Without thinking I begin moving through the clusters of them, inadvertently tugging the king along with me. I can feel his gaze on my face, drinking up my reaction. I pull away from him to pet a leaf.
It’s a captive here, living in its own gilded cage.
Just like me.
Releasing it, I lift my gaze and take in the rest of the greenhouse. The glass panes are misted over, and the humidity is curling my hair. Hundreds of plants line the building. The size and beauty of this place is staggering.
After living in a gloomy, subterranean bunker for the last five years, the idea of a room filled with light and plants is almost incomprehensible.
So, naturally, the king has one of these places on his property.
“And my queen’s frowning again.”
“This is just another room with a ridiculous purpose.”
He actually looks pleased, and I can’t fathom why.
He takes my hand and leads me down an aisle. Then he begins pointing. “Papaver somniferum—the opium poppy. Extracts of the plant can be used as high grade pain relievers, amongst other things. Camellia sinensis—the dried leaves of that one make tea. Coffea arabica—the plant that’s saved you from killing everyone before eight a.m.”
“Not everyone. Just you,” I correct.
He smirks and points to another plant. “Cannabis sativa—helps with appetite, sleep, anxiety, lowers nausea. A wonder drug, really.
“Many of these plants are already being used medicinally,” he continues, “and outside of my greenhouses, they are hard to find. Many more of them are being researched and genetically modified, again for science.”
And now I understand the king’s smug expression. I assumed he didn’t care about saving the world his war had broken. I hadn’t imagined that maybe some of the laboratory testing he’d been working on was to benefit the people he’d so abused.
He steers me down the aisle we’re on and we enter another room of the greenhouse. High above us I see the stars through the domed glass roof I’d caught a glimpse of outside.
The plants here cling to the edges of the room. In the middle of it all is a table set for two that’s illuminated by candlelight.
I clutch the chain of my mother’s necklace. I’ve never been romanced, outside of one other candlelit dinner also hosted by the king. And that last time, to my great embarrassment, it worked.
It probably will again.
Montes herds me forward, his dark eyes twinkling. It’s even harder to not be drawn in by him when the room’s dim glow draws attention to all the pleasing angles of his face.
He likes this, I realize. Indulging me in his lavish lifestyle. He hasn’t yet figured out that it’s a double-edged sword. I am a child of war and famine. I don’t know how to indulge, and I don’t want it.
He must see me backpedaling because he increases the pressure he places on my lower back. Reluctantly I let him steer me to the table. I approach it the way I would anything else that’s too good to be true.
The plates and cutlery rest atop indigo and gold linens embroidered with the king’s initials. I glance down at my rings. The colors match.
“Blue and gold—they’re your colors,” I say. I’m only now putting together the symbolism that’s been woven into the king’s rule.
“And yours as well, my queen that loves the stars and the deep night,” he says, shrugging off his jacket and taking a seat across from me.
Just like earlier today, he undoes his cufflinks and rolls his shirt up past his elbows. And now I’m back to staring at his forearms.
This is carefully crafted seduction, and I’m defenseless against it.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, forcing my gaze up. His face isn’t a better option.
I can’t bear this. I was raised on duty and honor, and I can’t find any in my situation. I’m trapped in a role where I’m everyone’s traitor—even my own.
He gives me a penetrating look. “Everything.”
“You know that’s impossible.”
“Is this another one your facts?” Montes asks, leaning forward.
Before I can answer, I hear the door to the greenhouse open. A long beat of silence stretches on while two servants enter, one bearing a bottle of wine, the other a tray with two plates on it.
“Here, I’ll take that from you,” the king says, grabbing the neck of the wine bottle from the server while the other one sets the plates in front of us.
Once the food has been laid out, both servers bow and exit the room.
Montes pours us each a glass of wine from the uncorked bottle he holds. “Let’s play a little game,” he says, handing my glass to me. “I’ll ask you a question and you’ll either tell me the answer, or you’ll drink.”
I narrow my eyes at him but take my drink from his outstretched hand. The last time I played this game, I slept through the next day’s negotiations, and when I woke, I was sicker than a dog. A downside. I also kept the king from sleeping with me. An upside.
“I’ll play, but only if you answer my questions as well.”
His mouth curves up. “Of course. That’s only fair.”
As if he knows a thing about fairness.
He leans back in his seat, the flame of the candles dancing in his eyes. I might as well be seated with the devil; Montes is handsome enough and wicked enough for the job.
“You told me once that hate isn’t the only thing you feel for me,” he says. “What else is it that you feel?”
He starts with that? That?
I take a drink of my wine. Montes smiles, and I realize too late that my reaction was an answer in and of itself.
“Were you planning on killing my father and me before we arrived in Geneva?” I ask.
If he gets to ask hard questions, then so do I.
Montes’s sighs. “This is supposed to be fun.”
“It’s not my fault you’re a bastard,” I say. “Now answer my question.”
The vein in his temple begins to pound. “Tread lightly, my queen,” he says softly.
We stare each other down, and I think we both realize we’ve met our match.
Finally, he says, “Death is always on the table when it comes to my negotiations. You know that.”
He had planned to kill us.
“Did you order my father killed?”
“Ah-ah,” he says, his voice jovial, but his eyes are hard. “Already forgetting the rules.”
I glower at him.
“Why did you marry me?” he asks.
I go still. “It was me or my country.”
“That was the only reason?”
“It’s my turn.” My voice is icy. I’m seconds away from overturning the table—or lunging across it and attacking the king.
“Did you order my father killed?” I repeat.
“No, Serenity, I didn’t.”
I swirl my wine glass, agitated. What had I hoped for him to say—that he had?
“Was saving your country the only reason you married me?” he asks.
Did he really expect any answer but yes?
“I vomited when I learned I’d have to marry you,” I say. “Do you really want to rehash this all out?”
“No. What did the Resistance do to you while they held you prisoner?”
He tricked me out of a turn.
I grip the stem of my glass tightly and force myself to muse on his question. The man across from me is not a soldier. He has no true concept of torture and humiliation. But he is my husband, and he is the megalomaniac that has bent the world to his will.
I grab my glass and drink. With him, violence begets violence.
I tilt my head back and look at the stars that I can barely see through the domed ceiling above.
I want to say I watch them because they are beautiful, but I can’t lie to myself about this. I’m avoiding the king’s reaction to what I’m about to ask.
I pull myself together. I’m not a wimp, and if I have the courage to ask the question, then I should also have the courage to face the king as I do so.
Leveling my gaze on him, I ask, “What do you feel for me?”
Surprise flickers through his features before he collects himself. Once he does, I wish I could draw the words back into my mouth.
Montes gives me a slow, smoldering smile, one that I feel low in my belly. He lifts his glass and takes a drink.
Neither of us has touched our food yet, and at that the moment, hunger is the furthest thing from my mind.
He sets his glass down, his gaze dropping to the base of my throat. “How old were you when you lost her?” He nods to my mother’s necklace.
I wrap my hand around it, and already I’m shaking my head. No, he doesn’t get to know about her. His war killed her, along with a million other mothers. She’s beyond his reach now, and I won’t give him what’s left of her.
The wine I swallow down barely makes it past the lump in my throat.
It’s my turn, and all the words I can think of have turned bitter on my tongue. “Tell me, what is the price of my life, Montes?”
Montes has been swirling his glass, but now he stops. “What are you really asking?”
“That,” I say. “I’m asking that. What is the price of my life?”
I’m setting myself up for failure, and I want him to fail me. I want him to disappoint me with his answer because I don’t hate him with all my heart, but I desperately wish I did.
He takes a sip of his drink.
That’s what I thought.
Maybe my life is worth one country to him. Maybe it’s worth less. Whatever the cost, he knows it would burn me worse than his silence.
I push back my chair and stand. “Some epic love you are,” I mutter. My words carry no vitriol. Perhaps that is what makes him flinch.
“You love me?” He says.
And he latches onto that. I shake my head. “I don’t blame you for it, you know. Thirty years is a long time to spend collecting countries like toys.” Long enough to lose your conscience.
He stands. “Serenity.”
I ignore him as I stride away, and there is something satisfying about unveiling the monster behind all the pretty prose.
“Serenity!”
I can hear his shoes click against the marble floor.
“You’re wrong,” he says when I don’t stop. “You want to know why I didn’t answer the question? Because I don’t know the answer, and that terrifies me. But I do know this: what we have is epic. Why do you think our enemies want to separate us so badly?”
Now I halt.
“We were enemies before this all began,” I say.
“I was never your enemy, Serenity. The world saw that when they watched the peace talks, and they saw it again when they watched our wedding. That is why the Resistance is trying to come between us.”
I swivel to face him. Even this far away, he swallows up space. If anyone were to be a world leader, it would be him. He’s mesmerizing, and not just for his looks. Maybe it’s all those hidden years of his that take up space in this room because they can’t be worn on his face. Whatever it is, it only makes him more of an enigma.
“You married me to secure your power,” I say.
He laughs at that and takes a step forward. “Is that what you’ve convinced yourself of? That my primary reason for marrying you was to secure my power?”
The hairs on my arm lift at what he isn’t saying.
“You and I both know I could’ve crushed the WUN under my boot if I so chose. They are more of a pain because I secured them peacefully.”
The scariest things are those that you don’t understand. That was what always frightened me about the king—I couldn’t fathom his motives. I thought I was beginning to understand him for a while there, but I wasn’t.
He saunters towards me slowly. “I’m afraid that when it comes to strategy, my queen, I’ve outmaneuvered you.”
Adrenaline courses through me as my body gets battle ready. “Why would you marry me if not for power?” There’s no more diving into a glass of wine for either of us.
I’m the ugly truth and he’s a pretty lie, and we are always, always circling each other. I think that he’s right. What passes between us is every bit as epic as I’d always feared.
He closes the last of the distance and reaches up to cup my jaw.
I tilt my head away from him. “Don’t.”
“Can’t I touch my wife?”
It’s so unlike him to ask.
There’s nothing left for me to hang onto when he’s like this. My hate’s too ephemeral, my heart too hopeful.
I close my eyes and nod.
A second later the smooth skin of his fingers brush my cheeks, my mouth. They leave, and then his lips are caressing mine.
He tastes like a taboo. He’s mine.
“It was better when I simply hated you,” I murmur against him. My head and my heart are at war, and the fallout’s ripping me in two.
“I know,” he says, his lips still pressed to mine. “That won’t stop me from trying to win you over, but I know.”
I open my eyes. The king’s dark, unfathomable ones stare back at me. My pulse quickens a little more. I’m not supposed to want to know what he’s thinking or be pulled in by the same allure that’s won over countries and officials.
But I do and I am. His life frightens me, but he’s also a kindred spirit. His darkness complements my own.
“Sit back down,” he murmurs against my lips.
I let him lead me back; I have nowhere else to go. He takes his own seat and reaches for his cutlery.
I lift my own fork and spear a pasta noodle. They used to serve us spaghetti in the bunker, but as soon as the flavor hits my taste buds, I realize this is a different beast entirely. If what I was used to was water then this would be wine.
Montes watches me the entire time.
I swallow. “Stop that.”
“Then stop making that expression when you eat.”
“What expression?” I ask.
“Like you’re being sweetly fucked.”
I shouldn’t have asked. And I definitely need more alcohol for this conversation. Montes refills my glass right before I reach for it.
“I’m surprised by you,” I say, eyeing my topped-off drink.
His eyes noticeably brighten. “Oh, really?”
This man and his ego.
“Feeding wine to the woman with stomach cancer.” Last time I overdrank, I vomited blood up.
The luster in his gaze dies out a little. “The Sleeper’s controlling the cancer.”
That’s good enough for me. I take a healthy drink.
“But I still have it.” I place the glass back down.
“You do. But you won’t for long.”
I really want to kick my legs up on the table and settle into my chair. Instead, I take another bite of the pasta. It’s heavenly.
Damnit, I think I am making a face while I eat it.
“We haven’t discovered a cure yet,” he continues, “but my researchers are close.”
I take another drink of my wine. “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.” Sure, there are experts galore, but Montes has only been funding those that furthered his war.
“What are you saying?” That vein begins pulsing again.
“I don’t think you can save me.”
Montes lets my words sink in, and for a split second he looks so reasonable. Then the bubble pops.
He stand
s swiftly, shaking the table as he does so. I stare up at him as he rounds it, his eyes sparking with emotion.
We’re fire and gunpowder. Something’s about to explode, and I lit the match.
He kicks my chair out and leans in, resting his hand along the back of it. “I can save you, and I will.”
I meet his gaze. God save me, the man means it.
I swallow. “Montes, it’s always going to be this way.” I feel like a soothsayer as I speak. “Whether it’s the cancer or the Resistance, something’s going to get me.”
My number’s already been drawn. It’s simply a matter of time. Montes is the only one besides me that’s fighting it at all.
“Haven’t you heard?” he says. “Death doesn’t come to this house.”
Chapter 10
Serenity
It’s late by the time we return to the palace. Before I can think twice about it, I take off my shoes. I can’t remember the last time I walked barefoot outside, and I shouldn’t be taken by something as simple as my naked feet touching the ground, but I am. In times of peace, people probably don’t have to think about wearing shoes, but I’ve always had to. You never know when you’re going to have to run.
It’s a little thing, this freedom, but I enjoy it. I steer us off the stone path to feel the sensation of grass between my toes. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling as I feel the spongy, moist earth beneath my feet and the itchy prick of the lawn. Right now I don’t care that a dozen lights are still on in the palace windows, or that we’re in view of several guards. Nothing can come between me and this small pleasure.
Montes must notice my fascination with the textures of the earth because he maneuvers us towards an area where the soil is free of grass and plant life. Neither of us acknowledges that I’m interested in walking through the mud and dirt.
He subtly steers me to another section of the palace grounds. Sharp pebbles bite into the pads of my feet. I curse, and suddenly, Montes’s hand is trembling in mine.
When I glance over at him, he’s laughing.
The Queen of Traitors (The Fallen World Book 2) Page 7