The Queen of All that Dies (The Fallen World Book 1)

by Laura Thalassa

  Montes thrusts into me, and the sensation is overwhelming. He’s overwhelming—over me, inside me.

  Something about the languid way he moves and the way his eyes track mine makes me think this is more than just physical for him. That I might now consume the thoughts of the man who consumes mine.

  A small smile tugs at the corners of my lips.

  Montes stills. “That’s a first,” he breathes.

  I’m finally giving into whatever it is I feel for this man and forgiving myself for circumstances beyond my control. I’m drawing a new beginning. One where not everything is a battle.

  Long after we’ve finished, Montes clasps me to him. A light and fizzy emotion surges through me. Hope.

  If not war, then love.

  I don’t know the first thing about it—love. I don’t know if I’m even capable of it. But I also know that I have a limited time to learn. I’m still dying. If I hope to help the world before my time’s up, then I’ll have to work with the king to achieve it.

  That’s asking a lot of the two of us—working together. We’re the last people for any of this. But it will happen. I’ll make sure of it.

  “Weeks ago you promised I could get involved with medical relief,” I murmur.

  Montes’s fingers trail my back. “I did.”

  “I want to start tomorrow.”

  His fingers halt. They tap against my skin once, twice. “Then I’ll put you in touch with the advisor on global health and wellness first thing,” he says. Whether the king is actually doting on me or just interested in keeping me busy doesn’t matter. I’ll get to work immediately.

  Neither of us speaks again for several minutes.

  Eventually, Montes breaks the silence. “What do you fear above all else, Serenity?” he asks quietly.

  It’s a strange question, given our circumstances.

  “You,” I say automatically.

  I glance up at him, but he’s not looking at me. He’s staring at the ceiling, a faraway expression on his face.

  His thumb strokes my shoulder. “Is this another one of your ‘facts’?” Now his eyes do travel to mine.

  I give him a shove, even as my lips curve up. He has me there. One doesn’t make love with one’s fears. Not willingly. Then again … perhaps I am the poster child for immersion therapy.

  “Aside from me, is there anything you fear?”

  My brows furrow.

  When I don’t respond, Montes says, “You can’t answer my question.”

  I can’t. Death doesn’t scare me. Nor does pain. I might’ve said I feared losing the things that I love … but I’ve already lost them all.

  “What do you fear?” I ask.

  He’s silent. “I don’t know,” he finally says.

  “You do,” I accuse.

  He sits up, the action causing the blanket to draw down and expose my breasts. I push myself up as well, dragging the sheet back over my chest.

  “They kept blood and oxygen flowing to my brain,” Montes says, rubbing his jaw. “That’s how they did it—how they kept me alive even after I’d been shot. You can replace everything but the brain. If that goes, a person is well and truly dead.”

  My hands tighten on the cloth. I don’t know why he’s decided to confide in me now, but I don’t stop him. People have killed and died to learn what he’s telling me. And he’s telling me, the woman who’s threatened to kill him to his face.

  He knows things have changed between us.

  “The origins of this war began decades ago, when I was just a successful businessman trying my hand at politics. I’d caught wind of a company developing an Alzheimer’s drug with unusual side effects. It could turn back the clock—it could return a patient to their brain’s peak performance, reverse baldness and bone loss, increase skin’s elasticity, repair torn tissue.

  “I took a chance and bought the majority shareholding of the company, and gave it the capital needed to continue testing. The drug was further tweaked, and we found a way to prevent aging completely.”

  Will had been right; Montes had stumbled upon the fountain of youth.

  “The company’s shares skyrocketed, and for a while, there was real concern in the medical field that the drug had just made tens of thousands of health related jobs obsolete.” The king gives a dry laugh. “It probably would’ve too.”

  That sounded ominous.

  “A super-virus swept through the Eastern Hemisphere. It spread rapidly, killing seventy to eighty percent of its victims. People panicked. The world hadn’t seen something like this in centuries.”

  Apprehension skitters through my veins.

  “Then one of my researchers discovered that my drug could cure the illness—if taken in the right dosage for the right amount of time. ”

  The king stares down at his palms. “People demanded I mass produce it and hand it out for free.”

  It dawns on me, how these long ago events affected the present. “You didn’t?”

  “No,” he says quietly. “I didn’t. I sold it for profit instead. And as the world got sicker, I became richer.”

  Montes shoves a hand through his hair. “In the beginning, I didn’t want power, I just didn’t want to lose everything I’d built. But somewhere along the way the line between money and power blurred, until I became king of it all.”

  All those people that died when they could’ve been saved.

  I cover my mouth with my hand and scramble out of bed, no longer caring that I’m exposing myself. My entire body is shaking.

  “I should never have saved you,” I whisper.

  A muscle in Montes’s cheek ticks. It’s the only sign that my words affect him.

  He pushes himself out of bed and stalks towards me. “You wanted to know what I fear most? Here it is: I fear I will always be alone. That no one who truly knows me will love me. Not even my wife.”

  I balk at this. “You’ve made piss poor life choices, and you want me to love you in spite of it? You’re insane.”

  I swivel to grab my robe and get the fuck out of here when Montes catches me around the waist.

  He tugs me to him, pulling me in close. “I’m not insane, Serenity,” he whispers into my ear. “And you and I both know why you saved my life. It doesn’t matter that you think I’m an evil bastard. You love me.”

  Chapter 27

  Serenity

  “Here they are,” Nigel Hall, the king’s head advisor on Global Health and Wellness, sets a crate of papers down on the desk between us, “the regional reports you requested. All two hundred and fifty-seven of them.”

  Montes made good on his promise to put me in touch with Nigel. That was three days ago, and it takes the king’s advisor that long to collect and deliver all the information on the state of affairs in every corner of the world.

  Tossing aside the cardboard top that covers the box, I pull out a handful of folders and begin flipping through them. There are hundreds of locations in need of medical relief. Places where the crime rate is exorbitantly high and the death rate is even higher.

  This isn’t just a medical issue; it was simple of me to assume so. I’ll have to take a holistic approach: education, shelter, basic amenities, regional justice systems, health—they all need to be addressed if I want to do this right.

  I thumb over the pages. “Who wrote up these reports?”

  “The committees on health and wellness, environmental sustainability, regional economic …”

  I tune him out after that. I’ve heard enough. These reports were all written in-house, which means they’re skewed to please the king.

  Just to test my theory, I interrupt him. “Where are the WUN’s?”

  He flips through the files still in the box and pulls several out. I open them up. The regions
are strangely divided here. I realize why when I delve into the reports.

  The Midwest is sectioned off from the surrounding land. The committees involved decided that it was the region in the most dire need of relief, and here measures will be taken to rid the earth and water of radiation, repair the economy, and get people back to health.

  It’s laughable. The Midwest was one of the most unscathed areas of the WUN’s land. Our former representatives figured that the king had plans to make use of the miles and miles of farmable land. This analysis only seems to support our theory.

  “Interesting,” I say, snapping the folder shut.

  “What is?”

  “The data gathered. It’s inaccurate.”

  Nigel balks at my words. “Your Majesty, I assure you, these are the most comprehensive reports out there.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt of that. They’re the only ones out there. But they’re still inaccurate. I will not be following your committees’ recommendations.”

  Nigel looks scandalized.

  “Has anyone gone into these communities and asked the people themselves what they need?” I ask.

  “Your Majesty,” he says my title disparagingly, like how an adult might talk to a small child, “most of these areas are far too dangerous to enter.”

  “All the more reason to find out how to change the situation. I want you to pull together a team and begin plans for us to visit these places.”

  “‘Us’? No, no, no. I’m afraid that’s not possible. The king will have my head.”

  “You’ll do this or I’ll have yours.”

  “But the king—”

  “I don’t give a shit about the king’s opinion on this.” I talk over him. “I vow on my life I will offer you protection from him, Nigel, but this will be done.” Montes owes the world that much.

  Someone raps on the door. “Your Majesty.” It’s Marco. Abominable, douchelord Marco.

  “I’m busy,” I say, staring down a panicked Nigel.

  “Not for this,” he says. “The video has leaked.”

  When I enter the king’s conference room, I find him pacing. Behind him, footage of my entrance into the WUN plays in loops across the screen. When Will had showed the tape for me, I couldn’t see all the meaningful details. Now I can. My face is alarmingly calm.

  Marco shifts uncomfortably next to me as he catches sight of the footage. In fact, most of the king’s advisors sitting in on this meeting stare at me with a mixture of anger and horror.

  “We’ve been deleting various uploads of the video all morning, but it keeps surfacing,” Montes says.

  “Why now?” I ask, my eyes traveling over him.

  Three days ago, this man admitted to me how he stayed ageless and how the war came to be. I still can’t wrap my mind around how he can look at himself in the mirror every day, or why my heart hasn’t stopped aching for him.

  Montes turns to look back at the screen. “We’ve destroyed numerous cells over the last several days.”

  The cells I’d told the king about. So this was a direct result of my efforts.

  “How bad is it?”

  That vein in Montes’s temple pulses.

  “You haven’t been able to completely stop the leak, have you?” I say. He’d been so sure.

  That’s how kings fall. Hubris.

  Montes glances away from the screen, piercing me with his gaze. It’s an explosive look, one full of vicious protectiveness. For all his wicked deeds, he doesn’t just care about himself. No, he cares fiercely about me too.

  “It’ll be taken care of,” the king says. The edge in his voice makes me think more people will die.

  I back out of the room and leave the king to his collusions. This isn’t my battle. It once was, but no longer. I’ve already surrendered.

  Over the next week, Bedlam breaks out across the globe. The king isn’t able to suppress the footage of me, and it’s done exactly what the Resistance intended: sparked rebellion.

  Uprisings pop up across continents, some more organized than others. The Resistance spearheads many of them, and they’re the most destructive. Provincial governments are demolished, the king’s research labs burned, armories ambushed. Reports suggest the group’s numbers have nearly doubled since the video leaked, and membership was already in the hundreds of thousands.

  I rub my forehead, trying to focus on the files Nigel gave me a week ago. I sit out in front of the palace soaking up the morning sun as I flip through them.

  I’ve never been more unsure of myself than I am now. A year ago, I knew exactly who I was and what I stood for. The king was the enemy. He was evil and he wreaked death and destruction.

  Now I’m married to that very man, and he’s no longer so easily compartmentalized. The Resistance, whom I’d sided with for so long, is now the one perpetuating violence when the world’s finally found peace. Right and wrong are lovers; I can’t have one without the other.

  I lean back against my chair and try to discern fact from fiction in these reports. I could be sifting through this inside, in the fancy new office I’ve been given, but I haven’t had the luxury of lingering out in the sun for some time, and feeling the warm rays on my skin is better than even the king’s most luxurious rooms.

  I glance up from the report when I hear the distant sound of a car coming up the drive.

  I squint my eyes. Not one car. A battalion of them. And not just cars. Armored vehicles.

  I stand, dropping the file on the stone bench beside me.

  I hear a familiar whine; my mind sharpens at the sound. That ransacked warehouse, those missing weapons. I’m now facing them down.

  The whine turns into a hiss as a rocket arcs across the sky from the bed of one of the cars. It’s headed straight for the palace.

  So today’s the day I die.

  Chapter 28

  The King

  My men get the call while I’m setting up provincial governments in South America. I see their fingers go to their earpieces one moment, and in the next, they’re surrounding me.

  “Your Majesty,” one says, “we need to get you out of the palace. Now.”

  “What’s going on?”

  The explosion knocks me over the desk, the sound a roar in my ears. The walls shake as dust and plaster rain down on me.

  Someone bombed my palace. Someone bombed my palace. Anger and incredulity war for dominance.

  “Security breach! Front gate!” a guard yells, and then my soldiers are pulling me to my feet and dragging me out of the room.

  The front gate? Serenity’s out there. A bolt of panic flares through my veins.

  I yank the hands off of me. “I’m not leaving without the queen.” I need to see her now.

  “Our men are already on it.”

  I hesitate, forcing my guards to drag me out of my room and propel me towards the map room, where escape waits.

  Oh God, what if something already happened to her?

  Serenity

  The missile slams into the west wing of the palace, and the building erupts in a plume of fire and stone. I barely have time to cover my face before the wave of heat slams into me.

  After all their years of planning, the Resistance is finally making their big move, and now I’m on the wrong side of the fight.

  Go figure.

  “Your Majesty!” The guards who’ve shadowed me all morning now sprint towards me as I rise to my feet.

  When they reach me, I don’t think. I grab the gun from one of the guard’s holsters.

  For a split second he looks at me like I’ve betrayed them. No, I have something much stupider in mind. “We need to cut them off.”

  The words are barely out of my mouth when one of my guards lays a hand on my shoulder. “We need to get you o
ut of here. Now.”

  Perhaps if I’d grown up in a world without violence, I would’ve readily agreed to this. Instead I duck under the guard’s arms and begin running for the front gate. I pump my arms; I can hear the king’s men behind me.

  I fall to one knee and line up the gun’s sights, and then I fire, aiming at the leading car’s front window.

  A miss.

  I correct my aim and try again.

  Another miss.

  I can see the line of vehicles a little better. Someone’s reloading the rocket launcher in the bed of that truck. I bite my lip and pull the trigger. I miss my target—I am too far away for much accuracy—but my bullet punctures the driver’s side window.

  That’s all it takes for the car to swerve, sending some of the men in the back over the tailgate.

  A pair of arms wrap around my midsection, and I’m lifted off my feet. One of the king’s vehicles cuts across the expansive lawn and lurches to a stop behind us. More of Montes’s soldiers grab me and throw me into the car.

  Fighting my guards’ orders any longer will only get more people killed. This isn’t a battle I’m equipped to fight in.

  I right myself and glance out the window. Behind us I can see the Resistance’s vehicles still barreling full speed ahead towards the gate. Other palace guards stationed near the palace entrance are already firing their weapons, but it’s making no difference.

  The gate lets out a sickening groan as the first car rams into it, and it’s torn from its hinges. The palace has now been breached.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “There’s an escape route inside the palace that leads to a launch pad. The king’s already on his way there.”

  Our car slams to a stop at the fancy courtyard in front of the palace’s front doors.

  “Move, move, move!” one of the soldiers shouts as we exit the vehicle. And now I understand; wherever this exit is, we’re not nearly close enough to it.