The Queen of Traitors (The Fallen World Book 2) (22 page)

I bite my lip hard enough for it to bleed. The odds are now stacked far against me. I’m not getting out of whatever twisted plan the king has in store. There isn’t a car waiting, nor are there Resistance fighters to protect me.

The normally stoic soldiers are yelling, trying to contain my struggles. Eventually they do, leaving me gasping out of anger and incredulity.

Servants are watching, the ladies of the court are watching, the men who might be politicians or just more elite individuals are watching. I have captured all their attention. And they look horrified. The queen who jumped three stories only to fall into the arms of her husband’s waiting army.

I have a clear line of sight to the palace’s rear doors. It only takes a minute for them to open and the king to come storming out.

This man who I have come to know intimately looks larger than life as he strides towards me, a doctor in a white lab coat at his heels.

He’s really going to do it.

I renew my struggles. A handful of wild, animalistic cries slip from my lips as I vainly try to get away. The entire time my eyes stay locked on the king’s.

His rove over my body. I can only imagine what he must see—the tangled locks of my hair, the whites of my eyes, the angry set of my jaw.

I grit my teeth as he steps up to me. This is it.

“What were you thinking, Serenity?” The vein at his temple pounds, and God does he sound angry. Angry and desperate.

“Montes, don’t. Please.” I have desperation in my voice to match the king’s.

He tips my chin up. “I
love
you, Serenity. I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m doing it to save you.”

After all this time, he still doesn’t understand. “This was never about me,” I say as he steps back so the man in the lab coat can get closer. “You’re not saving me, you’re saving your own chicken-shit heart—”

The man in the lab coat presses a damp cloth against my nose and mouth, and a sweet, chemical smell wafts from it. I buck against my captors and try to shake the hand. It grips my face harder.

I know whatever they’ve doused the material with is a sedative. As soon as I lose consciousness, I don’t know when—or if—I’ll wake up.

I try to hold my breath, but it’s a lost cause. I last for maybe a minute and a half before I’m forced to breathe in a deep lungful. I breathe in another. And another.

The soldiers are lowering me to the ground, and someone’s brushing my hair back. I follow that arm to its owner. My husband truly appears upset.

Is there no room for my own suffering in that heart of his?

The drug’s beginning to affect me. My focus drifts, and when I move, the colors of my surroundings blur for a second too long. But I haven’t passed out yet.

A surge of anger has me redoubling my efforts against the hands that hold me down, but I’m too weak and too outnumbered to make much headway.

Still, I don’t stop fighting.

“Serenity,” Montes says, continuing to pet my hair. “I would never hurt you. It’s going to be okay.”

Those five lying words. I’ve said them to soldiers as their lifeblood drained from their veins and their souls slipped from their eyes. It’s a statement you say to someone who’s lost hope, a lie you voice to make yourself feel better. But the person who is forced to hear it? They alone know the truth.

Sometimes, there is no hope to be had.

An angry tear trickles out. I can’t tell if my rage comes from this strange betrayal or from what will happen to me once I’m unaware.

Montes’s eyes focus on the tear, and the bastard strokes it away with his thumb. “Don’t cry,
nire bihotza
,” he says, his voice hoarse—as though this is tough for him. It makes me want to scream.

He has absolutely no idea what pain and loss feel like. The narcissist in me hopes that the king cares for me enough to regret this mistake for a very long time.

But I’m not counting on it.

“This isn’t forever,” the king says.

My eyes try to focus on him, but the sharpness of my reality is slipping away. I don’t know how much time has passed—minutes maybe—but I can tell the drug is working. Darkness is licking the edges of my vision.

The last thing I see is the king’s face, and the last thing I hear is his voice. He leans over me, and I feel a hand stroke my face. “We’ll only be apart for a short while. Once we cure your sickness, you’ll be mine again.”

Epilogue

The King

1 week later

I tell the
world she’s dead.

My enemies don’t believe me, but it doesn’t matter. She’s locked away in the Sleeper far below the surface of the earth, the machine healing her advanced sickness one malignant tumor at a time.

My fierce, violent queen.

I ache for her. This is different from the other times she’d been hospitalized. Now I know she’s not coming out until we cure her cancer. That could be years, decades even. That entire time I have to endure it with one side of my bed cold. I have to carry this nation solely on my shoulders after catching a glimpse of what it would be like to have a true partnership with the woman I love.

I gaze into the window of the Sleeper and press my hand against the glass. She looks too serene. I’m used to my queen’s frowns, her glares, her narrowed eyes. The way she studies things with cool detachment, the way those old soul eyes of hers assess the world.

This woman does not look like my wife.

I don’t think I can bear staring at her face much longer. It’s cruel to want something and know you can’t have it.

Serenity believed that I never felt the wounds of my war. That I was above it. If only she knew how goddamn bad my heart hurts. Sometimes I can’t catch my breath under the weight of all this grief. I lost my closest advisors, my oldest friend, my child, and the love of my very long life all within months of one another.

The world doesn’t realize just how fragile their immortal king is at the moment.

But my enemies do. Of course they do.

6 months later

They still mourn
her, my people. They hated her while she was alive, but her supposed death has made her a martyr. It helps that the rebellions in the West are responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities to date. The devil the people know is better than the one they’re learning about, the one the Resistance is regretting aligning with.

It also helps that I’ve encouraged Serenity’s martyrdom. I’ve leaked a series of clips, much the same way the Resistance once did. But rather than degrading her character, these video segments show the world the Serenity I knew—a woman who wore violence alongside benevolence. I have clips from her interrogation, security feeds from the palace, even rare footage from her time as a soldier and an emissary of the WUN.

They’re scrubbed down and shortened so that they cast her in a positive light, and they do the trick. Too late my people want to know about this woman that fought for them, who not only claimed to be one of them, but
was
one of them. And they love me for loving her.

I watch the clips over and over, until I’ve memorized every word, every expression, every movement of hers.

I’d hoped it would bring me peace.

It only brings more heartache.

2 years later

“Chris Kline, you
are a hard man to track down.”

The man in question currently wears shackles and sits sullenly on one of my couches. He’s much rougher around the edges than when I first met him. Hiding does that to a man. Makes him lean and shifty-eyed. But the former general’s sanity is still intact, and I can see he’s just as hardened as ever.

My guards flank him on either side. If he so much as moves a finger wrong, they’ll load his body with bullets.

I settle myself on the couch opposite him and prop one of my ankles over my knee. A butler comes in with two glasses of aged Scotch. He dips down, and I take one from the tray. My butler then turns to Kline, who’s watching this all unfold with wary eyes.

I gesture to the drink. “Go on. I’m not trying to poison you. I have far more efficient ways of getting rid of people than that.”

Reluctantly he takes the tumbler off the tray, his cuffs clinking together as he does so. It’s an awkward maneuver, drinking while shackled, but the former general manages it with ease. He takes a swallow and exhales, his eyes closing for the briefest of seconds.

“That’s good stuff,” he says.

“It’s near the best,” I say.

“Why are you sharing your best Scotch with one of your prisoners?” he asks.

Blunt and to the point, just like my wife. I wonder if this is where Serenity picked up some of her personality traits, or if this is just a feature of all North American citizens.

“I’m hoping by the end of this conversation you won’t be my prisoner.”

The man squints his eyes and leans back. “I reckon that’s not going to happen,” he says. “I don’t like you very much. See, you killed my son, destroyed my country, and married the closest thing I had to a daughter, and now she’s dead too.”

I swirl my Scotch. “I’m not here to apologize or discuss the past. It’s your resume that interests me. How long had you been the general of the WUN?”

“Six years.”

“And before that?”

“I was the Secretary of Defense for two years.”

I nod. “And you remain loyal to your homeland even now?”

Kline leans forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, his drink still clutched in one of his hands. “From where I sit, you’ve got me by the balls. Do you really think I’m going to answer that honestly? Add treason to the growing list of charges against me?”

I set my glass of Scotch down carefully on a side table, then I, too, lean forward. “This isn’t your old world. I can kill you now just because I feel like it—if I were so inclined. I’m not. I know you’re now heading up the Resistance, I know you love my wife, and I know you still want to help your people.”

South America has fallen into my enemies’ hands, and North America is set to follow. Serenity’s beloved homeland is far worse off now than it was two years ago when they surrendered to me.

For the first time ever, someone’s taken land from me. I intend to get it back.

“‘Love’?” Kline’s still stuck on my comment about Serenity.

“Come,” I say, standing. “I want to show you something.”

He doesn’t get a choice. His drink’s taken from him; my guards yank him up to his feet and force him to follow me.

I head down to some of the lowest levels of the palace. Here, the drone of many different machines fills the air. It doesn’t take long to find Serenity’s. I open the outer shell. Inside it is another glass case—a sort of incubator. And inside of that, the woman that holds my heart.

I haven’t laid eyes on her in nearly a year, and I have to lock my knees to keep myself upright. But for my purposes, Serenity’s old general needs to see this.

“Holy fuck!” Kline reels back soon as he catches a glimpse of her. “She’s alive?” There’s a strange note in his voice.

“She never died to begin with. But she will if I take her out of this machine.”

Kline regains his composure and creeps closer. I can still read the horror on his features, however.

“Why keep her like this?” he asks. “Why not just let her die?”

My eyes are transfixed on that scarred, beautiful face. “Because I love her.”

He’s shaking his head like he thinks I’m crazy, that what I feel for my wife is something less pure than love. But what does he know? He gave away this very woman to a man he considered his worst enemy.

I’d level the earth before I’d let that same fate befall Serenity.

“I’m working on curing cancer—and repairing radiation-damaged tissue,” I say instead. “I’m going to save her life. Once I do, I will have the ability to heal the sick. And I
will
heal them.

“You are a good man, Kline. I believe you have an honest heart. I need men like that. Will you help me repair what I’ve broken?”

It’s been a long time since I’ve done something that’s felt right. Like power, this feeling is addicting. Maybe I’ll rewrite my own history along with Serenity’s. Maybe one day people won’t see me as a man who ruined the world, but the one who saved it.

That won’t happen anytime soon, but time is something I have plenty of.

“I worked for you once,” Kline says. “I never will again.”

Before the sight of Serenity can break me, I close the lid. I turn to Kline, a man who was once my enemy, then my ally, then my enemy again, in hopes that he will be my ally once more.

Serenity trusted this man. I will too.

“I’m not asking you to work for me. I’m asking you, and the Resistance, to work with me.”

7 years later

My traitorous former
advisors have stolen my technology. For the first time ever I feel the anger that comes with trying to kill something that just won’t die. That’s how I find out they’re utilizing the Sleeper.

I’ve never received direct evidence that they’re taking my pills, but while under my rule, I watched their hair thin and their skin wrinkle. Now their thick heads of hair and their youthful faces are all the evidence I need that they’re taking the pills.

I am now fighting monsters of my own making.

10 years later

Nanotechnology.

That’s how we save her.

24 years later

Another failure. And
just when things were looking up. We’d begun human trials on the latest drug, too.

When I find out, I cradle my head in my hands and I sob.

It wasn’t all a loss, I suppose. The drug is able to cure certain types of cancer—just not Serenity’s. And, selfish bastard that I am, hers is all I really care about.

I have to accept the fact that even after all this time, I’ll have to wait longer.

That doesn’t sit well with me, and I take out my aggression on the WUN. I imagine that Serenity would hate me for it. But then, I wouldn’t be giving her enough credit. She always had a way of parsing down issues fairly. Maybe she’d understand that the WUN I fight today is not the same one she left.

29 years later

I sit in
front of the Sleeper, my hands in my pockets.

“My queen, I think we’ve found the key to curing your cancer.”

It’s not the only news I have, but it’s the one that consumes my thoughts. My hands practically shake from excitement.

Three decades, three long, excruciatingly lonely decades. Three more decades of war. My depravity has gotten worse. And now, finally, I’ll be able to hold her in my arms again.

Will we be the same once she wakes? All this work I’ve done for her, and sometimes I fear that I’ve changed too much. She will still be the Serenity I left thirty years ago, but will she see me as the same man she gave her life and heart to?

“You’re getting moved. I’m rebuilding my Mediterranean palace,” I say to her. It’s the place where we were first married. Far below the palace there’s to be a secret room—more of a temple really. And right at the heart of it my queen will rest until the last of her illness is obliterated.

53 years later

The plague hits
again, and the death toll this time around is just as merciless as it was the last time it swept through the Eastern Empire.

The WUN and my old advisors who rule it are responsible. We traced the origins back to a series of contaminated food supplies smuggled in.

I’ve now lived through two epidemics. The first one fashioned me into a wealthy ruler when I sold the cure for profit. I thought I was evil then, but compared to current events, I’ve actually had to reassess my own suppositions.

Unfortunately for the WUN, a mutated strain of the virus made its way back West. The numbers of our dead are nothing compared to that of the WUN.

It’s times like these that I’m glad my queen still sleeps.

Her cancer’s been cured, but there are other mutations to her genome caused by radiation that the Sleeper is fixing. It’s a slow process, providing gene therapy, and just when it appears all is well, some new issue pops up that the Sleeper must deal with.

I rub my face. Most of the time my thirst for life vanquishes all those things that haunt me. But late at night when I’m alone, like I am now, they come pouring in and I feel the weight of all my regrets and sorrow.

It’s moments like these when my skin feels most alien. I’m far too weary for the young body I live in.

I leave my study and head down flight after flight of stairs. The mausoleum is finally complete.

Once my architects finished the project, I delivered a refined version of the memory loss serum to them. No one can know about this place. And for the unfortunates that I hired, that was the price I exacted.

My footsteps echo against the marble stairs as I enter the cavernous, subterranean chamber. The room is covered completely in marble and embellished with gold, lapis lazuli, and indigo tiles. I head down the walkway that leads to Serenity’s burnished sarcophagus. At least, that’s what it looks like by all outer appearances. But beneath the golden designs that cover it is state-of-the-art machinery. This Sleeper is not only the most beautiful one in existence, it is also the most advanced.

It sits on an island of marble, surrounded by a pool of water. Columns ring the edges of the circular room, and the ceiling arcs high above us.

My shoes click as I head down the marble walkway that bisects the pool. The water is still and smooth. It reflects the dim lighting and, beyond that, the artificial night sky set into the ceiling. So she’d always have the stars to gaze up at.

I sit at the bench that overlooks her sarcophagus.

I still miss her, but already I’ve forgotten the sharp ache of our love. Now, like the rest of the world, she’s more myth than woman. I wouldn’t even know what to do with the real Serenity if I were to meet her again.

64 years later

I’ve done something
unforgiveable—two things, actually. Two twisted deeds I already regret. It’s times like this when I need Serenity’s ferocity. I need her to aim her father’s gun at me and demand I change my ways on pain of death.

As fucked up as we were, she tempered the conscienceless part of me.

No one else bothers to stand in my way.

My loneliness is to blame. It eats away at me. Some days I’m not sure I’ll survive it. But I’m too afraid to die and too afraid to resurrect my queen.

“I’m sorry, Serenity.”

I miss her.