The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) (28 page)

Chapter 56

Serenity

I see the
first stirrings of unease. The representatives didn’t really think it was going to be that easy did they?

How do you take down the West? You gather all thirteen representatives together. How do you gather thirteen representatives together?

You make them believe they’ve won.

More vibrations follow the first.

“I’ve been a thorn in a lot of men’s sides quite a while,” I say. “You know the problem with my existence? I’ve always been just useful enough to keep alive.”

Ronaldo stands. “Guards—”

“Your time is over.” I speak over him. “Those pretty walls of yours are coming down.”

“Seize her!”

I smile viciously as the adrenaline begins to move through me.

High above us, the glass dome explodes. That’s my cue that the clock’s begun. Heinrich is going to blow this place up, and if I don’t escape in the next fifteen minutes, I’ll get blown up along with it.

The representatives and guards shield their heads as shards of glass rain down on us. From beyond the opening, the king’s soldiers begin to rappel down.

I use the distraction to unholster the gun.

And then I fire.

I go for the armed guards nearest me first. The gunshots echo throughout the room as my aim moves from one temple to the next. Troy doesn’t even have time to react before my bullet lodges itself in his temple, his blood splattering against the bench directly in front of Ronaldo.

The traitorous former advisor now stares at the blood in shock. His eyes move from it to me. The barrel of my gun is trained on his forehead.

He was a marked man the moment he turned on the king.

I pull the trigger.

Ronaldo’s head whips back as my bullet catches him between the eyes. His body collapses half-on, half-off his chair.

Outside, distant gunshots echo my own.

The Western soldiers around me are now recovering, but even as they reach for their weapons, the king’s men are dropping to the ground and firing at the enemy soldiers and representatives.

Collins takes a bullet to the gut, as does the medical examiner. Alan’s body seems to dance as he’s pumped full of bullets.

Many of the other WUN commanders duck behind their desks. What big men they are now that they can’t control their enemies.

I round the bench, gun aimed. It’s like fish in a barrel; the representatives are all lined up, some of them reaching for weapons they’ve stashed near their seats.

I shoot Gregory and Jeremy in the head, the two men responsible for human trafficking and concentration camps, and they die where they stand.

At the end of the row, Styx stands, gun in hand, a dark look on his face as he stares out at the room.

I train my gun on his forehead. This is a kill I’m going to enjoy.

As if sensing my attention, he turns.

And smiles.

A split second later a large body rams into my backside, tackling me to the ground. I grunt as the soldier pins me down.

“Drop your weapon,” the man on top of me says.

When I don’t immediately comply, he grabs my hand and slams it repeatedly into the ground until I release the gun.

Styx heads down the bench, shooting soldiers as he moves. I see the king’s men go down.

“
Get up!
” Styx shouts to some of the representatives he passes, kicking one as he goes.

A couple of the men do shakily stand. A few others remain crouched.

Amongst the madness, Styx levels his gaze on me.

He lifts his gun, the barrel focused somewhere between my chest and that of the guard pinning me down.

Styx and I stare at each other, and I can tell he’s having an internal debate about what to do with me.

Before he comes to a decision, I hear the familiar clank of heavy metal right outside the doors.

I close my eyes and breathe out. Saved by a freaking grena—

BOOM!

The blast unbalances my captor and he releases my wrists to stabilize himself.

This might be the only opening I’ll get.

I reach for my discarded gun. My fingers lock on the cold metal, and I point it at the guard’s face. He only has time to widen his eyes before I pull the trigger.

His blood splatters down on me, his body collapsing on mine.

I grunt as I force his dead weight off of me. Styx slips between fighting men, heading for a side exit.

He’s getting away!

I can’t let that happen. All thirteen men must be either captured or killed, otherwise, today will have been for nothing.

I’ve barely gotten my feet under me when I stare down another gun.

Tito, Montes’s traitorous former advisor, trains his weapon on my chest. Sweat dips down his ruddy face. His hand trembles just the slightest.

“You better aim for the head,” I say, rising slowly. “You don’t want me coming back.”

But it’s not my head that gets blown away.

One moment Tito’s bulgy eyes are glaring at me. The next, they’re gone, along with a good portion of his face.

I follow the bullet’s trajectory back to its owner.

My knees almost give out.

Impossible.

Standing just inside the threshold of the room is the very man I shot through the heart.

The love of my fucked-up life.

Montes Lazuli, the truly undying king.

The King

She’s war and
peace and love and hate. She’s my death and my salvation, and right now, standing amongst all these massacred bodies, she’s staring at me like I’m the mythic one.

“Montes?” Her voice shakes. Uncertainty is an endearing emotion on my wife.

“You’re shit at keeping secrets, my queen,” I say.

Finally I can speak on this subject.

And finally I can breathe easy, knowing Serenity’s alright.

Bloody, but alright.

Her mouth is slightly parted, and her brows are furrowed. I know my queen well enough to know she’s trying to piece together what she feels is an impossible series of events.

One of the representatives nearest her moves, and she shoots him without question.

Deadly, savage woman.

I make my way towards her, shooting anyone I don’t recognize. Already my men have taken out most of the enemy soldiers and representatives in here.

Now I just need to get to my wife. My scheming, violent wife who concocted this elaborate,
foolhardy
plan so that war could end and I could live.

Even after everything I put her through, she did this for me. It is without a doubt the single greatest show of love I’ve ever received.

Which makes me all the more frantic to keep her safe.

I feel Marco at my back, covering for me.

The three leaders left standing now balk at the two of us.

Marco never was the West’s mole, he was a double agent working for me.

Serenity sees Marco as well, and she appears equally confused. But quickly her gaze returns to me, her eyes dropping to my heart.

In my peripherals, I see the last of the West’s representatives and their royal guard go down. I breathe a little easier as I step up to Serenity.

“How?” she asks.

I whisper in her ear, “I surround myself with loyal men.”

Loyal men, and loyal women.

Serenity

All of my
elaborate plans, all of my late nights, all of the details I worked hours on ironing out. Montes had known, and he’d kept it from me.

I want to be angry, but my heart’s not letting me have my moment of indignation. It’s far too happy that the king is alive. Alive and … not all that upset himself, considering that I shot him.

“How long have you known?” I ask. There had been nights where he gazed at me with such sad eyes, and I could’ve sworn he’d seen right through me.

He stays quiet.

“How long?” I repeat.

“Serenity, you are not that good at being subtle.”

Goddamnit, had he known the whole time?

Around us, the gunfire has ceased, and the only ones left standing are the king’s men.

“And you just let me go along with my plan?”

Montes’s eyes are stormy. “It was …
difficult
. All the details were so very reckless. And I wasn’t looking forward to getting shot. But yes.”

My eyes dip to his heart. Tentatively, I place a hand on his chest. I feel the organ thump beneath my palm. “Your gunshot wound?” An injury like that should’ve left him in the Sleeper for a week.

He covers my hand with his own. “I wore a bullet proof vest.”

I tilt my head up to him. “But there was blood.”

“It isn’t hard to rig a blood bag to my outfit. You yourself managed to get ahold of an entire body.”

The wrong body.

His
body. The second impossible detail about this situation. “The bloodwork, the dental records—they said it was you.”

“It
was
me.”

I furrow my brows.

“I didn’t just clone you and Marco.”

The full force of what he’s saying hits me. That single Sleeper I wasn’t authorized to view. It had housed his double.

“You killed your clone?”

Smoke curls around Montes. He looks for all the world like some terrible deity come to feast on the violence. Only, he’s here to save me, to avenge me.

He gives me an indulgent look. “You’ve killed dozens and dozens of men and you’re worried that I killed my twin? My queen, you are a strange creature. But to answer your question, the body was braindead to begin with. I didn’t want to chance another version of me ever getting loose.”

That was something we could agree upon.

He continues. “I’d planned on faking my death for some time—”

BOOM!

I’m nearly thrown off my feet as the explosion rocks the ground, the sound of it deafening. Montes grabs my arm, bracing me.

The roof above us groans sickeningly, and more glass shards rain down on us.

I glance at the king.

“Is Heinrich still planning on bombing—?”

Montes nods sharply. “We need to go.”

Chapter 57

Serenity

The two of
us dash out to the front of the building, the hot breath of air from the blasts whipping my hair about. From here we have a panoramic view of the walled city.

There are fires everywhere, and people are running, panicking.

More bombs go off, one right after another. I see chunks of the seaside buildings blown out from the side of the mountain. A few of them are blasted so far out I see them hit the water.

As I watch, one of the walls circling the city goes down with a thunderous boom. A plume of dirt and debris billow up into the air.

Troy indeed.

I’m breathing heavily, all but ready to cease fighting, when I remember.

The regional leaders and their children. They might be in the dungeons below the building.

My pulse accelerates. Oh God, they’re trapped.

I begin to back up.

Montes looks over at me, a warning in his eyes when he sees what I’m doing. “Serenity—”

“The prisoners—they’re below the building.” I can’t even fathom how close I came to forgetting, swept up in the action as I had been.

“Call Heinrich, tell him to hold fire.”

I don’t wait for Montes to respond. I swivel on my heel, dashing back the way I came, drawn back to the dungeons below the building.

The king curses, and I hear
martyr
amongst the oaths.

I don’t care what he thinks. There are children down there.

I head back through the main entryway, hopping over dead bodies. The king isn’t at my back, so I take it he’s getting ahold of Heinrich rather than chasing after me.

Ignoring the elevator, which could be out of commission, I storm down the stairs, descending deeper and deeper into the earth.

I ignore the prickly sensation that breaks out along my skin as I feel the walls press in on me. My boots echo as they slap against the ground.

When I see royal detention center stamped over one of the levels I descend to, I exit out the nearest doorway.

The light from the stairwell pours out onto the dungeon’s floor. Beyond it, lightbulbs are spaced thirty feet apart.

I slow, my boots echoing. I try not to shiver as I head farther into the wet, subterranean chamber. This chill never gets any easier to bear.

I move down the first row of cells. There are at least three more rows, and several more floors. I’d better hope the king gets ahold of Heinrich soon, or else I’m a dead woman.

A pebble skitters in the distance.

I readjust my grip on my gun. “Hello?”

My voice echoes. I hear whispers in the distance, then silence.

“My name is Serenity Lazuli. I’m here to help.”

“Serenity?” someone calls out weakly.

I jog towards the voice, with is one row over.

The family is in a cell at the far end of the row, where the shadows seem deepest. A man, a woman, and two children huddle in the corner of it.

The regional leader of Kabul and her family.

“Nadia, Malik?” I ask them.

Nadia nods her head jerkily.

“I’m going to get you all out of here.” My eyes drop to the lock. It and the rest of the cage is made out of iron.

“Back up,” I say, lifting my gun. This is no safe extraction, but I’m out of options.

I fire off two shots before the lock splits open.

For once, this feels like the right thing, saving instead of killing.

I swing open the cell door, and the family files out.

Malik clasps my hand in his. “Thank you, thank you.” His whisper is hoarse. I don’t want to imagine what these four have been through since they got here.

I nod to them. “Go to the end of this hall and up the stairs as quickly as you can. I have to get the rest of the prisoners out.” I pause. “There are other missing regional leaders. Do you know anything about their whereabouts?”

“They’re not on this floor,” Nadia says. “We were it.”

That’s good to know.

We separate at the stairwell, Nadia and her family going up while I continue downwards.

I only just exit the stairwell when I hear sobs, coming from somewhere deep within.

“Hello?” I call out, striding down the first row.

The crying cuts off, but the prisoner doesn’t respond.

I tense when I hear footfalls behind me.

“I knew I would find you here,” a familiar voice says.

I turn.

Styx Garcia stands between me and the only exit out of here. He holds a gun, its barrel trained on my forehead.

I don’t know why the terrible ones always fixate on me. I suppose they think I’m a challenge. But I’m not.

I’m just death.

I adjust the grip on my own weapon. I have no idea how many bullets—if any—I have left.

“You fool,” I say. “You should’ve never come back for me.”

“You know why I like you?” he says, his eyes unnaturally bright in the dim light. “Because even when you’re cornered and held at gunpoint, you still have this confidence. I’m sure if I stripped you, I’d find a pair of brass balls between those pretty little legs.”

I begin to lift my weapon.

“Ah-ah,” he says, cocking his gun. “Lift that thing any higher, and I will blow your face away.”

I don’t believe he’ll shoot me in the head. I’ve seen too much of this man’s fucked-up interest in me to think he’d give me the easy way out. He wants me alive.

At least, for a time.

“… And if you’re dead, then who will free these prisoners?”

I lower my weapon back down.

“Good girl,” he says, and it’s so damn patronizing. “Now drop the weapon.”

My jaw tightens, but I don’t release the gun.

He takes a step forward, and my hand twitches. If he gets much closer, I will risk death to bury a bullet in that scarred flesh of his.

“Drop it,” he repeats.

“You’re a dead man, Styx,” I say. “You’ll never leave this place alive.”

The corner of his mouth lifts.

The gunshot echoes down the cellblock.

I grunt and stagger back as the bullet hits my upper arm. I feel it enter, feel it rip through sinew, then exit out the other side. My gun arm.

My other hand goes to it just as the blood begins to pour out of the wound. I hiss out a breath at the pain.

“You should worry about your own life, my queen.” He says my title like an endearment. Considering he just shot me, he’s doing himself no favors.

Styx heads down the cellblock, towards me. “Ever since I was little, I heard about the great Serenity Freeman, a child of the West, sacrificed for the lusts of the East.” His eyes are far too bright as he speaks. There’s more than just a touch of madness in them. “I saw the footage of you bathed in blood. I saw your horror and your violence. I saw your sacrifice. It made me want to be a soldier.

“And that
scar
.” He lifts his gun and drags the barrel of it down his cheek, tracing the phantom path of my scar as he stares at mine.

I’m beginning to sweat from the pain, and the cold subterranean air is only getting colder with the blood loss. It drips between my fingers and down my wrist onto the dank ground.

“It was inspiring,” he continues. “The strong carry scars.”

I had imagined Garcia dangerous before, when I first saw his mutilated face. But now there’s the extra knowledge that his scars might’ve been inspired by mine.

I begin to lift my injured arm again, the handle of my gun slick with blood.

“You aim that weapon and I will shoot you again.”

“Fuck you,” I say.

He closes the last of the space between us. “I won’t kill you,” he says softly, confirming my earlier thoughts. He studies me for a moment, and then his gaze drops to my injury.

He presses his gun into my wound. “But you might wish I had by the end of it all.”

I stagger back, but now he grabs me with his other hand, keeping me rooted in place.

I try to jerk away from him as the barrel of his gun digs into the ragged flesh. My jaw clenches through the pain, and my nostrils flare.

“The representatives are gone, aren’t they? All but me. That makes me the sole ruler of the West.”

He presses harder, watching me the entire time. He’s so busy keeping eye contact that he doesn’t notice me lifting my gun. This evil, crazed man. He’s so lost in my pain that he’s not paying attention to things he should.

“How would you like to be my queen?”

The edges of my vision darken.

Aiming for his groin, I pull the trigger.

Click
.

Fuck. Whatever ammunition I had, it’s now gone.

The sound breaks Styx from his trance. He glances down at my gun, aimed at him. His grip tightens as he realizes I meant to kill him.

I pull my head back, then jerk it forward, head-butting him.

He releases his hold on me and staggers back, placing a hand to his forehead.

I follow him, reaching for my father’s gun. This ends now.

My fingers barely skim the handle when Styx lifts his gun and shoots at my holster.

I jerk back in surprise as the bullet whizzes past my hand, only just missing it.

Styx storms forward, gun now trained on my chest, his expression murderous. “And I thought we were finally coming to an understanding, my queen.”

He yanks my father’s gun from its holster and tosses it aside.

I know he’s about to hit me. I can see how badly he wants to pull his hand back and pistol whip me. My muscles tense.

But he doesn’t hit me, and I get a glimpse of how he’s managed to gain this much power. For a psycho, he has a good measure of control.

Instead, he presses the barrel against my temple. “Where were we?”

I stare unflinchingly back at him. I think he wants me to be scared, but he’s picked the wrong girl to try to frighten. I don’t fear men like him.

I hunt men like him.

“Ah, yes, I remember,” he says. “You could be my queen, but only—if—you—behave.” He punctuates the last words by tapping the barrel his gun against my temple.

I glare at him as the blood that still coats the end of his weapon now smears against my skin.

He drags the barrel down, further smearing my blood across my face. He draws it over my cheekbone and across my mouth.

Then he pauses.

He taps my teeth with his weapon. “Are you going to behave?”

“Fuck. You.”

He smiles. “Dear, sweet Serenity, let me rephrase: you will behave, or I’ll start giving you more scars.” He leans in close. “And I will make them very, very distincti—”

The gunshot takes us both by surprise.

Styx and I stare at each other, and I have no idea how I look, but the thirteenth representative appears shocked. He glances down between the two of us.

There’s nothing. No bullet holes. No blood. No pain.

But then Styx staggers forward, his body slumping against mine. And I realize, there is blood, it’s just not mine.

I disarm Styx easily enough, and then I’m holding both his upper body and his gun with my good arm. Behind him I see a man, who’s nothing more than a shadow against the light spilling down into the prison from the stairwell.

But I know who it is. I would recognize that silhouette anywhere.

Montes prowls forward slowly.

“
No one
threatens my queen.”

The king’s voice is poison-laced wine. It’s the same voice that asked me to dance in a gilded ballroom over a hundred years ago. It’s the same voice that broke the world.

The voice that shattered my heart before he claimed it.

He shoes click against the cobblestone floor, his gun still smoking as he approaches us.

I release Styx, whose body slides out of my arms. The thirteenth representative groans as he hits the ground.

“For months I had to listen to you disrespect my queen.”

Shit. It
had
been months.

He stops at Styx’s feet. Using a booted foot, he forces the injured man onto his back. A line of blood trickles out of Styx’s mouth, and his breathing is labored.

Punctured lung. I’ve heard the sound enough times.

“And you thought you could just take her?” Montes continues. “From me?”

This is out of my hands. The king has few demons left, but the ones that survived his transformation—those, he’s about to feed.

Montes steps up to me. His face goes grim when he sees my wound. “Are you okay?”

I run my tongue over my teeth, then nod.

He pulls me to him and kisses my forehead. He doesn’t chastise me for running down here. I think Montes knows exactly how to fan the flames of my love.

When he lets me go, the atmosphere in the dungeon changes to something dark and violent.

The devil has come to feast.

Montes towers over Styx. “I was ready to torture you before, but now …” He crouches down. “I could hurt you, then heal you, then hurt you some more. On and on until I die.” He pauses. “I’ve lived for a century and a half. I could make you immortal, only so that you’d live lifetimes of torture.”

What Montes is suggesting is beyond horrific.

Styx’s gaze moves to me, and for once I actually see fear on his face. He never believed he was going to lose his power. And now he’s facing a man and a fate that might be worse than death.

The king aims his weapon. “We could start now.”

“Please—”

The gunshot cuts Styx’s plea short.

The representative’s body goes still, and I realize that sometimes Montes’s empty threats are not just lobbed at me. The fresh bullet hole carved between the Styx’s eyes is proof of that.

And that’s how the thirteenth and final representative falls.

We free the
rest of the prisoners, and then there’s the gruesome task of carting Styx’s body topside, where twelve others are already laid out.

Only then do the West’s soldiers believe leadership has fallen. And only then does the military cease fire.

As soon as Montes and I are well out of range, Heinrich lights up the Iudicium.

Now, an hour later, the building the representatives reigned in is nothing more than a pile of stone and ash.

It probably wasn’t necessary, but I’d insisted on it. I didn’t want that monument, where so many evil men gathered, to remain standing.

I lean against one of the West’s military vehicles that’s long since been abandoned. Montes has fished out a first aid kit from inside it, and now he bends over my upper arm, bracing it with one hand and cleaning my wound with the other.

I keep jerking away from him every time he wipes the antiseptic over it.

“This would all be over with much sooner if you let a proper medic tend to you,” the king says conversationally.