Chapter 26
Serenity
Before we leave Geneva, there’s something of great importance to me here. A visit I’ve been anticipating and dreading. I come to find out it’s the reason the king stopped here instead of his Mediterranean palace.
I enter the morgue alone—well, as alone as I’m allowed outside the king’s estate. Today that means two guards flank me. Montes has wisely made himself scarce.
My eyes fall on the body in the middle of the room. He’s already laid out, and suddenly, he’s the only thing I have eyes for.
In four quick strides I cross the room. The medical examiner stands off to the side, and my guards fall away. It’s just me and him.
My father.
Before I can think twice about it, I take his hand. It’s cold and the texture is somehow all wrong. He’s been gone long enough that, even embalmed, there is no pretending that he’s a living thing. Still, I can’t seem to let him go.
My gaze travels to his face. The blood has been washed from him, and the bullet hole in his forehead’s been sealed up.
A tear drips onto the metal table beside my father’s head. “I was supposed to die with you,” I whisper to him.
The loneliness of my situation slams into me. How am I supposed to live if the one person who mattered most to me is now dead?
Killed by my husband’s people. How could I forgive Montes for this? What kind of weak woman would that make me?
“I’m so sorry, Dad.” For a moment I wait for him to respond. I know what he would say: Don’t be. I’m so proud of you.
A memory from two years ago floats in. I’d been so angry at the king, angry at all the senseless death.
My father placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Do you know why your mother and I named you ‘Serenity’?” he’d asked me.
I shook my head; I had no idea where he was going with this.
“Serenity means to be at peace,” he explained. “When your mother was pregnant, she said the thought of you gave her that—peace.”
Ironic that my life had known so very little of it.
“You’ll never live up to your namesake if you don’t forgive, Serenity.”
“Dad—” He managed to use my one weakness, my mother, against me.
“No,” he shook his head, “this is not an argument. What you choose to do with all that anger is your business. But you can’t control the world; someone will always be there to wrong you. It’s your choice to let it go. Only you can decide the woman you want to be.”
It’s finally time to let it go. I’m not excusing Montes’s atrocities, nor all the monstrous acts that his war brought with it. No, I’m releasing my bitterness so that I can find peace within myself. I want to be that woman my father spoke of, the woman my mother might’ve imagined I’d become.
Perhaps my father was against my current circumstance. It doesn’t change the fact that he always wanted the best for me. He’d want this, serenity.
By the time we arrive back at the king’s palace by the sea, my father’s remains are on their way to becoming ash. I didn’t think he’d want to be buried in the ground after spending so many years down in the bunker.
Once he’s cremated, I intend to scatter his ashes over our homeland, just like we did my mother’s.
I walk into Montes’s room—our room—and see the bed I lost my virginity in. I have mixed feelings about this place, but it’s definitely better than Geneva, where memories of my father haunt the halls.
Montes comes in behind me. His arms weave around my torso and across my stomach. It’s clear what feelings this room stirs in him.
He places a kiss along my neck. This hasn’t happened in awhile—angry hallway encounter not withstanding. Surgeries, kidnapping, and healing wounds have kept us apart. But as the king’s hands glide down my torso, I can tell that’s all about to change.
I turn my head to face him. The look he gives me commands attention—demands I quiet my thoughts so that I can be filled with his. I see his charisma, his charm. It’s what everyone notices, but below all those hardened layers is a shred of the man he must have been long ago. Someone who wasn’t nearly so cruel. Perhaps it isn’t just me who’s capable of becoming a better person.
His fingers hook under my shirt, and he peels it off me.
“I hate you,” I say quietly, without any of my usual venom.
Montes tosses my shirt aside. “I know—you’ve told me many times.” He doesn’t stop undressing me.
“But.”
The king’s hands still on the button of my pants. “But?” he repeats calmly. I know his cool demeanor is a ruse, especially when his eyes slowly travel up to mine.
I press the palm of my hand to the side of his face. “But it is not the only thing I feel for you.”
The king’s eyes smolder at my words. He understands what I’m saying even if I can’t really put words to it.
He threads a hand behind my neck and pulls me to him, and I catch sight of it: a flicker of something vulnerable and compassionate on the king’s face. His lips press hard against mine, kissing me like I’m his oxygen. This is magic, this is heaven, this is everything my life has denied me.
We begin tugging off our clothes. My hands grasp the collar of Montes’s shirt, and I yank it open, popping buttons as I go. He growls low in this throat. The sound makes me pause until I realize that this is an approving sound.
The king pushes me up against the wall, and my back hits hard.
“Fuck,” the king swears quietly, “did that hurt?”
There’s that shred of humanity again in his eyes. Too bad it’s misplaced. I am most comfortable with pain.
I tunnel my fingers into his hair and drag his head back harshly. “Don’t stop.”
The king’s eyes hood, and he recaptures my mouth, his tongue forcing its way in.
For all his rough ministrations, his hands and his gaze are gentle. While his chest pins me to the wall and his mouth pillages mine, his fingers trail down the skin of my arms and my torso. They come to a halt low on my belly, and there they linger.
It’s the area where a woman carries a child and just below the epicenter of my cancer.
The king falls to his knees and kisses it. I lean my head back and close my eyes at the tender gesture. We both know the king’s plans for an heir will be put on hold indefinitely—at least if he wants one that shares my blood. It’s one of the many things that go unsaid between the two of us because we can’t seem to acknowledge things that waken our cold, charred hearts. Like the fact that I’m still dying.
He unzips my pants, tugs them off, leaving me in only my lingerie. That’s what I wear now—scraps of lace. I only tolerate them because I’m obviously not wasting material.
Montes stares at them, and I can see his thoughts turning wicked. “I wouldn’t have guessed my wife would go for these.” His eyes move to mine. “I always assumed you were more of a cotton panties lady.”
“Better be careful what you say when my knee is that close to your face.”
A wolfish smile breaks out on his face. His lips skim over the material, and then he drags them off of my legs.
Suddenly I feel far too exposed. I’ve only done this with Montes a handful of times, and before that, never. I’m not used to baring myself, and the king is at face-level with the most intimate parts of me. I reach down to cover myself, and the king catches my hands.
“I don’t think so.” He pins them to my side.
When he moves his mouth to my core, I yelp. “Montes!”
I’m scandalized; I wasn’t aware that anything could still shock me.
The king lets out a husky laugh, then his lips return to the sensitive flesh. I don’t last long. My legs buckle, and Montes is there to catch me. He stands and picks me up.
He quiets me with another kiss, and carries me to our bed. When he lays me out on it and removes the last of his clothes, I swear his eyes shine in the dim glow of the room’s light.
Where I’m modest with nudity, the king isn’t. Once he’s fully unclothed, he approaches me, completely unselfconscious. My eyes stray to all the pleasing lines of his body. He is mesmerizing to look at.
He prowls over to me, his hands stroking my legs as he watches me, a slight smile playing along his lips. I can’t stand just laying here, so I push myself to my knees.
Reaching out, I stroke the king’s chest for no other reason than I want to. After all, he’s clearly put his fingers—and lips—everywhere that pleases him.
The king’s eyes close, and he covers my hands with his own. They’re warm and they dwarf mine.
“Don’t stop,” he murmurs.
I blink. I hadn’t realized that his touch had stilled my own. I move our hands down, over the ridges of his abs, across his obliques, to the hard, lean muscle of his thighs. Here the king’s hands tighten over mine.
He releases his hold and softly pushes me back against the bed and follows me on, his body blanketing me.
There’s something to be said about physical touch. I’ve gone so long without it that the sensation is better than the sweetest of the king’s liquors. I don’t believe I’m the only one that feels this way. Montes is stroking my skin.
It hits me: he’s been with far more people than I have—he told me so himself—yet he’s acting as though I’m something coveted.
One of the king’s knees slink between my legs, spreading them apart. His hips settle heavily over me, and I can feel him right at my entrance. He shifts his pelvis, and then he’s pushing into me.
The king enters slowly, watching me the entire time. This isn’t the rough sex I expected. Somewhere along the way our frenzied movements have turned into this.
My lifelong enemy is now the person who’s physically closest to me. And I don’t mind. The remorse I felt on our wedding night is gone.
Montes thrusts into me, and the sensation is overwhelming. He’s overwhelming—over me, inside me.
Something about the languid way he moves and the way his eyes track mine makes me think this is more than just physical for him. That I might now consume the thoughts of the man who consumes mine.
A small smile tugs at the corners of my lips.
Montes stills. “That’s a first,” he breathes.
I’m finally giving into whatever it is I feel for this man and forgiving myself for circumstances beyond my control. I’m drawing a new beginning. One where not everything is a battle.
Long after we’ve finished, Montes clasps me to him. A light and fizzy emotion surges through me. Hope.
If not war, then love.
I don’t know the first thing about it—love. I don’t know if I’m even capable of it. But I also know that I have a limited time to learn. I’m still dying. If I hope to help the world before my time’s up, then I’ll have to work with the king to achieve it.
That’s asking a lot of the two of us—working together. We’re the last people for any of this. But it will happen. I’ll make sure of it.
“Weeks ago you promised I could get involved with medical relief,” I murmur.
Montes’s fingers trail my back. “I did.”
“I want to start tomorrow.”
His fingers halt. They tap against my skin once, twice. “Then I’ll put you in touch with the advisor on global health and wellness first thing,” he says. Whether the king is actually doting on me or just interested in keeping me busy doesn’t matter. I’ll get to work immediately.
Neither of us speaks again for several minutes.
Eventually, Montes breaks the silence. “What do you fear above all else, Serenity?” he asks quietly.
It’s a strange question, given our circumstances.
“You,” I say automatically.
I glance up at him, but he’s not looking at me. He’s staring at the ceiling, a faraway expression on his face.
His thumb strokes my shoulder. “Is this another one of your ‘facts’?” Now his eyes do travel to mine.
I give him a shove, even as my lips curve up. He has me there. One doesn’t make love with one’s fears. Not willingly. Then again … perhaps I am the poster child for immersion therapy.
“Aside from me, is there anything you fear?”
My brows furrow.
When I don’t respond, Montes says, “You can’t answer my question.”
I can’t. Death doesn’t scare me. Nor does pain. I might’ve said I feared losing the things that I love … but I’ve already lost them all.
“What do you fear?” I ask.
He’s silent. “I don’t know,” he finally says.
“You do,” I accuse.
He sits up, the action causing the blanket to draw down and expose my breasts. I push myself up as well, dragging the sheet back over my chest.
“They kept blood and oxygen flowing to my brain,” Montes says, rubbing his jaw. “That’s how they did it—how they kept me alive even after I’d been shot. You can replace everything but the brain. If that goes, a person is well and truly dead.”
My hands tighten on the cloth. I don’t know why he’s decided to confide in me now, but I don’t stop him. People have killed and died to learn what he’s telling me. And he’s telling me, the woman who’s threatened to kill him to his face.
He knows things have changed between us.
“The origins of this war began decades ago, when I was just a successful businessman trying my hand at politics. I’d caught wind of a company developing an Alzheimer’s drug with unusual side effects. It could turn back the clock—it could return a patient to their brain’s peak performance, reverse baldness and bone loss, increase skin’s elasticity, repair torn tissue.
“I took a chance and bought the majority shareholding of the company, and gave it the capital needed to continue testing. The drug was further tweaked, and we found a way to prevent aging completely.”
Will had been right; Montes had stumbled upon the fountain of youth.
“The company’s shares skyrocketed, and for a while, there was real concern in the medical field that the drug had just made tens of thousands of health related jobs obsolete.” The king gives a dry laugh. “It probably would’ve too.”
That sounded ominous.
“A super-virus swept through the Eastern Hemisphere. It spread rapidly, killing seventy to eighty percent of its victims. People panicked. The world hadn’t seen something like this in centuries.”
Apprehension skitters through my veins.
“Then one of my researchers discovered that my drug could cure the illness—if taken in the right dosage for the right amount of time. ”
The king stares down at his palms. “People demanded I mass produce it and hand it out for free.”
It dawns on me, how these long ago events affected the present. “You didn’t?”
“No,” he says quietly. “I didn’t. I sold it for profit instead. And as the world got sicker, I became richer.”
Montes shoves a hand through his hair. “In the beginning, I didn’t want power, I just didn’t want to lose everything I’d built. But somewhere along the way the line between money and power blurred, until I became king of it all.”
All those people that died when they could’ve been saved.
I cover my mouth with my hand and scramble out of bed, no longer caring that I’m exposing myself. My entire body is shaking.
“I should never have saved you,” I whisper.
A muscle in Montes’s cheek ticks. It’s the only sign that my words affect him.
He pushes himself out of bed and stalks towards me. “You wanted to know what I fear most? Here it is: I fear I will always be alone. That no one who truly knows me will love me. Not even my wife.”
I balk at this. “You’ve made piss poor life choices, and you want me to love you in spite of it? You’re insane.”
I swivel to grab my robe and get the fuck out of here when Montes catches me around the waist.
He tugs me to him, pulling me in close. “I’m not insane, Serenity,” he whispers into my ear. “And you and I both know why you saved my life. It doesn’t matter that you think I’m an evil bastard. You love me.”