The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) (16 page)

Chapter 31

Serenity

I draw in
a shaky breath as soon as I leave the podium and retreat back to the wings of the stage. I see Marco first, watching me with too-bright eyes. He steps towards me, but I brush past him.

I don’t want to be around him or anyone else for that matter. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, and I want to sort my emotions out alone. I see the king standing off to the side, engrossed in a conversation with several of his officers. His eyes catch mine as he speaks, following me as I walk down the hall.

Several guards fall into formation, two behind me, two in front.

I’m never alone. Never, never alone. And I really would like to be.

I head back to that little room where I waited earlier with the king. Five minutes is all I need to decompress and deal with the fact that I am no longer some abstract concept on a poster, but now a living, breathing ideology that people can consume.

The corridor outside the room is abandoned. I should be relaxing at the sight; solitude is what I wanted. Instead I find myself tensing up.

Behind me I hear several slick sounds. Something warm and wet sprays across my arms and back.

A trap.

In the next instant I hear the wet gurgle of dying men gasping for breath.

I swivel just as my guards fall to their knees, one clutching her neck.

Beyond them, three men wait for me, two holding bloody knives, and one with his gun leveled on my chest.

He adjusts his aim, then he pulls the trigger.

I hear a
grunt at my side as the guard next to me takes a bullet to the chest. He staggers in front of me, covering my body even as he chokes for breath. The shooter’s gun goes off several more times, and the other soldier flanking me goes down.

In the distance I hear shouts, but they’re too far away.

I reach for my gun as they come at me.

I unholster my weapon just as the three reach me. One of my attackers jerks my arm up. I use the motion to align the barrel with the bottom of his chin.

I fire.

The back of his head blows away. Whatever pretty beliefs he had, whatever life he’d made from himself, it’s gone within an instant.

As quick as I am, I’m still outnumbered two to one. One of the men forces my hands behind my back while the other covers my mouth with a damp cloth.

Now I’m having flashbacks to when the king pulled the same stunt.

That will
never
happen again.

They are still grappling for my weapon, and now I begin firing, hoping that I can hit some piece of enemy flesh. Blood splatters on my hands and wrists. One of my abductors shouts, releasing me reflexively.

I don’t hesitate. I raise my gun and shoot the man point-blank in the face.

The final man, who’s still pressing the damp cloth against my face now slams me into the wall in an effort to dislodge my weapon, cursing under his breath as he does so. I can hear the panic began to enter his voice.

I’m likely putting up more of a struggle than they expected.

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 returning 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.”