I hear a familiar click. The sound of a gun being cocked. I look up at the final soldier standing. He has a gun trained on me.
“Don’t fucking move. I swear I’ll shoot,” he says. His body is trembling.
Freedom or death—the poster got that much correct about me. I’m not letting these men take me hostage, even if it costs me my life.
Lord knows I hadn’t expected to live this long.
The soldier doesn’t shoot. I can tell he wants to look at his fallen comrades, the ones that are moaning and those that have gone still, but he’s smart enough to know that the moment he takes his eyes off of me, he’ll join their ranks.
“We freed you,” he says.
“Swapping one prison for another is no freedom,” I tell him.
He opens his mouth, but I don’t give him time to respond. I turn my gun on him, and I shoot.
The bullet takes him between the eyes. He remains upright for a moment longer, then his legs fold and his body lands with a thump.
I take a moment to catch my breath. Blood is seeping onto my dress. I can feel the warmth of it against my thighs. It sticks to my back, staining the material crimson. The vehicle is a mess of dead men.
I can still hear two clinging to life, their breathing labored. When I catch sight of them, my stolen gun comes up and I pull the trigger twice. It’s not just a mercy killing. Dying men have nothing to lose. Even though I’m some long dead queen, and even though they needed me alive, none of that matters much when you’re bleeding out.
The vehicle is still canting from side to side, and I can hear the driver yelling, but I can’t tell if his words are meant for me or for the men bearing down on us.
I lean my back against the wall. Until the driver is either killed or decides to stop the car, there’s not much for me to do except muse over my dark thoughts.
I reach out and exchange my gun for another, wiping the bloodied metal off on my skirts, taking in my surroundings again as I do so. I expected the future to be clean and shiny like a new penny. But I’m not seeing clean and shiny. The interior of this vehicle is rusted and stained. The men’s uniforms are faded. And the soldiers themselves had a sinewy, desperate look about them.
I don’t believe I like this future very much at all.
Suddenly the car slams to stop. I hear the driver side door being thrown open, followed by the sound of pounding footsteps moving farther and farther away from the vehicle. More gunfire goes off outside.
Time for me to move.
I push my body off the ground, blood seeping between my toes. For the first time in over a century I stand on my own two feet. The gown I wear drapes off my shoulders, and my drenched skirts stick to my legs.
I am a thing made of lace and blood. Swathed in silk and dripping with the dark deeds of men. I suppose I’m finally clothed accordingly.
The adrenaline I felt earlier resurges through my veins, and I grip my gun tighter.
I’d like to say that I can feel all those years I lost, that they left some imprint on my body or my mind. But I can’t. Other than my memories feeling a bit foggy, there’s no indication that I’d been asleep for decades rather than hours.
That makes this all worse. Because it seems like only hours ago the king told me he loved me. The moment that love became inconvenient for him, that fucker let me waste away. My breathing is coming faster and faster.
My monster, my husband, my captor. Soon he will be my victim.
I always considered Montes the thing of my nightmares. Now I’ll be his.
Yes, I think as I step up to the vehicle’s rear doors, I will enjoy killing him.
Chapter 4
Serenity
“Come out with your hands up!”
Even the orders of the future remain the same. Has nothing changed at all?
Pressing my back against one of the vehicle’s doors, I use my hand to throw open the other. Instead of the gunfire I expect, a dozen different soldiers yell orders to exit the car. Those orders die away when they catch sight of the bodies.
Finally, fearfully, one calls out, “Serenity?”
I close my eyes. “I’m here,” I say.
“Is there anyone with you?”
“No one living.”
There’s a pause as the king’s men process that. Whatever they were told about me, I’m guessing that it hasn’t prepared them for who I really am.
“You can come out, Your Majesty. We won’t shoot.”
I open my eyes and push away from the wall and into the open doorway. Sunlight touches my skin for the first time in a very long time. I soak it in. The day is full of firsts.
I step down from the car and onto the dirt road.
A hush falls over my audience as they catch sight of me. Then slowly, one by one, they kneel.
I stop and take them in. I had prepared for their horror, dressed in blood as I am, not their veneration.
There are dozens of soldiers circled around the car I exited. Behind their ranks, several armored vehicles are parked, lights flashing. Above us, a chopper circles.
It’s all the same. The machinery might look slightly different, but it doesn’t appear to have advanced in all this time. Prosperity breeds progress, and this, this isn’t progress.
I fear for the world I have woken to.
Beyond the cars, scraggly rolling hills stretch out as far as the eye can see. I can feel the solitude of this place. The whistle of the wind seems to exacerbate it.
I haven’t dropped my gun, but the soldiers don’t seem to mind. As soon as they rise, I catch sight of their expressions.
I’m a ghost. A myth. That’s the only explanation for the spooked ardor in their eyes.
All the while, rivulets of blood snake down my calves. They’re right to be spooked of me.
I scour their ranks, looking for Montes. My eyes pass over dozens of men and a few women. I look them over once, twice. I didn’t realize I held onto some sick hope until I feel it vanish.
The king isn’t among these soldiers.
Even in the middle of my bloodlust, my heart aches. Last time I was captured, he was there to retrieve me.
A hundred years to change into whatever he wanted to become. A hundred years to fall out of love. A hundred years to forget about the broken, deadly girl he forced into marriage.
The king that rules these people isn’t the same king I knew. All my anger and pain are wasted on a man who, in all probability, no longer cares for me. The world’s still at war, after all. If I can really end it, the king should have taken me out of the Sleeper long ago.
Reflexively, my hand tightens on my gun.
Behind me is open road, in front of me is vengeance. My twisted heart is breaking, but I’m tempted to leave my heartbreak and revenge to the past and walk away from it all.
I take a step back. The soldiers tense.
“Your Majesty,” one of them says, “we’re the king’s royal guard. You can trust us.”
Normally, when people tell you that you can trust them, it means exactly the opposite.
I look around; the soldiers encircle me completely. If I ran, how far would I get before they caught me? How many more men would I have to kill? I don’t want to spill more blood. And even if I did, I couldn’t possibly take them all out before the king’s guard immobilized me. I’d lose whatever precious power I had to wield.
I’m still not free.
“I need your word,” I say to the man who spoke.
He pauses. “Anything, Your Majesty.”
“Don’t let the king put me back in the Sleeper.” My voice breaks as I speak. “Kill me first.”
“I’ll vow to you anything but that.”
“Then I can’t go with you,” I say.
“You
r Majesty,” he says, all but pleading with me, “what you’re asking of me is treason. The king would—”
I press the barrel of the gun to my temple. The soldiers tense once more.
“I need your word,” I say. “I need everyone’s word, or I will pull the trigger,” I say.
I hear murmuring from all around me. It takes a minute to make out what they’re saying, but eventually I do.
“Freedom or death.”
Even out here in the midday heat, my skin prickles.
What have you made of me, Montes?
As my gaze sweeps over all of them, I begin to see them nod. Then, one by one, they take a knee and put their fists over their hearts.
“You have my word,” the first soldier says.
“And mine,” someone says from behind me.
“And mine.”
“And mine.”
This lonely space fills with the sound of dozens of oaths.
Slowly, I lower my gun. They don’t know me, but now they show me allegiance.
I slip my weapon into the bodice of my dress and approach the king’s guards, leaving bloody footprints in my wake.
Time to meet the man of my nightmares.
The future is no place for civilization.
I stare out the window of the chopper that circled high above me only hours ago. Even this far away from the surface of the earth I can see the destruction.
What does a century and a half of war look like? It looks like ghost towns, like rust and wreckage.
Here and there I see evidence of small towns where people must live. Nothing about these settlements follow any sort of city planning. There are no straight lines, and they have none of the symmetry I recall from the time before the war.
The king appears to have left more than just me to rot.
Over the course of the flight, I notice the settlements change. They get bigger, nicer, and they seem to have some of the symmetry that the other ones lacked. Perhaps not everyone is suffering in this new world.
Once we begin to descend, I have an idea of where we’re headed. A swath of deep blue ocean stretches below me, broken up by islands every so often.
The king rebuilt his Mediterranean palace.
An unnatural dread settles into my bones. It’s going to feel like nothing’s changed. I just know it.
As soon as we land, I stand, and the king’s guards step into formation.
Dried blood flakes off me. I suppress a grimace. I’m a mess.
The back of the chopper opens, and I follow the soldiers out, the metal floor cool against my bare feet. My hair kicks up around me as I exit the aircraft.
No cameramen wait for me, nor any eager civilians. Instead, an armored car idles off to the side of the runway, and other than the few soldiers that stand in front of it, we are alone.
Still no king.
And now my mind skips back to the first time the king retrieved me, back when I thought he ordered my father to be killed. Even knowing that he was last person I wanted to see, he’d come for me.
Perhaps that’s why he didn’t show up today.
Because it if there is one person I do want to see, it’s Montes.
I was right.
The king’s world is all so eerily familiar.
The palace is just as abominably beautiful as his palaces have always been. Just as big, just as grand, just as oppressive. I stare up at it as the armored car I ride in comes to a stop. Exotic, flowering vines grow up the sides of its walls. Beyond the walls, the ocean stretches on and on.
Just as before, no one waits for us.
I slide out of the vehicle before anyone can try to help me out.
My entourage of guards fans out around me.
I can’t look away from those tall walls.
“The king’s inside?” I ask.
“He is,” one of the men says. “He’s ordered us to take you to your chambers, where you’re to shower and dress.”
I feel my upper lip curl. Of course he would want me to wash away all my sins like they never happened.
I follow the soldiers up the marble steps. Before I can cross the threshold, one of the men guarding the door clears his throat. “Your Majesty, your gun.”
The cold metal rests between my breasts. “What about it?” I ask.
“You can’t bring it inside.”
“Says who?” I ask.
“It’s the king’s policy.”
Reluctantly, I reach down my bodice and hand the gun over. I stole that one; I can always steal another.
Walking into the king’s palaces always felt like entering someone else’s dream. But now, more than ever, it feels surreal as I pass the colossal columns that line the great entryway. I’m in a time and a place that I don’t belong. There is a bone deep wrongness to the situation, and I can do nothing about it.
So I settle for getting perverse pleasure dragging my bloodied skirts and dirty feet across the king’s pristine floors.
As we wind our way through the halls of this place, I keep my muscles tense. The guards may have promised to keep me safe from the Sleeper, but their allegiance ultimately belongs to the king.
Our footsteps echo through the lonely, abandoned halls. When I was newly married to the king, his corridors bustled with politicians and aides, servants and guards. Now they’re eerily empty, the artwork that lines them covered with drop cloths.
Has my terrible king grown eccentric in his old age?
The few posted guards I pass stand stoically. If they’re shocked by my presence, they show no sign of it.
Eventually my retinue stops in front of a set of double doors.
“Your chambers, Your Majesty,” one of the soldiers says. “Make yourself comfortable. We’ll be right outside.”
I nod to them and enter the room.
I could still be an emissary and this my suite for all the similarities I see.
My eyes move over a large, gilded mirror, a canopy bed, and elaborately carved table and chairs to match.
I run a hand over and intricately carved piece of furniture. This is too similar to the time I left. It’s destabilizing. Confusing.
On the far side of the room, two French doors lead out to a balcony. They have already been thrown open, and a sea breeze rushes over me. I’m sure that if I walked out there right now, I’d see the ocean in all its glory.
Instead I pace.
I’m right back to where I started, here where the tragedies of the world can never touch me. Everything about this place mocks my existence.
He should’ve just left me to die.
I press my palms to my eyes.
I don’t want any of this.
And then there’s what I do want. Answers, revenge, repentance.
I have a sick feeling I won’t get any of them.
Chapter 5
The King
She’s here, in the palace. Awake.
Even if I didn’t hear the cars pull up or receive updates from my soldiers, I would know it.
Every square inch my skin is buzzing in a way it hasn’t done for decades. Not since those beautiful eyes of hers closed a hundred years ago. I’m mortified to admit that I’ve long since forgotten their exact color.
I can’t escape her face. It’s everywhere—printed onto posters, mounted on billboards, tagged across the sides of walls—but I can escape all those details about Serenity that used to haunt me. I’ve avoided the footage of her I’d once so liberally dispersed.
Up until now, my feelings for her had moved from a fresh wound, to an old one, to a dull ache, to a fond memory. A perfect memory.
That all ends today.
From the reports coming in, my men say they found her covered in blood. Th
at the vehicle she was pulled from was full of dead men.
I put a fist to my mouth.
My wife’s awake.
Awake and on a warpath.
And I’m her target.
Serenity
Once I’m in the shower, I begin to assess myself.
Other than a few absent freckles, my skin looks the same. And from the brief glimpse I caught of myself in the mirror, I still retain the scar on my face, as well as the thin white ones that crisscross my knuckles.
I might be heartsick, but physically, I feel great. If I’m still riddled with cancer, then my health will change soon enough. For now, I count my blessings. I have few enough of them.
It’s only once I leave the shower that I encounter disappointment.
I frown at the lone gown and heels that sit inside the closet. It’s the furthest thing to combat gear I can imagine. The lacy lingerie that accompanies them is little better.
It takes me almost five minutes to dress, due largely to the number of holes and straps the deep crimson gown has. I ignore the heels altogether.
A thud at my back has me spinning around. My eyes lock on the gilded mirror that takes up a good portion of one of the walls. The surface of it trembles ever so slightly.
I walk up to the mirror and press my palm against its surface. The tremors die down, and eventually vanish altogether.
This eerie place.
Someone raps on the door. “Your Majesty,” they say, “The king will see you now.”
More cavernous halls, more empty corridors. Everything is pristine, but there are no signs of life.
For the first time since I woke, I feel the stirrings of trepidation. I’ve been angry at the man who put me in the Sleeper, not the one who refused to let me out.
I don’t know this man.
The guards that surround me carry no weapons. I was so confident that I could steal one off of them, but there are none to steal.
They take me to a room I assume is used for extravagant parties, judging by how large the double doors are.
The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) Page 3