Chapter 19
Serenity
I wake up in the middle of the night, clammy with sweat. If I close my eyes, I can still see the last moments of the dream—the blood, the shattered bones, the death throes of the mortally wounded.
I run a hand down my face. I’m used to nightmares; I have too many bad memories for my mind to prey upon. Tonight’s just reminded me of the abyss I’ve traveled down since war broke out.
The king stirs, and his arm goes around my stomach. He drags me against his chest, his fingers stroking my damp skin.
“It’s okay, my queen,” he murmurs against my hair. I’m not even sure he’s awake. “You’re safe now.”
Safety’s not what I crave, and no one can rescue me from my life. I wait until I’m sure Montes is asleep before I slip out of bed.
My demons ride me hard. I change as quietly as I can, and I pad out of the room and onto the balcony.
I swing one foot over the ledge, then the other. Once I’m standing on the outside of the balcony, my arms wrap around the railing behind me. I gaze out at the dark sea. The surf crashes, calling to me.
All at once, I let go of the railing.
I feel weightless for an instant, and then my feet meet grass. I clench my teeth as the impact sends a stabbing pain through my knees and abdomen.
I head towards the ocean, and the lawn gives away to sand. I scoop up a handful of it and let it run through my fingers. The lamps out here are few and far between, and the nearly full moon casts the edge of the garden in shades of blue. The king’s many guards patrol this place, but they’ve either made themselves scarce for the evening, or they blend in well. Either way, I can almost pretend that I’m alone.
Now that I have some small measure of privacy, I can finally settle my thoughts on things I’d rather keep from the king. I place a hand over my stomach. I’m dying, and not even Montes can stop it. I still vomit blood, my stomach still aches sharply. Whatever the Sleeper’s abilities are, I’m not sure they’re making things better for me.
I would’ve thought I’d be happy—it’s finally an end to this sad life of mine. I’ll return to the earth, just like everyone else I’ve loved.
But I’m not pleased about it.
“I’m sorry, Mom and Dad,” I whisper to the stars above me, “but I’m not ready to come home yet.”
I watch the sky. A cool evening breeze runs through my hair, beckoning me closer to the water. If I had it my way, I’d let the wind and the waves carry me far, far away.
I head over to the water and stick my toes in the sand.
“What are you doing out here this late?”
My spine stiffens at that voice, and I rotate.
Montes stands a few short feet away from me. He shouldn’t look as handsome as he does. Moonlight pools against his features, illuminating half of them and casting the other half in shadow. He wears only loose lounge pants, and I have to force myself from fixating on his torso.
“Enjoying the view,” I say, casting a brief look up at the stars.
“The one sleeping next to you wasn’t good enough?”
All I want is to be left alone. Not even in the deepest recesses of night am I allowed this. “Not everything is about you, Montes,” I say, weary.
“You can talk to me.”
I almost laugh. I’m not sure this man could handle my past. But more than that, he gave me this past of mine. “I will never tell you my burdens.”
He closes the distance between us. “You’re lying again.”
I search his face. “Why do you try so hard with me when you so obviously don’t with anybody else?”
“Your heart has always been mine. I knew it from the moment I met you. I try because I cherish what is mine.”
“I don’t believe in love at first sight.”
He laughs. “I’m not talking about love, Serenity.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He shakes his head. “Something else. Something poets know more about than I do.”
I hate to concede anything to Montes, but I felt it, too. Maybe not the moment I met him—I had too much hate for that. But when I caught sight of him on the flat screen when I was the Resistance’s prisoner, I still recognized him in a way that had nothing to do with memory.
“I will never forgive you,” I say.
“I don’t want forgiveness from you. I never did.” His hand slides to mine.
My beautiful nightmare. That’s what he is, what all of this is—the nightmare I can never wake from. And it doesn’t frighten me any longer.
I take one look as the stars. “They’re waiting for me. You know, they might be even more powerful than you.”
“Who are you referring to?”
“The dead.”
The king appears unnerved by my words. “I didn’t know you were superstitious.”
“I’m not.” I sit down in the sand. The king joins me.
“Superstitions are nonsensical,” I say, slinging my arms over my knees. “I’ve seen a person’s soul leave their body. You can’t not believe once you see proof like that.”
“Is that what you’ve been dwelling on out here? All the people you’ve killed?”
“All the people you’ve killed.”
The king leans back on his elbows and stretches his body out. My eyes linger first on his chest, and then those long legs of his.
“Throwing blame around doesn’t change the fact that they’re dead,” he says.
“Dead, yes. But gone? No, they’re not gone.” If anything they are more present than ever. The dead haunt my memories and my dreams; I’ll never be free of them. That’s the penance you pay when you take a life.
Montes glances over at me, and lounging back on his forearms, he’s the poster boy for irreverence. “Let the past go,” he says. “Be happy.”
I stare up at the lonely stars. “I don’t know how.”
We sit next to each other in the sand for who knows how long, and somewhere along the way Montes sits back up and his arm finds itself around me. I pretend I don’t notice. Better that than to admit I might actually enjoy him holding me close.
“Now that you no longer live in the bunker, have the stars lost any of their allure?” Montes asks.
I shake my head and smile. “None. If anything, they’ve gotten more beautiful.”
When I look over at him, he’s already watching me. The intensity of that stare makes me acutely aware of myself. Sometimes, like right now, I believe that if the king could, he would drink me up and swallow me whole just to absorb every single bit of me into him.
It’s disconcerting, to say the least.
I glance back up at the sky to shake my strange awareness. Amongst a sea of unfamiliar constellations, I see a dear one.
“Want to know a secret?” I ask.
“Of course,” Montes says. “If it has anything to do with you, I’m interested.”
I will give the king this: he never does anything half-assed. Especially not when it comes to pursuing his cold wife.
“I have a favorite constellation,” I admit.
In the moonlight, I see him raise an eyebrow. “Which one?”
I lean into him, for once uncaring at our closeness, and point far above me. “Do you see that cluster of dim stars?”
“The Pleiades?” the king says.
I nod and wrap my arms around my legs. “My mother taught me about that constellation. The Seven Sisters. She said those were the wishing stars. That if you wanted something badly enough, you need only to wish upon them and it would come true.”
Montes is flashing me a rueful grin. “And have you ever?”
I give him the side eye. “Once or twice.”
“What did you wish for?”
The end of the war. The end of my sorrowful life. “Things I won’t admit to another soul.”
“Not even to me?”
Now I laugh. “Especially not to you.”
He pushes me back into the sand and rolls over me. “Why not?”
We’re gazing into each other’s eyes, and now I see the night sky in his irises, and I can only imagine what he sees in mine.
“Because you’re my enemy, and you don’t tell your enemy your secrets.”
He captures my hands, like I knew he would, and presses them into the sand on either side of me. “But I’m also your husband, and you do tell your husband secrets,” he says, threading his fingers through mine.
“You’re going to have to force them out of me.”
“Oh?” His interest is piqued. “Lucky me,” he removes one of his hands from mine to slip it into my robe, “I know exactly the type of torture my wife likes best,” he says, cupping a breast.
“Stop referring to me in the third person.”
“Or what?” His lips are just an inch away from mine, and his voice is husky. “You’ll really never tell me your secrets?” He thumbs my nipple as he taunts me.
Already my breath has quickened. “I sleep with my gun. You’d do well to remember that.”
“And you know I’ll take that gun away from you if I feel like you’re abusing your power.”
I guffaw. “Do you seriously want to get into a debate about the abuse of power?”
He laughs low in his throat. “I don’t want a debate at all.”
He takes my mouth then, his lips gliding against my own. I like to think myself a complicated, toughened person, but it never takes Montes long to pull me apart piece by piece.
I press my torso into his, and now he releases my hands so that he can skim his along my skin.
Beyond us the tide has risen, and it licks at our toes. I can feel it dampening the edges of my robe, which—thanks largely to Montes—is no longer serving any sort of proprietary function. I’m splayed open to the king, something it doesn’t take him long to figure out.
First his hand, then his head dip down between my thighs, and my fingers are grasping uselessly at sand. My legs open further, and the king groans, pausing his ministrations to grip my thighs.
“I enjoy it when we fight,” he says, “but I enjoy it even more when you finally give in.”
“Ssssh …” I don’t bother clarifying that I was trying to tell him to shut up, but I couldn’t get past that first syllable.
I’ve come completely untethered. I thread my fingers through Montes’s hair, getting sea salt and sand all over the king’s dark locks. I mess it up further, which I’m unashamed to say is a favorite pastime of mine.
I don’t know how he does it, but the man manages to shed his pants while keeping me preoccupied. But then his mouth leaves my core and his bare chest slides up my torso. I laugh as the sand I put in his hair sprinkles down on me.
He kisses my mouth, and I taste myself on his lips.
“Maybe I’ll make a wish upon those Sisters,” he says between kisses.
“Mmm, you don’t get to claim the Sisters on top of everything else,” I say, nipping his lower lip.
“That’s not very egalitarian of you.” That wicked grin of his stretches against my lips.
“Wishes are for people who can’t just buy what they want.”
“Hasn’t anyone told you, nire bihotza?” he says between kisses. “The best things can’t be bought.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask, fighting the impulse to move against him now that his weight has settled between my legs.
“‘Nire bihotza’?”
I nod.
“Mmm, you’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” He touches my scar. “Too bad it takes sharing your secrets to learn mine.”
I huff. What he says is fair; it doesn’t mean I like it.
“Now,” he continues, “about that wish …”
Back to this?
“Fine, make a wish, man-who-has-everything,” I say.
He lifts my hips and slides into me, breaking away from my mouth to watch my reaction.
“I will: I wish that one day, you’ll finally know happiness.”
And, staring into his eyes, I fear that one day, I just might.