Chapter 15
The King
The news doesn’t immediately take. I stare at the tiled floor as the doctor’s words sink in.
Serenity is … pregnant?
With my child?
My gaze moves up slowly to the doctor. “She is?”
He nods.
She’s carrying my child.
Serenity’s carrying our child.
I draw in a lungful of air.
Now it takes.
Fierce joy surges through my system, followed on its heels by possessive, masculine pride. I can’t stop my reaction. Now my heart’s pounding for an entirely different reason.
A child.
We hadn’t planned on this. I wasn’t trying to get her pregnant, despite my eventual plans for an heir. I’d never considered kids, and now I don’t know what to do with this strange elation I feel. If I’d have known I’d have this reaction, I’d have pushed the issue sooner.
I want to grab my wife and hold her. My eyes move to the Sleeper. Instead she’s unconscious, hurt once again.
She and our child.
A burst of anger punches through my joy. Someone needs to die, and Serenity and I need to leave the palace. It’s clear that if we remain, this will continue to happen. It grates me to flee my own home, but I’ll do it for her and the baby.
I’m going to be a father.
Had I once worried that no one who knows me will love me? Already my wife’s long-standing hatred is toppling. And my child—I rub my mouth. I’ll make damn sure they love me.
“How far along is she?” I ask.
“Just shy of eight weeks—Your Majesty, I need to caution you, the child might not survive. Women like Serenity who have been exposed to high levels of radiation often have fertility issues. And if the child does survive, it might have problems of its own.”
These words, too, don’t immediately sink in. But when they do—and they eventually do—they slaughter me.
This is karma, giving me everything I want only to steal it away.
I’m shaking my head. I won’t believe it.
Usually I’m a reasonable man. But reasonableness has nothing to do with this. Not now that I have a future to look forward to and something to hope for.
“The Sleeper can fix this.” Serenity is a survivor. Maybe our child will be as well.
“The Sleeper, as we’ve previously discussed, has limits.”
“Then fucking enhance it! Goddamnit, I will not sit here and listen to you tell me all the ways this won’t work.” I rise to my feet and get in Goldstein’s face. “You’re the royal physician. Consider your life now tied to my child’s.” I mean every word.
He blanches.
Good. Perhaps the threat will be enough to prompt him into usefulness.
Once he recovers, the doctor bows his head. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
“Leave—and tell no one of this.” If my enemies knew of the pregnancy, they’d redouble their efforts to kill Serenity.
Goldstein exits the room, leaving me with my sick, pregnant wife.
I stare at the Sleeper, my excitement offset by Goldstein’swarnings. I place a hand on the machine.
Deadly, savage woman.
Now that I’m alone with her, I realize Serenity won’t react to the news like I have. I don’t know quite how she’ll take it, but I doubt joy will top her list. I remember her barely masked revulsion on our wedding day when the subject came up. It burns me raw to remember. She still hates me; I haven’t won her over enough for her to forget the bad blood between us. And when she finds out she’s pregnant with my child … it will set off all sorts of her triggers.
I’m a wise enough man to know telling her will earn me her famous wrath. I might not survive an angry, hormonal Serenity. Better she figure it out on her own.
I smile at the prospect of a pregnant Serenity stomping around.
I’ve only gotten the barest taste of this future, but already I know I want no other.
Serenity
When I wake up, it’s in the king’s bed.
I push myself up and rest my back against the headboard.
How did I get here?
I have to jog my memory to recall the knife wound.
The Sleeper. Of course.
Now I wear a dress someone else slid onto my body while I slept. I try not to think about that too hard. Same goes for the underwear I see when I lift the hem of the dress up. There really isn’t anyone who I’d want to see me naked.
I continue to raise the material until I see the smooth expanse of my stomach. I touch the skin that had been split open last time I’d seen it. Nothing remains of that wound, not even a scar.
How many days did I lose this time?
I pull my dress back down and lean my head against the headboard. A glint of metal catches my eye, and I turn to the bedside table.
A row of bullets are lined up along the polished wood. Next to them are a giftwrapped box and a card with my name scrawled across the front. I reach for the card.
I thought you’d prefer this to flowers.
I run my thumb over the king’s handwriting.
A reluctant smile spreads across my face. I do prefer bullets to flowers.
I pick one of them up and study it.
My smile falls away. This ammunition is familiar.
I turn my attention to the gift wrapped box. When I lift it onto my lap the weight, too, is familiar.
I tear away at the ribbons and paper that cover it. I’m breathing faster than I should be. And then, when I open the lid of the box, I stop breathing altogether.
Inside, resting on tissue paper, is a gift I have already been given once before. I pick up the piece of cold, hard metal. It fits in my hand like it was born there.
The gun had originally been a gift from my father, and ever since he’d given it to me, it had been the most constant of comrades.
Montes had held onto it this entire time. I can’t stop the anger that rises at the thought. He’d taken away one of the few possessions I’d coveted.
But he had given it back. With bullets.
What a trusting, stupid man.
I’m loading bullets into the chamber of my father’s gun when Montes storms in. His eyes capture mine, and he stalks towards me.
My anger is no match for the emotion pouring off him.
He doesn’t bother removing the gun from my hand before he cups my face the same way he had the last time we’d been intimate. The same intensity burns through him now as it did then.
He takes my mouth savagely. When the kiss doesn’t let up after a few seconds, I set aside the gun to better return it.
I can tell without asking that Montes’s emotions simmer just beneath his skin. Usually I doubt his motives and intentions, but there is no confusion here: I’m no passing fancy of his.
He threads his fingers through my hair and his tongue invades my mouth.
It’s not enough.
I can practically hear the thought running on repeat in his head. The man who owns the world has finally found something he can never have enough of, and he’s trying to figure out a way to remedy that.
He breaks off the kiss and leans his forehead against mine. “How do you feel?”
“You gave me back my father’s gun.” Even as I speak, I reach for it.
“Thinking of using it on me?” His eyes are full of mirth, and any anger I was planning on directing his way now dissipates. He enjoys the vicious side of me; it’s hard to threaten someone when they relish it.
I turn my attention from the king to the weapon. I flip it over and over in my hand. I miss my war-torn country and my father. I miss knowing right from wrong and friends from enemies. I miss knowing my place in the world.
I can feel the king watching me. The bed dips as he sits at my side. “Your gun had me thinking.”
That train of thought can’t end well.
His fingertips touch the scar on my face. “I have a serious question for you: Now that you’re the unofficial representative of the western hemisphere, how would you feel about returning to the WUN?”
Not two days later Montes and I are on the plane heading to the last land to fall to the king.
Up here, the sky is bluer than I’ve ever seen it, and the clouds are whiter than even the king’s smile. It hurts my chest that a day can be this beautiful.
We’re not headed to the continent formerly known as North America. It’s an odd mix of relief and disappointment to not be returning to the place I called home. It’s all I’ve ever known, but there’s nothing there left for me.
Instead, we’re heading to the land on the other side of the equator. The king’s having trouble pulling together the fractured nations of Southern WUN, and now, as the self-appointed representative of the western hemisphere, I’m to help him fashion some sort of cohesive government. I smile to myself as I stare out the window. What he wants to do is damn near impossible, and it may be petty of me, but I look forward to seeing the king struggle.
I steal a glance at Montes, who sits across from me, his legs pressed against my own. He’s pinching his lower lip as he scrolls through a document on his tablet. Without warning, Montes looks up and our eyes meet. I squeeze my chair’s armrests.
A wry smile spreads across his face. “Still plotting my death?”
I frown. I don’t want this casual familiarity with him, no matter that it’s inevitable.
Absently I touch my holstered gun. “You shouldn’t remind me. The prospect is too tempting.”
“So you weren’t plotting my death while you were staring at me? Hmmm, I wonder what my queen was thinking.” He leaves the thought hanging there.
More bait for me to rise to.
“This is where all your delusions of grandeur come from,” I say.
“They’re not delusions, Serenity, if they come true.”
He has a point.
“Who are we meeting with first?” I ask, purposefully changing the subject.
We land in Morro de São Paulo, a city along the continent’s eastern coast, in another several hours. The discussions don’t begin until tomorrow, but I want to be ready. Not only is this a chance to establish my own abilities, I know many of these people either directly or indirectly from my time with the WUN.
“Luca Estes,” Montes says.
I groan. “Don’t tell me you’re giving him a government seat.”
“Not just a government seat, the government seat. He’ll spearhead the South American region of my rule. You have an issue with this?”
“Yes.” A huge one. “He’s a sellout.”
My eyes flick over the luxurious cabin we sit in. Greed, in the end, got to Estes. It’s as corrosive to the soul as outright violence. After all, if not for greed, there would be no King Lazuli.
I click my tongue. “He’s not a good person to have working for you. Before he was a politician, he was a thug. He only came to power once he killed enough people.”
Something you two have in common.
“I dare you to find me a single person in office that hasn’t gotten his or her hands dirty—including you.”
I can’t say anything to that. Our world is one of hard choices and bloodshed.
“After you detonated the nukes across the WUN,” I say, “Estes began destabilizing many of the neighboring regions.”
When I was just the daughter of an emissary, Estes had been one of the thorns in the WUN’s side. He often pulled aggressive maneuvers on his allies rather than trying to come together and provide a united front against the Eastern Empire.
“That’s because he was working for me the entire time.”
Montes’s words aren’t surprising, but they are disheartening.
“So you would have a sellout—a traitor to his comrades—holding the seat of Southern WUN.”
“South America,” Montes corrects.
“What would you have me do?” he asks, leaning forward.
He really wants my advice, this man who’s taken over the world.
“You have better experience with bad men than I do.” He convenes with a whole room of them on a daily basis. “Perhaps you can handle Estes. But I’d listen to what the people here want.”
“My reports indicate he’s a favorite amongst the people.”
I know all about Montes’s reports. They’d serve more use as kindling than as information.
“Fear and love wear similar faces,” I say.
“Not on you.”
This is hedging too close to subjects I don’t want to talk about. “You’ve never seen love on my face,” I say, staring him down.
“I thought you and I were beyond the lies.” He holds my gaze.
My fingers dig into my arm rests. I’m itching to unholster my gun, but not because I’m angry. Heaven help me, it’s because Montes might be right and I can’t bear that he of all people lured something as soft as love out of me.
Montes lifts a cup of coffee to his lips. After he sets it down, he says, “I will take what you say into account. For now, let’s keep our friends close and our enemies closer.”
“I already am, Montes.” And that really is the problem.