. “Serenity, the sun would sooner fall from the sky. Even when you slept, I couldn’t stay away from you.”

The ocean breeze stirs his hair, and I have to look away.

Montes has had a hundred years to perfect not only being the very thing I hate, but also the very thing I love.

I breathe in the briny air and take in the horizon. The sky is the very palest shades of orange and pink. Beneath it, the ocean looks almost metallic blue. It’s beautiful. Peaceful. Paradisiacal.

“Is this the same island where we married?” I don’t know why I ask. Why I feel nostalgic over a memory I never wanted.

When I face Montes again, I catch him studying me.

“It is,” he says.

All those people I met, they’re long dead by now. I should be too.

I take a long drink of wine. “Is this where you kept me when I slept?”

“It is.”

“Did you ever regret what you did?” I ask, setting my glass down.

He settles into his seat, his frame dwarfing the chair. Even his build hasn’t changed. I find myself looking at his deeply tanned forearms. It feels like only days ago I touched that skin like it was mine. I ache to do so again. Even though I can’t, the urge won’t disappear.

“Every day,” he says.

My eyes move from his arms to his face. It’s so unlike him to admit this—to feel this. I thought hearing that would make me feel better; it doesn’t.

I let out a breath. “And yet you never changed your mind.”

“I am over a hundred and fifty years old, Serenity. Much about me has changed, my mind most of all.” He says this all slowly, each word weighed down by his long, long existence.

I swallow. My anger still simmers, but it has nothing on the terrible loneliness that crushes me. I am the relic of the forgotten past.

And I’m beginning to understand that I’m not the only one carrying a heavy burden. If the king’s demons don’t eat him up at night the way mine do, then they at least fall on those great shoulders of his throughout the day.

The waiters come then, bearing plates. I study the men. Their shoulders are wide, their faces hard. Soldiers dressed as servants. Montes no longer employs civilians it seems.

The food they place on the table isn’t quite like what I’m used to with the king. It’s simple—a cut of meat that rests on the bed of greens with a side of rice. The portion sizes are much smaller than what the king used to dole out.

I stare at it, not making a move for the utensils.

“The food is not going to bite you, Serenity,” Montes says.

“How bad off is the world?” I ask.

If the king eats like this, if he’s given himself a demotion, what must the common people’s lives be like?

“What makes you think it’s the world that’s different, and not me?”

It’s an echo of his previous statement. That he’s a changed man.

My gaze flicks up to Montes. He takes a sip of wine, watching me over the rim. He lounges back in his seat, slowly setting his glass down on the table. Everything about him is casual. Everything but his eyes.

I don’t want to believe what he’s suggesting. Not my narcissistic king, not the bastard who ruined my life and the lives of those I loved. He can’t have changed his ways. Because if he truly has, all my righteousness will be for nothing.

I can’t do this. My hate is all I have left; I don’t want to know that the object of it is no longer worthy of my wrath. And, hypocrite that I am, I’m not ready to hear that leaving me inside the Sleeper was a personal sacrifice he made for the greater good.

The king is the selfish one. Not me.

Dear God, please not me.

“I think I’ll eat alone.” I grab a bread roll from the basket that rests between us and stand. “Enjoy dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Montes catches my wrist as I pass him.

I look down my arm, at those long, tapered fingers that completely engulf my wrist. “Let go.”

The vein in his temple throbs. “Sit. That’s an order.”

The king and his orders. He always did like to lord them over everyone. That hasn’t changed.

I lean in, getting close to his face. “Fuck you and your orders.”

I twist my wrist out of his hold and stride away.

“Serenity!” he calls after me.

But I don’t stop walking, and I never look back.

Chapter 9

Serenity

Self-doubt has never
been one of my character traits, but now as I pad through the empty halls of the king’s castle, I can’t help but feel it.

When it comes to the king, I have always assumed the worst. Perhaps my assumptions are no longer correct.

Perhaps he’s no longer the most abominable person on the planet.

Nodding to the guards posted on either side of my door, I slip inside my bedroom. As soon as the door closes behind me, I lean against it, my head tilted towards the ceiling.

I must be the worst sort of person to be angry at this possibility. If my father were here, he would be shamed by my selfishness.

But my anger always did a great job of masking every other emotion I felt, and right now the main emotion that lurks just beneath it is worry.

How long did I hold out against the king when he was wholly wicked? What will I do now when the king’s wicked side is tempered by something just, something good, something I might actually agree with? Believe in?

That
is something I fear.

I don’t want
to fall asleep.

Despite the guards’ promises, I’m still concerned that the king will change his mind and force me back into that Sleeper. I should be thankful for the leaked footage. Now that the world knows I’m alive, Montes can’t easily hide his little secret once again.

But it’s more than residual concern that keeps me awake. I don’t want to go back to sleep after sleeping for a century.

My wants don’t seem to matter; my eyes still begin to repeatedly drift close. I fight it until I can’t any longer, and then I decide to change for bed. I pad towards the closet, my skirts swishing around my feet.

I stare into the empty closet.

The room I’m staying in still has no clothes.

I mutter an oath beneath my breath and begin unzipping my dress. Just or unjust, the king is still a wily fucker.

The gown slips off of me, sliding to the ground, and I’m left in the lacy lingerie the king provided me with earlier. I step out of the gown pooled at my feet and head for the enormous bed.

Halfway there, I hear a dull thump from the side of the room. I twist around, my body instinctively tensing. My eyes find the source of the noise, my body stiffens.

The surface of the mirror is vibrating once more. As I watch, the vibrations slow, then eventually vanish altogether.

I walk over to the mirror. It’s unusually large, taking up a quarter of the wall. I wait for the noise to repeat itself, my eyes fixed on the smooth surface. When the seconds tick by and nothing happens, my exhaustion creeps back up on me.

Ghosts I’m not afraid of. Far too many already haunt my mind.

I pad over to the bed and slide in. It’s only once I’m amongst all those sheets made of fine fabrics that I notice how empty the bed feels. It’s about to swallow me up it’s so large. I’ve gotten used to the king’s body pressed against mine. I never realized that once something like that is gone, you feel its ache like a phantom limb.

I don’t want to think about him deep in the night, or pine for his presence the way I’m sure many ladies of the court have.

Monsters like the king don’t sleep in beds, they sleep under them. And I don’t yearn; I exact vengeance.

The King

I enter her
room late that evening, long after I know she’s fallen asleep.

If I thought it would work, I’d wait for her to invite me herself. But I’m not a complete fool; another hundred years would go by before that would happen. Serenity is vindictive enough to deny both of us this for as long as she seeks to punish me.

I’m not a fool, and I’m not some chivalrous knight here to defend her honor.

I’m her morally depraved husband.

So I’m bending the rules of propriety.

I shrug off my button-down and slacks and round the bed.

Serenity stirs as I slip under the covers. The sheets are warm from her body heat. There were days long gone when I would’ve ruined entire cities for something as simple as this.

I’d gotten so used to her inhuman coldness as she slept in that sarcophagus. I’d nearly forgotten that Serenity has always been fire and heat and blood and ignited passions. My injuries are a testament to that. The excitement that thrums through my veins is a testament to that.

Those grave robbers resurrected more than an ancient queen when they took Serenity. My heart and my spirit slept with my wife, and those two have now woken. Just as I feared they would.

“Montes,” she murmurs in her sleep.

I still at my name.

No time has gone by for her. She hasn’t felt that century like I have. I forced myself to exist without her, the fates’ punishment for all those years I took from everyone else. Maybe I finally paid my penance.

She rolls against me, her body nestling into my side, her arm wrapping around my torso.

I close my eyes and swallow down what feels like a shard of glass in my throat. Her skin is all over me. I rasp out a pained breath. Nothing has ever felt so good.

My arms come around her hesitantly. I’m never this tentative, but tonight my mythic queen is in my arms, and I haven’t been a husband in a very long time.

I move my hand to her hair and stroke those golden locks. I have to breathe through my nose to control my emotions.

I’m not dreaming.

Nothing should feel this good.

I shouldn’t be here. I did this to her, to me, to us. And it’s not over. Even once she forgives me—and she will, that I’ll make sure of—there are my enemies. We’re back to square one, where she was my weakness. Only I, in my infinite stupidity, have made her more than my weakness. I have made her a vital player in this war.

My men have been alerted to look for and eliminate threats, and already they’ve taken care of dozens. But more will come, and I’m no longer smug enough to think I can neutralize all of them.

Even now with her cancer gone, death looms over Serenity. I’ve brought this upon her—just as I have every one of her other misfortunes.

“
Nire
bihotza
, I’m sorry,” I whisper, my lips brushing the crown of her head, my shaky fingers running down her arm. “I know you’ll never believe it, but I’m so, so sorry.”

Serenity

I stir, my
body stretching out. The first rays of dawn slide through the windows. It’s almost enough to rouse me.

Almost, but not quite.

Montes’s arm tightens around my waist, and I settle back into him. For once my king isn’t up earlier than me. My lips curl and I drift back asleep against him.

Sometime later, I wake again, my body stretched along Montes’s. I blink, taking in the room.

The drapes are the wrong color. The room is the wrong shape and size.

I furrow my brows, confused. I begin to sit up, only to have my king groan and pull me back into him.

Right as I feel the firm press of his skin along mine, everything comes roaring back to me.

The king, that slippery bastard, snuck into my bed during the night. He’s been holding me this entire time.

And while I slept, my body has been encouraging him along.

I try to move away, but his embrace only tightens.

I flip over to face him. His eyes open slowly, heavy with sleep, and his hair is ruffled. That ache that’s taken up residence in my chest only increases at the sight.

“You have no right,” I say, my irritation overriding that horrible burn that imperfect love produces.

He stares at me from across the pillow. I can see my bruises on him, and it shames me all over again that I put my mark on his skin. And then I am ashamed to be ashamed, for if anyone deserves to get roughened up, it’s the king.

“You are my wife,” he says. “Spouses share a bed.”

“Get. Out.” I’m beginning to shake as irritation gives way to anger.

Montes’s thumb rubs little circles into my back. The man looks downright content. “My roof, my rules,” he says. “We go to sleep and wake up together.”

“Oh, do we now?” I say. “I wonder what happened to that rule when you put me in a box for a hundred years.”

He searches my face. “I never did it to make you suffer.”

No, he did it to save me from death.

“
Is
the cancer gone?”

I feel Montes’s hand creep up my back and into my hair. He hesitates briefly, then nods. “Everything is gone. The cancer and all other ailments you might have suffered from.”

The king made good on his word.

“How long did it take?”

“Three quarters of a century.”

Seventy-five years. He waited over seven decades for me to heal.

Seven decades.

Most people I knew never lived to be half that age.

“And was it worth it?” I ask.

His eyes turn heated. Fervent. “
Nothing
has ever been more worth it.”

“And yet you never woke me.” I slept three extra decades, and I probably would’ve slept more if I’d never been captured.

Montes pulls me up and onto his chest.

“Yesterday I gave you my repentance,” he says, his voice rough. “Today you’ll get everything else.”

“You going to have to do a little more than repent for a single day, considering you took thirty thousand of them away from me.”

An amused smile curls the edges of his lips. I hadn’t meant for that to be amusing.

“I’ll give you thirty thousand more,” he says.

“I don’t want thirty thousand more. I want you to let me go.” I push against him. That only serves to tighten his grip and rub our bodies together.

His jaw clenches, and his eyelids lower just a smidge. “If you keep doing that, you’re going to be coming rather than going.”

“I
will
hurt you,” I threaten.

“But you won’t kill me, and that really is what’s important.” His thumb skims under a bra strap. “I rather like this on you.”

I grab his hand. We stare each other down.

“Montes, you don’t get to do this with me,” I say. “You gave that up a long time ago.”

He leans in close enough that I can feel his breath tickle my skin. “I gave
nothing
up. Be upset at me for making you live when you wanted to die, but don’t blame me for this.”

He moves the hand I still hold captive to my face, touching my scar. “You fought for me, killed for me. You wore my crown and carried my child. Don’t distort what you mean to me, what you’ve always meant to me.

“And I’m going to keep you in this bed until you understand something: I won’t let you go. Everything you are is mine, and everything I am is yours.”

“That is something I’ve always known,” I say.

Ever since the day my father died I’ve understood. So long as the king lives, I will never be free of him.