The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) (13 page)

Chapter 24

Serenity

“Your itinerary is
complete.” The officers I met with yesterday are now discussing the peace talks I will be having with the heads of several of the king’s territories.

None of them have broached the subject of last night’s call with Styx. I doubt they will either.

Montes sits next to me in the conference room, his presence dominating the space.

His leg and arm brush against mine as he settles in, and I can’t help but think it’s deliberate. That everything about him is deliberate. And these two casual touches serve to remind me that this monstrous man can make my heart flutter even when his attention is focused elsewhere.

The king doesn’t need to be here, but of course he wants to be. If he can micromanage every step of this process, he will.

I grab the document set out in front of me in an effort to refocus my energy and attention.

“The queen’s tour of the East will begin next week,” one of the officers says.

I lean back in my chair, flipping through the itinerary. We’re starting my campaign for peace in the East. I have to win my own people over before I can consider swaying the people of the West.

Next to me, Montes reads through his copy, pinching his lower lip. One of his legs begins to jiggle. I take the subtle hints of his aggravation as a good sign.

“How did you pick these places?” I ask.

“Your Majesty, we followed your requests—these are the biggest cities or the ones that have the least loyalty to the East.”

Most of the city names I recognize, but some are new. When I get the chance, I will discreetly find a map and plot these places out.

The king closes his copy and tosses it onto the table. “No.”

We all look to him.

“Half of your scheduled visits are in wild country. We’ve long since established that we can’t secure many of these locations.”

“Yes,” the female officers says slowly, “the lack of royal presence in those regions is partially responsible for their fractured loyalty.”

“These are exactly the places I want to be,” I say.

The king stands and shrugs off his jacket. “No,” he repeats.

“Yes,” I say just as forcefully.

The vein in his temple pounds. “Goddamnit, Serenity, don’t test me.”

I stand, my chair screeching as it slides back. “Or what?”

“Or I will lock you in a fucking room where no one can hurt you.”

I take a step towards him. “Are you threatening to put me back in the Sleeper?” I ask, my voice low.

He flinches. So the bastard has some remorse after all.

“I’m not going back in there, Montes. Not ever.”

“You’ve said that before, and then you went back into the Sleeper.” He says it like I chose to return to the coffin. Like I wasn’t forced into it by his own hand.

I step in close. “How
dare
you. Consider yourself lucky I’m unarmed.”

Before the discussion can devolve any further, the door to the conference room opens, and Marco strides in.

Marco the clone. My skin still prickles at the thought.

It takes him only a handful of seconds to register that he came in at a bad time.

He puts his hands up. “By all means, don’t stop on my account.”

I turn back to the king. “So now that I know about Marco, he’s allowed to join us?”

“He’s my right-hand.” To Marco, the king says, “Have you seen the itinerary?”

“I have,” Marco says, taking a seat near us and kicking his heels up on the table.

That little gesture makes me like him just a smidgen more.

Montes folds his arms across his chest, widening his stance. “And?”

Marco drums his fingers against the armrests. “And I think it’s a good idea.”

I try not to smile. I fail.

The king throws me a lethal glare.

“It’s not safe,” he says, returning his attention to Marco.

“You act like you’re not married to the most dangerous one of us,” Marco says. He juts his chin towards me. “She woke up in a car full of armed men. When she was retrieved, they were all dead.”

I appreciate Marco sticking up for me. He has no reason to. I haven’t been kind to him.

The king frowns at his friend.

“Montes,” I say, “let me do this.”

He fully turns his body towards me, and his nostrils flare as he tries to tamp down his emotions. When I look into his eyes, all I see is agony. I’m someone he loves, someone he respects, someone he cannot bear to lose under any circumstances.

I take it all in, and then I do something uncharacteristic.

I place a hand against the side of his face, in full view of Marco and the officers.

“We need to end this war,” I say. “I have a good chance of doing just that, but only if you let me try. I’m not going to hold our deal over your head, and I’m not going to force your hand.”—
Yet
.—“I’m asking as your wife and your queen to allow this to happen.”

He looks moved, but I’m not sure.

“It can be how it was before,” I say quietly. “We rule well together. Let me do this. Nothing bad will happen.”

Montes grimaces then closes his eyes. He places his hand over mine, trapping it against his cheek.

“I always knew you’d make a good queen,” he murmurs.

He opens his eyes. “Fine. I’ll agree to it, provided there’s extra security.”

I nod, my expression passive. But there’s nothing passive about how I feel. The king doesn’t readily make concessions, and I don’t usually get my way without threatening someone.

The two of us are making progress.

“Serenity?” he says quietly. “You still need to work on your lies. You and I both know that with diplomacy, something bad always happens.”

Chapter 25

Serenity

After the meeting,
the king takes me to the palace gardens.

Montes and his gardens.

The plants that grow here are far different than the ones in Geneva and his other palace in the United Kingdom. They’re greener, brighter, more exotic.

“Do you still have your palace in England?” I ask.

Montes glances over me. “I do. Would you like to go back at some point?”

What an absurd question. That place was just another example of the king’s decadence, another example that I was just a brightly colored bird in a gilded cage.

My retort is on the tip of my tongue. Only … I find I can’t say the words. That terrible home of the king’s might be one of the few things about this world that I remember. People need familiarity. I need to feel like I’m not swept out at sea.

“Maybe,” I say.

I look over at Montes as he squints off at the sea.

His handsome face is made all the more so by how well I know it. His palaces are not the only thing I am familiar with.

I could reach out and touch his face. I want to. I want to run my finger down the delicate folds of skin that pinch when he squints. For the longest time I’ve held back my affection. I thought it important to punish the king for being the king and me for wanting him.

I reach out and ever so softly run two fingers along the skin near one of his eyes, smoothing out the crinkled skin.

He turns into my touch. I can tell without speaking that he’s surprised and pleased. Both of us stop walking.

My fingers move to his mouth. I trace the edges of his lips. “What happened to all your wickedness?” Even that has changed. Oddly enough, I miss it.

He gives me a what-can-you-do-about-it look. “I got old.”

“You don’t look old,” I say.

We haven’t discussed it, but the king must still be taking his pills. He looks identical to how I’ve always remembered him.

And he hasn’t tried to make me take any; it’s just further proof that he’s not nearly so wicked as he used to be.

Montes touches my temple. “I got old here.” His fingers move to the skin over my heart. “And here.”

I understand that. Age isn’t just a number; it’s also how you feel.

Montes takes my hand and tucks it into the crook of his arm. When I try to tug it away, he holds fast to it.

The age-old battle of chivalry versus my stubbornness.

He wins this round.

We resume walking.

“Marco likes you,” he says, absently running his thumb over my knuckles.

I don’t bother hiding a very real shiver. “That’s regrettable.”

“It is.”

There’s something about the way Montes says this that has me glancing over. I can’t put my finger on it—

“What do you think of the future?” he asks, changing the course of my thoughts.

“It’s disorienting,” I say, “though not as different as I imagined it would be. The world does not appear to have made any progress.”

“War does that,” Montes says. “The only thing that ever gets more impressive are the new ways we find to kill each other.”

That’s more than a little disheartening to hear.

“In what ways has the weaponry gotten worse?” I ask.

“Mmm,” he muses, staring out at the horizon, “I’ll let you figure that one out on your own. It’s probably in my best interest not to have you knowing about all the new and ingenious ways you can kill me.”

I smile at that.

I’m so fucked-up.
We
are so fucked-up.

“So you still think I might kill you?” I ask.

The king stops again.

This moment is too much. The warm, bright sun, the sweet smelling flowers, the sound of the surf crashing. The way the king’s staring at me. I am getting gluttonous off of it.

“That’s the beauty of being with you,” he says. “I never quite know.”

A week goes
by in a blur as I prepare for my tour of the East. A tour that begins tomorrow, when we leave for Giza, the first of nearly two dozen cities I’ll be visiting.

Most of my time has been spent locked up in meetings. And when I’m not listening to other people discuss world affairs, I’m locking myself away to study them.

The king, being who he is, has decided to hole himself up along with me. He’s fashioned himself into my personal mentor.

I pity the world; under his instructions, it will undoubtedly burn.

“So there are thirteen representatives,” I say, leaning back in my office chair. Spread out in front of me are photos of a dozen men, each with their name neatly typed beneath.

“Correct,” Montes says, “thirteen representatives, but we only know the identities of twelve.”

Montes sits on the desk itself, his legs splayed wide, his shirt sleeves rolled up. After being here for over a week, I’ve noticed he alternates between fatigues and suits. Today is a suit day.

I pull my attention back to the matter at hand. Thirteen representatives, but only twelve identities. That’s more than a little odd. “Why don’t we know the identity of the thirteenth representative?”

Montes reaches forward and hooks his hand underneath my seat. With surprisingly little effort, he drags my chair forward until I’m sitting between those splayed legs of his.

My eyes are level with his crotch.

“Forcing me to look at your dick is not going to help me learn who the representatives are,” I say.

“You could always sit on my lap,” he offers.

“Pass,” I say absently, my gaze drifting back to the photos. I stand to get a closer look at them.

As I do so, Montes’s arms go around my waist. I’m now trapped in his embrace.

“Had I realized how fun diplomacy was,” he says, his lips brushing against my hair, “I would’ve taken it up much sooner.”

“No you wouldn’t have,” I murmur, my attention still locked on the photos. I move them around, reading the various names, and trying to memorize the faces that go with each. “You’re an asshole, and assholes don’t give a shit about peace.”

One of his hands falls heavily over mine, trapping it to the desk.

“You think that what I’ve done is bad?” he says, his voice deadly quiet.

I don’t have to look at him to know I’ve offended him.

“I will tell you a story about what I’ve seen in the West,” he says. “Girls sold as slaves—some younger than ten. Those went for the highest price. Women taken from their families, raped and sold then raped some more.”

Now he has my attention.

“Don’t blame me for being hesitant to forge peace between my land and theirs,” he finishes.

I feel a muscle jump in my cheek.

I search his eyes. “Is that true? What you just said?”

He frowns, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “It is.”

Women and children enslaved? Raped? This is not the West I knew. This is every one of my nightmares made flesh.

“Why?” I know Montes can see the horror on my face.

“You’ve asked me the same thing,” he says. “Power can twist people.”

He wraps his hand around mine and begins moving my fingers over the photos. “Gregory Mercer, Ara Istanbulian, Alan Lee, Jeremy Mansfield, Tito Petros, …” He lists off all twelve of them.

“Each has his own brand of evil. Alan—” Montes moves our hands over the photo of a man with dark hair and beady eyes, “coordinates disappearances. People of importance he doesn’t want alive—sometimes he has them killed outright, sometimes he detains them for torture, and sometimes he sends them to state-funded concentration camps.”

A lock of hair falls into his eyes as the king speaks.

“Jeremy—” Our hands travel to a photo of a man with pale, blotchy skin and a weak chin, “was the mind behind the development of these concentration camps. All that radiation has led to widespread disease and genetic mutations. He decided some WUN citizens were too sick or unsightly to be left amongst the regular population, so they were moved. It’s a great place to send anyone who doesn’t fall into line as they should. It also incentivizes violent individuals to join the West’s military. If they’re stationed at one of these camps, well, anything really goes.”

I’m about to ask him why he hasn’t taken action sooner. Why evil like this hasn’t been stamped out. But before I can, he moves on.

“Tito.” Our hands trail to a man I recognize, the Eastern politician who always reminded me of a walrus. He was one of the king’s former advisors. “This man knew exactly where all my research laboratories were, as well as my military outposts and warehouses. The WUN had them bombed almost immediately after I placed you in the Sleeper. Then they hit the East’s hospitals.”

I can understand bombing military outposts and warehouses. I can even understand wiping out laboratories.

But hospitals?

The West has thrown any sort of code of ethics out the window if they’re hitting hospitals.

“Ronaldo,” the king continues, moving our hands again. “You remember him, don’t you?”

God help me, I do.

Once upon a time I’d saved him from death only to find out he was the advisor who’d sanctioned the atomic bombs dropped on the WUN.

I nod.

“As soon as he traded alliances, he was back to his old tricks. He dropped a handful of bombs on the biggest, most successful cities in the East. The damage was so disastrous that many of the cities have not been rebuilt.”

His hand moves on. “Gregory sanctioned human trafficking, and he personally has close to a hundred slaves—”

“
Enough
,” I say, pulling my hand from the king’s.

I’m going to be sick. How does evil get concentrated like this?

Bombed hospitals, slavery, concentration camps—this is ghastly even by my standards.

Beyond my horror is that roaring monster inside me. The one that loves the taste of blood and vengeance.

Already I can feel my hands aching for necks to squeeze and my knuckles for skin to split. I will get my day, I vow it to myself.

Montes turns me in his arms so that we’re staring at each other. “You asked me why the thirteenth representative doesn’t show himself. The truth is, I don’t know. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because he’s either hiding from his enemies—or lying amongst them.”

I take that in.

“How haven’t you managed to kill them yet?” I ask. That’s what the king was good at, after all. Slaughter. And he had so many decades to eliminate these men.

Montes absently plays with a strand of my hair. “You kill one, they elect another.” He smooths my hair back in place. “This wouldn’t be a problem if all thirteen representatives gathered together—I could wipe them out all at once. But they don’t. And if you can’t kill them simultaneously, it’s not worth the effort.”

I return my attention to the photos.

“What
would
cause them all to gather?” I muse aloud, my fingers tilting one of the images to better see the representative.

My hand stills as the answer comes to me.

Slowly my eyes return to the king.

He already knows, I can tell. I say it anyway.

“Victory.”