Chapter 9
Serenity
Two years ago I became my father’s apprentice.
He hadn’t always been our land’s only emissary. I hear we used to have many. Men and women appointed by the government to engage in diplomacy with foreign nations.
When the Western United Nations was formed, this branch of the government was refashioned. A single position—that of WUN emissary—was created. It proved to be a fatal one. Half a dozen men and women died before my father, who’d once served as the Secretary of State, had been elected into the role.
He managed to hold onto the position and his life, mostly because he hadn’t set foot onto the Eastern Hemisphere.
There should’ve been another round of elections since my father took the title of emissary. He should’ve abdicated the role to another official, along with all the other representatives that lived in the bunker. But once the western hemisphere went dark, our electoral system disintegrated almost overnight. In it’s absence we had to revert to an archaic system of power: bequeathing titles from parent to child. And now my father was passing the position onto me.
I knew all of this the evening he called me into his office. I’d seen and lived so much that this shouldn’t have scared me. But it did.
Once I shut the door behind me, my father glanced up from his papers. “Do you know why you’re here?”
I gave him a sharp nod. “You want to teach me how to be an emissary.”
My father scrubbed his face. “I don’t want to do this—that you’ve got wrong. But neither of us have much of a choice.”
“Dad, I’m no good at diplomacy.”
He cracked a smile. “You’re my daughter. You’re good at everything.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re a little biased.”
“And you’re a little humble.”
His words were proof I’d never have his sharp tongue. He always knew the right thing to say to diffuse a situation. I was more likely to punch someone in the face than I was reasoning with them.
That first lesson was brief, unlike the hundreds to come. By the end of it, my father left me with one final bit of information. “Serenity?”
My hand was already on the door. I turned back to face him.
The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth deepened. “As an emissary, if an accord is ever to be reached between us and the Eastern Empire, you will likely be a key player in it.”
I swallowed and nodded. I now carried a heavy responsibility.
“Do you know what that means?”
I waited for him to finish.
His gaze lingered on me a long time before he finally answered his own question. “One day you’ll meet the king.”
That day had come.
The room is quiet as my father contacts the representatives. I barely made eye contact with him after my kiss with the king. I couldn’t. The whole situation still gives me the heebie jeebies.
My dad, for his part, seems to be at a loss for words. So we wait in silence, until the representatives flash onto the screen. We do the usual greeting, and then there’s a pause.
“Serenity,” General Kline says, “you gave the world quite the show. The Internet’s blowing up with it.”
What he doesn’t say is that everyone’s calling me a traitor, a whore—whatever unoriginal names they can come up with. There will be no honor to my sacrifice. Women who have filled the role of temptress have always been looked down upon.
“I got King Lazuli to make another agreement,” I snap, my voice bitter.
My father turns to me, surprised.
“Tomorrow,” I say to the general, “if there’s a semi-decent bone in the king’s body, the WUN should have a fair and equitable peace treaty.”
All’s quiet for a moment, and then my father speaks. “What did you agree to, Serenity?” he asks, worry tingeing his voice. The rest of the representatives wait for my answer.
I glance down at my hands. “I don’t exactly know.”
I’m not surprised when I hear knocking on the suite door. I glance at my father’s closed off room. He’s locked himself away in there since our talk with the representatives. His excuse is that he’s relaying updates to those nations who couldn’t send their own emissaries. I know better. I heard his muffled weeps. He can’t stand the situation, so he’s hiding from it.
Now the room’s ominously quiet. My father knows what waits for me in the hallway, just as I do, and he’s decided to ignore it.
If only I had that luxury.
Be brave, Serenity, I tell myself, because no one else is here to comfort me in this moment.
I rise from my seat, setting aside the WUN’s proposal, and answer the door.
Marco stands outside. “The king requests—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I could go the rest of my life without hearing these official missives. Particularly when they involve illicit business. I step out of my room and follow Marco through the palace. We pass the king’s private dining room and continue on, eventually stopping in front of an ornately carved door.
Marco opens it. “This is where I leave you.”
If I speak, he’ll surely hear my fright, so I nod instead and step inside the room. I glance behind me in time to see the door close and Marco’s form vanish from sight. It might as well have been the iron bars of a cell slamming shut.
I am trapped.
I turn my attention to my surroundings. I’m inside the king’s richly decorated sitting room. It’s beautiful and lacks for nothing, save the king.
I step up to a window. Below me, lamps cast the king’s estate in shades of amber and orange. The city beyond lies in darkness. My hands slide along the windowsill. The greatest irony here is that the king lives in the light, the innocents in the dark. The king belongs to those shadows that lurk outside the light. As do I.
“You’re still in my dress.”
I swivel around, startled to find the man himself leaning against an open doorway, hands tucked in his pockets. He still wears his dinner attire, only now his suit jacket is gone, and the cuffs of his sleeves have been rolled up past his elbows. Aside from his swimsuit, this is the most casual I’ve ever seen him.
“I knew you’d come for me,” I respond, touching my sternum in a poorly masked attempt to hide my cleavage. It only serves to draw the king’s attention to my chest.
There they linger. Seconds tick by, and neither of us moves. I don’t know what’s passing through his mind, but terror and excitement consume mine. I’m incapable of moving, even if I tried.
The king’s gaze flicks back up to mine, his dark eyes intense in the low lighting. Pushing away from the wall, he prowls forward. The trance is broken. Something’s changed, and things I know nothing of are about to happen. With each step the king takes, I can see a little more of that fire burning in his eyes.
What have I agreed to?
Taking my hand, Montes leads me to a fainting couch. I allow him to guide my body onto it. The entire time I watch him like he might tear my throat out if I look away or move too quickly.
The king kneels next to me, a hand dropping to one of my ankles. It slips under the silky seam of my skirt and glides up my calf. Over my knee.
My heart’s in my throat; I can feel it pounding there, cutting off my breath.
Up his hand delves, over my thigh. Then stops.
“You’re shaking.”
I close my eyes. His words carry no inflection, so I can’t tell whether he considers this a good or bad thing. I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to be doing either, but chances are, if I take an active role in whatever’s going on, I will end up attacking him, the Undying King. That can’t happen.
That won’t happen.
I lick my dry lips. “I’ve never … done this.”
“This?” the king repeats like he’s confused. His fingers brush between my legs.
The small burst of pleasure tightens my stomach, and I glare at him. “Yes, that.”
His hands slide out from under my skirt. “What have you done?” Curiosity smolders in his eyes.
“I’ve been kissed.”
“That’s it?” Again, his words are inflectionless. He lays a hand on my hipbone
“That’s it.”
He swears under his breath, his grip tightening. I can tell conflicting desires war within him because he’s looking through me more than at me. I also know the moment they resolve themselves.
He hesitates, then rises to his feet. “Leave.”
I don’t move. This is not how it’s supposed to play out.
“Move, Serenity, before I change my mind.”
Slowly I stand. The fear is fading, replaced by confusion. I consider the man in front of me. Logic is telling me that he’s letting me go because of some moral compass he carries. My emotions are telling me any moral compass he possesses is so warped and eroded he wouldn’t know a good deed from a bad one.
“I’m giving you tonight,” he says, not looking at me. “Enjoy the company of your father. Tomorrow, you’ll be at my side, not his.”