I can’t be around this. I just … want out.

I back up.

Montes leans back, his arms slung over his knees. If I didn’t know him better, I’d say he was completely at ease. But he never did like me walking away from him, and I can see the controlled panic in his eyes.

“The queen I remember never leaves until she’s made a threat,” he says, watching me back away from him.

He remembers more than I thought he would.

And now, of all things, he wants me to threaten him. Because that’s intrinsically something I would do.

I pause, only for a moment, and exhale, suddenly very weary.

“Not for lost causes,” I say.

And then I leave him.

The King

I don’t move until the door closes behind her. But once it does, I can’t seem to move quickly enough.

I pull my phone from my pocket and dial the head of security. “Serenity is not to leave the palace grounds under any circumstances.”

My guard is quiet for a beat too long.

“Understood?” I say.

Finally, he says, “Understood, Your Majesty.”

I click the phone off and bring it to my lips.

For the first time in a hundred years, my soul flares to life, my heart along with it. And it hurts so fucking bad.

No one’s ever been in my situation, so I couldn’t have foreseen that love doesn’t function as other things do. It took decades for it to fade, and an instant for it to come roaring back.

As far as my heart is concerned, no time has passed.

And yet, Serenity was nothing like my memory. None of my imaginings could’ve made her so perfectly flawed.

I can now recall the exact color of her irises—somewhere between gunmetal gray and a frigid ice blue. And her anger—part of the reason I didn’t stop her from laying into me was that I was mesmerized by that inner fire of hers. My beautiful storm.

I touch the side of my face tenderly. The skin’s beginning to swell.

I breathe harshly through my nose to beat back a shout. I did leave her in a machine to rot. She couldn’t protest, so I didn’t listen. And now she’s back with a vengeance.

The fool I was who first laid eyes on her all those years ago did one thing right—he saw redemption within his reach, and he snatched it up for himself.

And then he sabotaged it again, and again.

I’m still brooding when I hear a knock on my door twenty minutes later. I already know who’s on the other side. I squeeze my phone tighter as a wave of anger washes over me.

I should’ve known.

He should’ve told me.

I pull myself together, breathing in and out through my nose to calm myself down.

I knew this was coming.

“Come in,” I call.

This is something else I’ll eventually have to explain to Serenity, something else she’ll want to kill me for. And maybe this time she’ll be successful.

I rub my face. Redemption has always been within my reach. I’m just too damn guilty to accept it.

Serenity

I thread my hands behind my head and pace once more inside my room.

I’ve only ever had one job: to take out the king. I failed at that task time and time again.

I can kill easily enough. There are six dead men who can attest to that.

And no one is more deserving of death than the king. The man has done so many unconscionable things.

My stupid, idiotic feelings.

And what now?

A century ago, I had a purpose. Marriage for peace. A voice for my people and all those who were downtrodden. I might not have wanted the life I was forced into, I might’ve lamented it, but at least then I understood it.

I don’t understand this.

The future, the lost, obsessive king and the war he still futilely fights. Why life has made a joke of my existence.

I take a deep breath.

I never had much time for pity. I still don’t.

The king and his world have moved on. I’m no longer needed to hold together two hemispheres.

My gaze travels to the window.

I could leave.

I could leave. Not as someone else’s prisoner, but on my own.

The thought is heady. Freedom has always been just beyond my reach. To finally have it … It would almost make up for my tragic, broken heart.

But if I did leave, I would need boots, fatigues, weapons, food, water and a means to get more. That would take time to acquire, and there’s always a possibility that outside these walls, I will be recognized and fought over as a pawn to be played in this war.

It would be a hard life. A life where I couldn’t make much of a difference, a life where I was expendable.

A life without the king.

I walk onto the balcony and spread my arms over the marble railing. The ocean stretches out as far as the eye can see.

That life might be what I want, but my existence really was never about what I wanted. I was woken to save the world.

And the best way to do that would be to stay here and work with the very man who destroyed my heart.

I draw in a breath through my nose.

If that is what is needed of me, then that is precisely what I will do.

Even if it breaks me.

Chapter 7

Serenity

Not too long after I come to my decision, there’s a knock on the door. I cross the room, my skirts swishing around my ankles.

When I open the door, my hand tightens on the knob.

Montes stands on the other side, his hands in his pockets. The gesture is so reminiscent of how he’s always been that my knees weaken.

It’s too soon. It physically hurts staring at his face and feeling like things can never be the same between us.