The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) (14 page)

Chapter 26

Serenity

That evening, the
officers gather in the large dining room for a goodbye dinner. The atmosphere feels celebratory, like they already know I’ll accomplish what I set out to do.

I’m not so certain.

I lean back in my chair and finger the velvet tablecloth. It’s worn. I don’t know how long it takes to age material, but I would guess years, maybe decades if it’s well cared for. It makes me wonder about that dress I wore when I so carelessly ran into the sea. It makes me wonder about every grand detail of the king’s lifestyle.

I’ve made a lot of assumptions, about Montes and everyone else. In the past, they’ve been founded, but I no longer know whether they are or not.

My eyes move across the table I sit at. It’s round, which means I get a good view of everyone. And they are all watching me, though some are more discrete than others. There’s an energy to the room, and excitement, and I know I’m responsible for it. The dead queen’s come back to end war once and for all.

They believe in me far more than I do.

There’s no magic to this. In fact, chances are, someone will bury a knife in my back before I’m even halfway through visiting countries. That’s what happens to powerful, dangerous people. They lead very short lives.

A heavy arm brushes my back. I glance first at the hand draped over my seatback, then its owner.

Montes is casually talking to Marco, who’s seated on his other side.

The soft lighting gentles the king’s features. I find my breath catches as I look at him.

He breaks conversation to turn to me. “My queen is quiet,” he says softly so that only I hear. “Never a good thing.”

“I have nothing to say.”

Montes contemplates me. Beyond him I feel Marco’s eyes on me as well.

The king stands, his chair scraping behind him. He reaches a hand to me.

I inhale sharply as I stare at Montes’s hand.

I am a stranger to this world, this future I must live in. I don’t know what to talk about, because I know nothing of this world. And I want to save it, I do, but I don’t know how to be a part of it.

Montes figured that out all with a single look, and he’s giving me an out.

The entire room’s attention focuses on us.

I take the king’s hand and I stand.

I can leave. Montes is willing to cut this dinner short. I can see as much in his expression. But I’m not going to run from these people just because I find these types of gatherings uncomfortable and I feel a little lost.

So instead I squeeze the king’s hand and then turn to the officers seated around the table. “Tomorrow we begin what will hopefully be the end of this war.” That earns a few claps and a couple of whoops from the dinner guests.

I can feel the king’s assessing eyes on me; I sense his curiosity. He likes my spontaneity.

“Many of you are used to fighting,” I say. “I know that I am.”

The king squeezes the hand he still holds.

“But I don’t want to spend the rest of my days watching young men die.”

The evening’s lightness dries up in the room.

“I want to see them grow old, and fat—I want to see men fat because there is so much food to go around.”

Several officers nod at that. As I gaze out at their somber faces, I realize that these are my people. A hundred years ago I couldn’t relate to the men and women the king surrounded himself with. These men and women I can.

Change is possible.

I pick up my wine glass. “A toast to peace.”

I meet the king’s mesmerized gaze. A small smile creeps along his face.

People raise their glasses. “To peace!”

After dinner, while
people are moving into the adjoining room to drink and chat, I slip away. I’m sure my exit gains some attention. Once I made my toast and sat back down, I had more interested guests eager to talk to me than I knew what to do with.

It’s for that very reason that I take my leave early.

At the end of the day, I am a solitary thing. I’m not sure if this is the result of circumstance, or if I would’ve been this way had war never altered my life.

As soon as the dining room doors close behind me, the tinkling glasses and jovial conversations cut off.

I head through the cavernous palace, my steps echoing. I pass the massive entry hall, with its long entryway and towering columns, and keep going.

Down the corridors, all those sheets still cover most of the royal paintings. It’s vaguely irritating. Why put a picture up at all if it’s just going to get covered?

I don’t know where I’m headed; I have no place in mind. I just want to keep moving. And the more I walk, the more I notice how much of the walls are covered up.

Whether it’s curiosity or irritation that halts my steps, I can’t be sure, but I stop in front of a section of wall partially covered by velvet drop cloths.

I reach out, towards the material.

It only seems like a bad idea at the very last second, when I’ve already bunched the velvet up into my fist. By then, gravity has taken over. The fabric slides off the frame.

A young Marco stares back at me from inside the frame. It’s a formal photo, one where he’s posed rigidly in a uniform. He can’t be more than fourteen or fifteen years old. He has a wispy mustache boys at that age get.

I take a step back. It’s hard to look at Marco as a boy. I don’t associate his cruelty with this version of him.

I glance down the corridor, noticing over half a dozen similarly covered frames.

Surely they are not all photos of Marco? Not that I would put it past the king. He’s obsessive with his affection.

I move to another covered frame and tug the cloth off of it. It’s another of Marco, this one when he’s older. In it, he and the king are clasping shoulders, laughing at something together.

I move on. My heels click against the floor as I stride down the hall.

This time when I pull down the velvet covering, I’m not prepared.

What lies beneath it has me recoiling.

The person I’m staring at is me.

Only, it’s
not
.

It can’t be. For one thing, I’m posing in a huge fucker of a dress. I’d knock someone out sooner than I would put that thing on. And I would’ve remembered it if I’d worn it. I mean, the thing’s practically as big as a tank.

For another thing, my scar is gone.

I walk several paces down the hall and pull off another sheet of material.

There I am again, this time as a young teenager. I can’t be older than thirteen or fourteen.

And I’m not alone in the photo either.

My arm is slung around the neck of an equally young boy.

But not just any boy. A cloned one.

Marco.

Chapter 27

Serenity

I take a
shaky step back.

Oh God, what is this?

“Her name was Trinity.”

I startle at the voice. When I swing around, Marco is watching me. His eyes drift to the wall.

My pulse is in my ears. I can hear my own blood whooshing through my veins.

I place a hand to my temple. “Are you saying—?”

“He couldn’t bear waking you, so he cloned you,” Marco finishes for me.

It takes several seconds to process his words.

“Montes cloned …
me
?” The proof is hanging on the wall, but I don’t want to believe it.

Marco steps up to the photo.

My chest is rising and falling faster and faster. “Why would he do that?” I ask.

“Marco. Serenity.” That powerful, ageless voice. It’s wiped out cities, ordered countless deaths, whispered sweet platitudes in my ear. It’s fooled me into loving it.

I stiffen when I hear it.

He cloned me.

It doesn’t take long for shock to slide to anger.

I spin to face the king. “You did this?”

The king strides towards us, his eyes taking in the framed photos.

The bastard wouldn’t wake me up, but he’d make a copy of me.

I back up when I realize he wants to eliminate the distance between us. “Stay away from me,” I warn.

“Marco, leave us,” he says as he continues to stride forward.

Marco hesitates, earning an arched brow from Montes. With one last, long look at me, the king’s right-hand turns on his heel and leaves.

Montes steps into my personal space, and even when I cock my arm, he doesn’t stand down. Instead he lets me throw my punch, but only so that he can catch my fist.

I growl my frustration, trying to tug my hand out of his grasp. “Let me go, you bastard.”

“Not until I explain.”

I keep yanking on my arm. “I’m tired of your explanations,” I say between gritted teeth.

What I don’t say is that something in me is broken and bleeding. Something that no Sleeper can heal. I force back a sob.

When he still doesn’t let go, I bring my knee up to his crotch. He swivels out of the way.

Now he’s mad, his features taut with his anger. He thrusts my body back up against the wall, the force of it making the frames shiver. His hand is at my throat. “Listen to me,” he growls.

“Fuck. You.” I don’t want to listen. I want to bathe in the horror of this moment because this is the Montes that I remember.

“That was forty years ago,” he says as though he can read my mind.

“And let me guess,” I say. “You’re a changed man.”

His vein throbs.

Hit the nail right on the head with that one.

“Where is she now?” I ask.

The king’s face closes down.

Dead
.

I can read that much off of him. For however long she lived, she no longer does.

Goosebumps break out along my skin. It’s equally disturbing to think that my clone both lived and died while I slept. And for all the king’s unnatural technology, he wasn’t able to save her.

“What did you do to her?” I say.

This psycho.

He grimaces. “I didn’t
do
anything to her, Serenity. Or can you not tell that from the photos?”

I close my eyes because I can’t bear to gaze into his dark, anguished ones. I don’t want to know if he loved her. Not on top of all the deception and pain he’s given me.

“Why not just wake me up?” I ask. My heart is primed for breaking. I really know nothing but destructive love. So he can tell me whatever pretty words he thinks are going to soothe me, but I doubt there will be any to make this better.

He gives my neck a light squeeze. “
Nire
bihotza
, look at me.”

I open my eyes, not because I’m interested in following his demands, but because I’ve never hid from unpleasant truths, and I don’t plan on starting now.

“Haven’t we already established that I was a fool to not wake you up?”

“We can always establish that more,” I say.

Montes cracks a smile, but it quickly disappears. “There was a while where I felt like I’d gone insane from loneliness. The Sleeper was still repairing your body at the time, though I will admit that by then I was afraid of seeing you again. But I was even more afraid of the possibility that you would never get out of the Sleeper, never be healed. So I cloned the two people I missed most.”

“You depraved son of a bitch.”

Montes played God, deciding who got to live and who didn’t.

He frowns, his features hardening at my words, but he doesn’t try to defend himself further.

“What happened to her?” I ask.

It’s taking a lot not to lash out like a wild animal. My basest nature wants to. But at this point, throwing a fit like a child won’t change the past.

I take a deep breath.

“She was killed,” Montes says releasing me reluctantly.

“How?”

“She was captured much the same way you were. The West was planning on using her as their puppet.

“She was not like you—not at all.” He says this last part quietly.

“We recaptured her.” He looks away and rubs his eyes. “But the plane was shot down.”

There’s real emotion there. Real anguish.

He takes a deep breath. “They thought I’d cloned her to end the war.” Montes shakes his head. “It’s a good theory, but I had the real thing the entire time.”

I search his face. “You cared for her.” Just saying those words is a bullet to the gut.

His expression doesn’t alter, but it does intensify. “I couldn’t
stand
looking at her.”

He reaches out and tries to touch my cheek. I step away before he can. His fingers curl into a fist.

“There was only ever one of you,” he says. “I didn’t want anything else—not in any sense. Once I realized that, I stayed as far away from her as I could. She suffered because of it. But I tried to care for her.”

Some bitter combo of disgust and relief flow through me. I find I don’t want to be replaceable, and it’s a dagger through the heart to know that he must’ve created her with that in mind. And then there’s the unbidden pain that comes when I think of this woman he created after me, created and then abandoned. All she got for it was death.

He must see me withdrawing because he seems desperate to close the space between us.

I back up, shaking my head. “You ruin everything, Montes.
Everything
.”

I turn my back to him and walk away.

I can’t be sure, but I swear I hear him whisper, “That’s all I know how to do.”

Chapter 28

Serenity

London’s gone, as
is Paris, Cairo, Delhi, Beijing. On and on the list goes.

Today, in the hours before we leave, they show me the footage of it. What little there is left.

I stand in the middle of the Great Room, dozens of men and women as my witness. They didn’t need to be here; it’s all old news to them. But I think they want to remember, or to try to see it all with new eyes.

I watch the bomb that rips apart the Eiffel Tower. The steel beams that had held for over two centuries now buckle and collapse.

The footage cuts away, only to be replaced by the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. Or at least, it was.

I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see man’s greatest achievements blown away in an instant because someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to destroy the world.

I force my feet to stay rooted to the floor. I owe it to both the people of the East and the West to watch.

“Do you see that glint?” One of the officers has a laser pointer that he aims around a section of the frame taken up by sky.

The bright concentrated section of light flashes in the middle of it. The camera catches similar flare-ups of light glimmering along the windows of the Burj Khalifa. But this one … This one has no business being in the middle of open sky.

“This was one of the first instances where the West used retroreflective material to camouflage their weaponry,” the officer says.

I don’t get a chance to ask what retroreflective material is before the side of the skyscraper explodes into flame, rows of windows and debris scattered to the four winds. Plumes of dark smoke bloom almost immediately.

The footage is time lapsed, and the next frame shows the building still smoldering, a dark halo of ash and dust enveloping it. We watch this for about thirty seconds.

And then, somewhere in the middle of it, the building begins to fall.

I don’t breathe as I watch the world’s tallest building collapse onto itself. It happens in a matter of seconds, one story after the next swallowed up by gravity and rubble-filled smoke. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I feel a tear slip out of my eye. It’s the atomic bomb all over again. Destruction so vast and so terrible that my very bones ache for humanity.

And then it’s over, and I know that within those few seconds, thousands upon thousands of people died. I can hear the observers’ screams through the speakers. And though their language is different, and though I’ve never set foot onto their land and never walked the earth during their lifetimes, I ache for them.

At some point, we are all the same.

“That’s enough,” Montes says.

The screen shuts off.

I feel my dark king at my back.

“Are you ready?” he asks me.

I turn and take him in. His eyes aren’t giving away his mood. But he must feel it, this smoldering anger that burns at the sight of so much carnage.

Behind him the officers wear grim expressions.

I nod to all of them. “Let’s end this.”

The plane we
board has all the accoutrements I remember. Plush central seating, a bedroom, and a conference table, each sectioned off into separate segments of the cabin.

A dozen men board along with us, one of them Marco. He catches my eye and gives me a tiny, playful wave.

I thin my eyes in response. Divine intervention better strike this plane. That’s the only way Marco will leave it unscathed.

“Play nice,” Montes whispers in my ear.

“I’m not nice,
my king
,” I say disparagingly.

“Well, you’re going to have to learn how to be. Marco is my right-hand.”

“He can just get used to me.” I am, after all, the queen. The title has got to be good for something.

Montes flashes the man in question a penetrating look. “I think he’s all too ready to do that,” he says, his lips thinning.

Before I’m able to respond, he begins to herd me to the back room. I catch sight of Marco once again, and he watches us, his eyes filled with some emotion I cannot place.

“What are you doing?” I say, reluctantly moving towards the small bedroom.

As soon as we both cross the threshold, Montes slams the door shut. “Getting you alone.”

I bump into the bed, and now I think I have an idea of where the king’s mind is at. I can still hear the muffled conversations of Montes’s men as they get settled.

“If you think—”

He cuts me off with a kiss, holding my face hostage as he does so. It’s long and drawn out, and I know he’s making a point, especially when he backs us up until we both collapse onto the mattress, my body pinned beneath his.

Only then does he release my mouth. “That is not why I brought you in here, though I would enjoy fucking you senseless …”

“
Montes
.” I’m still so pissed off at him after last night. Kissing me only serves to make my anger burn hotter.

“Do you trust me?” he asks. He has me trapped beneath him.

How does he expect me to answer?

“No, not with most things.”

“And should I trust you?” he asks, his face just inches from my own.

“Not with most things,” I repeat softly.

“Can you trust that I want to keep you alive?” he asks.

If there is ever one thing I can be sure of, it’s Montes’s obsession with my life.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says. “We’re going to dangerous places, and there will be people who want you dead. So you understand my concern.” He doesn’t release me. Instead he threads his fingers through my own. “You are not going in there unarmed.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You’re giving me a gun?”

“Can I trust you not to shoot me with it?”

“No.” I need some target practice anyway.

He sighs, but there’s a twinkle in his eyes. “If you shoot me, there will be very severe repercussions.”

“I’m quaking,” I say, but I’m excited. I feel naked walking around without my weapons. Being raised on violence has taught me to always be prepared.

Montes releases me and pushes off the bed. He heads to an overhead compartment. Opening it, he pulls out a box. I hear something heavy slide inside it.

A gun.

I stand, my hands itching to touch the heavy metal.

He turns, cradling the box. “Don’t make me regret this, Serenity.”

I meet his eyes. “You won’t.”
You will.

When he hands me the flimsy packaging, I sit down on the edge of the mattress, opening the lid carefully.

Nestled inside is not one gun, but two, each tucked into a belted holster. I recognize one of them immediately.

“It’s over a hundred years old, Serenity. The thing jams fairly often.”

I run my fingers over my father’s gun. So it’s not reliable. But Montes would only know that if …

When I look up at him questioningly, he watches me, arms folded.

“I fired it on many occasions,” he explains.

When I wanted to be close to you.

The king omits much of what his heart wants to say, but I glean it off of him anyway. And it’s twisted that this weapon, which has ended many lives, is a bridge between the king and me. But everything about our relationship is twisted, so it fits.

“The bullets are also long out of production.”

I unholster the gun and run my hands over it. From the looks of the thing, it’s aged about as well as I have. Which is to say, not at all.

But it’s a relic, nonetheless.

Just like me.

“So you gave me another gun,” I say, re-holstering my beloved weapon and reaching for the other.

“Everything about its design is essentially the same as the guns you’re familiar with,” the king says, crossing his legs at the ankles as he leans back against the wall. “And those bullets are the most common ones on the market.”

So I can get my hands on more if we find ourselves in a tight situation.

I loop the belt and holsters around my pants. Once everything’s secured, I glance up at Montes.

“Thank you,” I say. I mean it, too.

I’m still upset and unnerved about my twin, but for once, I’m going to bury the past. I have bigger worries on the horizon.

The king levels a serious look at me. “Don’t die on me.”

“So many demands,” I murmur. “You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, Montes.”

“I didn’t marry you because you were a pretty thing. I married you because you were a wicked one.”

Was that a compliment?

“You married me because you’re a bastard.”

“Yes,” he grins, though it lacks any mirth, “that too.”

It takes only
a couple hours to fly from the king’s seaside palace to Giza. Only a couple of hours’ time, but there appears to be lifetimes of differences between the land we left and the one we arrive in.

Giza is only a handful of miles from Cairo, one of the cities that the West apparently destroyed. But as we descend and the buildings come into view, I realize just how war-torn and desolate Giza itself is. Half the buildings are in various states of disrepair.

When I step out of the plane, hot, dry desert air greets me, and the very feel of it is nothing like what I’m used to. I squint as a hot gust of air blows my hair around.

The king steps up to me and presses a hand to my back. Several men wait to greet us on the ground. From what I’ve picked up, these men are the territory’s dignitaries, and they will be our guides while we’re here.

They take one look at me and begin to bow, their hands clasped together as they do so, like I’m some desperate, answered prayer of theirs.

Montes puts pressure on my lower back, urging me forward. I dig my heels in instead.

“They’re acting like I’m a god,” I say to him. I can’t quite take my eyes off the people in front of us.

“You are a queen and a rebel fighter, and you’ve been dead a hundred years only to turn up alive. To them you might as well be.

“Now,” he continues, putting more pressure on my back, “you need to meet them and act like it.”

When I approach them, one by one they clasp my hands and kiss my knuckles.

“It is an honor to meet you.” The man who speaks has a heavy accent, yet his English is crisp and sharp. The result is a lilting speech.

“I am honored to be here,” I say honestly.

“Where is Akash?” Montes asks, glancing about the group.

From what I read, all of the king’s lands have regional leaders. Giza and its surrounding land is managed by Akash Salem.

“Your Majesties,” the man who first spoke now sobers, his easy smile disappearing. “On our way here, we received worrisome news concerning Akash and his family.”

“What about them?” I ask.

No one seems to want to be the one to break the news. Eventually, however, one does.

He takes a deep breath. “They’re missing.”