The drug I’m being forced to inhale starts to take effect. Colors are blurring and my movement is slowing.
I lift my gun wielding arm.
Suddenly, I’m yanked back from the wall. The hallway spins with the movement.
My body begins to sag, each muscle feeling increasingly heavy. I still hold my weapon, but it takes an increasing amount of focus to get my body to move.
“Don’t shoot!” the man behind me says.
It takes a second for my eyes to focus.
When they do, I see what my attacker sees: over a dozen different guards and officers, most with their weapons drawn. And right in the middle of them, Montes.
Our eyes find each other. He doesn’t show his fear or his anger, not like most men do. But they’re both there, simmering just beneath the surface.
I know his men aren’t going to shoot, not when my captor is using me as a human shield.
The edges of my vision are starting to darken when I feel the man at my back trying to pry my gun from my grip.
I’m not going out like this.
It takes the rest of my strength just to pull that tiny little trigger. The shot echoes down the hall and the man cries out. I’m not even sure whether or not the bullet hit him or he was just taken by surprise. Either way, it’s enough.
I fall out of his hold, and a dozen other guns discharge. And then the last of my attackers meets his grisly end.
I set my bloody crown down on the airplane’s conference table, the gleam of it somewhat dulled by the blood splatter.
It’s been over an hour since the attack, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at us all. I’m still coated in blood. Despite the fact that I have worn blood more often than makeup, it never gets less horrifying.
Heinrich Weber, the king’s grand marshal, is the last to enter the cabin, the door to the aircraft closing behind him.
“Your Majesties,” he bows to me and Montes, the latter who is stalking up the aisle from the back of the plane, a damp hand towel gripped tightly in his hand, “we found several dead employees in the stadium’s storage closets,” he reports. “From what the investigators have been able to piece together, it’s believed that Serenity’s attackers disposed of them then took their ID badges and gear.”
“That was all it took?” the king says. He kneels in front of me. Placing a hand against my cheek, he begins to wipe down my face with the cloth. I’m so taken by the gesture that I let him tend to me.
“The queen of the entire eastern hemisphere goes to her first—her first—speech,” he continues, “and all it takes for the enemy to infiltrate is a couple stolen badges?” His ministrations roughen with his anger.
As soon as the towel gets close to my lips, I take it from Montes. I don’t want anyone else pressing a damp cloth near my mouth. Not even the king.
He stares into my eyes, one of his hands dropping to my thigh and squeezing it. When he removes his palm, I notice it’s stained red from just touching the fabric I wear.
I’m a bloody, bloody mess.
He stares at his hand for a beat, then his fingers curl into a fist.
Someone’s going to die. I can feel it. The king’s anger has always needed an outlet.
He stands. “Did you discover who the men are affiliated with?”
I begin wiping my arms down. It’s a hopeless task. The blood’s everywhere.
The officer hesitates. “They’re still not sure, but it appears that they were associated with the First Free Men.”
I go still.
Styx Garcia.
The man tried to capture me again after the deal we made. The thought makes me seethe. Surely there’s an explanation for it.
I remember the way Styx looked at me when we last spoke. He wants me for more than just power and political leverage. There is some personal aspect to this.
The king glances back at me, and for a split second I’m almost sure he knows of my talk with Styx. My heart pounds in my ears, but I stare at him unflinchingly.
“These sorts of things will continue to happen so long as the queen visits these places,” Marco says, interrupting the moment. He sits on the far side of the room, his eyes on me.
“Then we will call this off,” the king says.
A bit of the old tyrant ruler peeks out. I knew that bastard wasn’t gone.
I stand, setting aside the now blood-drenched towel. “Montes.”
The king isn’t the only one who can call the room to heel with his presence. It takes just a single word for all eyes to focus on me.
A century of sleep has given me a strange sort of power, one that I never had when I was just a young foreign queen.
“You think this is just going to go away if you lock me up in one of your palaces?” I say.
His head tilts just the slightest. “No, but it will keep you alive longer than this.” He holds up his bloody palm. “I didn’t hide you all this time just to watch you die.”
Sometimes I get so swept up in his dominance plays that I forget he’s just a broken man trying to save his broken woman.
My voice softens. “You’ve tried hiding me away. The world found me. Why don’t we try a different tactic now?”
He holds my gaze.
Finally, he blows out a breath.
He gives a brief nod to the men that await his orders. They seem to relax at the gesture, many of them returning to whatever it was they were previously doing.
The king comes back to my side then. “I’m going to trust you. Don’t make me regret it,” he says softly, echoing the same words I said to him a week ago.
I had wondered once whether it was possible for people like us to redeem ourselves. Now as I stare at Montes, my conscience whispers, perhaps.
Perhaps.
Chapter 32
Serenity
Our next stop is in Kabul, a city smack dab in the middle of the East’s territories. It’s a barren place bordered by huge, austere mountains.
We arrive early that evening, just as the sun is beginning to set.
Endless war has made this city even more desolate than Giza. Most of the dwellings are mudbrick, and the older ones seem to be crumbling where they stand. Then there are the buildings that came before. Steel and cement skeletons are all that remain of those.
Here it appears that the city is returning to the earth. We rose, we peaked, and now we fall.
I can’t say it isn’t beautiful, however. The rosy hue of sunset makes the ruins look deliberate, like some city planner crafted the desolation into the architecture of this place.
As our car winds through the city, I catch glimpses of street art. On this street it’s a spray-painted grenade. The artist went to the trouble of adding eyes to the explosive. Eyes and a single curving scar that looks like a teardrop. Beneath it a caption reads, Freedom or Death.
I see several more tagged iterations of this propaganda on our drive. Some with just a grenade, others with renditions of my face. In some, I can only tell it’s me by the scar they include.
I touch my face. Perhaps I’m the wrong person to encourage peace. From everything I’ve seen, I’m a war cry. A liberator, but a violent one.
Marco was right—more attempts will be made to capture me or kill me.
I am, after all, a walking revolution.
I sit out on the back patio of Montes’s royal residency in Kabul. The mansion rests on the mountainside overlooking the city.
An evening breeze stirs my hair, and I pull the blanket around me closer.
“You know, there are other ways to stay warm.” The voice at my back is like the richest honey.
My king has decided to join me.
“If I was trying to stay warm, I wouldn’t be out here,” I say over my shoulder before retu
rning my gaze to the brutal landscape.
Montes comes to my side, placing two tumblers and a bottle of amber liquid on the table in front of me before pulling out the chair next to mine.
“I don’t like it when you’re alone,” he admits.
I glance over at him, some of the hair that was tucked behind my ear now falling loose. “Why?”
He pours us each a glass and hands one to me. “Another way to keep warm,” he explains. From the way he’s gazing at me, his eyes will do more to heat me up than the drink will.
“I don’t want you to ever feel like you’re lost,” he says, returning to the previous subject.
That’s so oddly sweet of him.
“I’ve been alone enough for the both of us,” he adds. He stares at his glass, as though he can divine his next words in the liquid.
After a moment, he brings it to his mouth and takes a sip. He hisses out a satisfied breath after he takes a swallow.
I follow his lead and take a healthy swig of the alcohol. I almost spit it back out. It scorches the inside of my mouth.
“Mother—” I curse. “That’s strong.”
Montes look like he’s trying not to laugh. “I hope you never change, Serenity.”
I glance over at him again. Between the light streaming out from inside and the lanterns scattered throughout the garden, Montes seems to glow.
Beautiful, haunted man. How is it that I’m only seeing how tragic he is now?
“I hope I do,” I say softly.
I squint out at the small, flickering lights of Kabul. “Tell me how you’ve changed.”
He sighs, like it’s all too much. And what do I know? If I lived for a century and a half, life might overwhelm me as well.
He bows his head. “I’ve always felt such … discontent. Even as a boy. It didn’t matter what I achieved or what I was given. I wanted more. Always more,” he murmurs, staring at his glass. “To hunger for success—that’s a good trait to possess as a businessman and a conqueror, but it needs to be balanced with temperance, morality, and wisdom. I’m not sure how much I have of any of those. Even now.”
His gaze moves up to the stars. “I can’t tell you how many nights I wished upon your Pleiades. For you to heal. For you to live. Once you were gone, for the first time in my life, success was overridden by something else.”
I feel a lump in my throat. I couldn’t speak even if he asked me to.
Montes looks at me. “How have I changed? I fell in love. I needed you, and you were locked away in a Sleeper. And the only way you were getting out of that machine was if I found a cure for cancer. It changed my entire focus. I began to understand loss in a way I hadn’t before—I began to feel the weight of your life and your suffering. Of everyone’s suffering. I couldn’t ignore it. God, did I try, too. But after a time … well, even an old dog like me can form new habits. Better habits.”
I’m gripping my glass so tightly I can feel the blood leaving my fingers.
He shakes his head. “You go so long without someone and fear can eat you up. The idea of you sustained me for decades but—and it’s inexplicable—I felt that once you were healed I couldn’t wake you. And I had all sorts of reasons for it—and so many of them are legitimate—but at the end of the day I don’t know, I just couldn’t make that one leap.”
Montes is finally explaining his decision to me. Really explaining it.
I take another swallow of my drink, and this time I don’t feel the burn, grappling with my thoughts as I am.
“You and I are the only people who know the world as it once was,” he says.
I shiver. Right now I feel like Montes and I are the only two beings in the entire universe, tied together by love and hate, time and memory.
“Us—and your former advisors,” I say.
“They aren’t people,” Montes says.
I take a deep breath. “Neither are we.”
We are all just self-fashioned monsters posing as gods.
“You’re wrong, Serenity. You and I cling to our humanity more fiercely than anyone else.”
He has a point. We cling to it because we know just how close we are to losing it.
“Your Majesties!” Heinrich dashes out to the patio. The alarm in his voice has us both standing.
Almost reflexively, Montes steps in front of me.
I frown at his back. I never wanted the old Montes, but he became mine anyway. I want this newer version even less. This is a man whose evil deeds I can truly forget. And I don’t want to forget. I want to remember to my last dying breath that even though the king might now be the solution, in the beginning he was the problem.
Just as soon as that thought comes, another follows in its wake.
No one is beyond forgiveness.
Both my parents used to say that, and that was something I had almost forgotten.
“We just got word from our men who were supposed to change guard for the regional leader of Kabul,” Heinrich says. “They said the place is a bloodbath—our soldiers are dead and the family is gone.”
Chapter 33
Serenity
“You’re not going,” the king says.
He and his men are equipping themselves in the living room.
A mercenary king. I hadn’t expected that from Montes. I don’t know whether I’m more surprised that he’s joining the unit assigned to the task, or that his men seem unfazed by this.
After all these years, the king has finally come down from his ivory tower.
“I am if you are,” I say, checking the magazine of my gun to make sure my weapons are fully loaded. My new gun isn’t. I haven’t had a chance to replace the spent bullets I fired off in Giza. I cross the room where box of communal ammunition rests. I pull out my own bullets and compare.
A match.
I begin to slide them into the magazine. The soldiers around me tense, their eyes darting between me and the king.
“Anyone have a spare magazine?” I say.
Just in case we run into any difficulties.
One of the soldiers lifts one sitting next to him and begins to hand it over.
Montes catches his wrist. “Don’t,” he says. “Serenity won’t be joining us.”
I finish loading my magazine and force it up into the chamber of the gun. “Who’s going to stop me?” I ask.
Many of these men saw me kill today, which means they saw my lack of hesitation, and now they’re seeing my lack of remorse.
Some of the soldiers look uncomfortable, but I also catch some suppressing grins.
Montes steps forward, crowding me. “Don’t force my hand, Serenity.” His voice has gone quiet.
“Then don’t force mine.”
We stare each other down. Us and our impasses. Montes knows just how easy it would be for me to lift my arm and point this gun at him, and I know how easy it would be for him to have his men detain me.
He knows I can hold my own if something bad should happen. I’ve proven that to him over and over.
“Let me into your world,” I say softly. My plea cuts through the tension in a way that none of my previous words could.
Montes’s nostrils flare and his lips press together. It used to be that the king couldn’t resist me when I got physical. Now it’s something else. Every time I tear down an emotional wall of ours, I make headway with him.
“If anything goes wrong—anything—I won’t be repeating this, and nothing you say or do will stop me.”
By the time we arrive at the home of the woman who ran Kabul’s government, all that’s left are bodies and blood.
I step over one of the king’s fallen soldiers just inside the entrance of the home. His throat has been sliced open. I can still hear the slow drip of his blood as it leaves his body.
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The king’s men who were on the scene first have secured the perimeter of the house and the surrounding neighborhood, but aside from them, we’ll be the first ones inside the home of Nadia and Malik Khan, the regional leader and her husband.
I have my gun out. Even though there are plenty of guards, some who were here before us and some who came with our brigade, it never hurts to be ready.
We move through the residence, our footsteps nearly silent. I take in the sparse furnishings. Even regional leaders live fairly humble lives, if this home is anything to go by. The furniture and decorations are faded, and the wooden tables have lost their polish.
Montes walks slightly ahead of me, his broad shoulders largely obscuring the hall ahead of us.
We head to the back of the house, where the bedrooms are.
More fallen soldiers lay outside the doors, their eyes glassy. These ones have gunshot wounds.
My eyes drift back to the door. Hesitantly, I step inside.
The reports never mentioned that Malik and Nadia had kids, but they very obviously do. Two beds rest against the far wall of the children’s room, both empty. The sight of those ruffled sheets is harder to look at than the dead soldiers. I grip my gun tighter.
Someone will die for this.
Once we scan the room, our group moves back out into the hall. We make quick work of the other rooms, until there is just the master bedroom left.
I don’t particularly want to go in there. For one thing, the closer I get the stronger the smell of raw meat and death is. The reason for that is obvious—four dead guards line the hall leading up to it.
But there’s also the less obvious reason for my reluctance. My intuition is now kicking in. Maybe it’s just the partially open door and the darkness beyond it, but my heart rate’s picking up.
We enter, and my eyes land on the empty master bed. There are several drops of blood on the sheets, but I have no idea what sort of injury caused them.
The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) Page 18