The Queen of Traitors (The Fallen World Book 2) (6 page)

Montes picks the frame up from the floor and returns it to my desk. He doesn’t say anything. He lost a father tragically too.

Resting next to the photographs is my mother’s necklace. I pick it up, a slight tremor running through my hands.

The gold pendant catches the light. Montes left me the few items that have any value to me. I don’t have many things to call my own, but what I do, I cherish.

“And my father’s gun?” I ask.

“I’ll give it back to you the moment I trust you not to shoot me with it,” Montes says.

“So you
do
think I’ll shoot you,” I say, studying the necklace dangling from my hand.

“You’re a woman that loves a good dare. I’m not gambling my life on your ability to prove me wrong.”

He takes the necklace from me and clasps it around my neck. I run my fingers over the delicate chain. My eyes drift around the room.

It dawns on me. “This office is mine.”

“It is—my queen needs a place to carry out world affairs.”

He’s given me an office before, not one that was outfitted with my personal affects. Not like this one. I don’t know what I’m feeling, but it makes me uneasy.

“Why did you do all this for me?” I ask.

“This is such a small thing.” He runs a hand over the veins of wood. His wily, conniving side disappears altogether. “You are my wife. I want to make you … happy.”

The man who always takes is now giving. And he wants me to be happy. Here. With him.

I don’t have the heart to tell him that will never happen.

Chapter 8

Serenity

Montes shrugs off
his suit jacket and throws it over my chair back before rolling up his sleeves. My eyes linger far too long on his tan, corded forearms. I’d forgotten that underneath all those layers of fine clothing was a fit man.

He then grabs a cardboard box sitting off to the side and heaves it onto the desk. Tossing aside the lid, he pulls out the first file and drops it in front of the chrome computer situated in the middle of my desk.

“Here are reprints of the files you were working on. Any notes you had with the originals are, unfortunately, lost,” he says, sitting on the edge of the desk.

It’s hard to focus on anything he’s saying. He might be six feet and some change of a man, but his presence fills the entire room.

An unfamiliar part of me wants to step between those powerful legs of his and trail my fingers over the backs of his hands.

I could do it—I know he would welcome it—but I fight the impulse. He still feels alien to me.

I’ll have to lay with him tonight.

An odd combination of anxiety and anticipation flares through me.

The king watches me with those penetrating eyes of his, and I swear they can see into my mind.

I try to stay as far away from him as I can when I open the folder in front of the computer.

“Ah, yes, these reports,” I say, remembering them. I’d been reading through the files when the Resistance laid siege to the king’s palace. The reports had been largely skewed for the king’s purposes. I’m too ruffled to point that out. “Thank you,” I say instead.

“‘Thank you’?” He reaches out and catches my wrist before I can step away, then reels me in.

I end up between his thighs after all.

His other hand steadies my chin. “What’s going on in my vicious little wife’s mind?”

I try to jerk away, but he holds me in place.

“Montes, let me go.”

“Not until you tell me what you were just thinking about.”

I’m so close to kneeing him in the crotch.

However, neither of us gets the chance to see our actions through.

Not before another memory hits.

All I saw was crimson blood and all I heard were Will’s screams. The outer walls must’ve been thick to silence such agonized cries. The king’s wrath was just as frightening as I’d always feared.

I squeeze Montes’s thighs as a memory rolls through me. I’m being swept up in its tide.

“I’ll do whatever you want, Montes, just please, stop torturing him.” It was Will, after all. I might hate what he’d become, but torture … I didn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

I was halfway down the hall when I heard a bang. My body jumped at the sound, and a tear leaked out.

Gone. Will was gone.

Back in the present, I choke on a gasp.

“You killed Will.” After torturing him nonetheless. Death, at that point, had been a mercy.

I try to pull away again, and again Montes refuses to release me.

“Let me the fuck go.”

He ignores my command and instead forces me to look at that pleasing face of his. “Yes, I did have my men kill him,” he says, “and I’d make the same decision over and over again. In case you still don’t remember, your friend Will had his men shoot you,” the king says. That vein in his temple pulses. “He threatened you with torture.

“Anyone who thinks to torture you, Serenity, will be made an example of, and I don’t give a damn how well you know them.”

I stop struggling against him, though none of my ire is gone. “Well, I do.”

He sighs. “Out of all the slights against you, that’s the one you punish me with?”

He catches my fist before I can land the blow, and now he holds both my hands prisoner.

I try to knee him, but the angle is all wrong. The last of his mirth leaves his face. Using the grip he has on my hands, he yanks me onto the desk next to him and rolls over me. The file scatters and the computer monitor topples over as he pins my torso down.

That vein of his still throbs, and several loose strands of his dark hair brush my cheeks. He smiles down at me, but it’s not kind. “You try that again,” he breathes, “and you won’t like the results.”

But I have rage to match his. “It’d be worth it,” I say.

“For you, I imagine it might.” Slowly, the anger drains from his face. He doesn’t let me go, however.

Instead, he moves both my hands into one of his, and he uses the other to reaches into his pocket. Pulling out a phone, he types something onto the screen.

A moment later, the guard enters the room. I’m still pinned to the desk, and Montes appears to be five seconds away from having his way with me, yet the guard doesn’t bat an eyelash.

I renew my struggles against the king.

Montes readjusts his hold, his eyes trained on his man. “Please tell the staff to see to the earlier dinner arrangements we discussed.”

The guard inclines his head and bows. As his footsteps retreat from the room, the king returns his attention to me. All at once he releases my hands and straightens.

I work my jaw as I push myself up to my forearms. The urge to hit him is still riding me hard.

“You will dine with me.”
You will surrender to me.

His mouth and his eyes say two very different things.

“No.” I’m not interested in either.

I stand and brush myself off. I’m wearing a dress someone else clothed me in. This entire day has been one unpleasant experience after the last.

He steps in close and tips my chin up.

“Yes, you will, even if it means having my guards drag you to dinner. Fight all you want, it won’t change my mind.”

Even if I didn’t already have a vendetta against this man, I would develop one quickly enough.

“I’ll drop you off at our room and give you time to rest and get ready,” he continues.

I step away from him. “Don’t bother. I’ll find it myself.”

I don’t head
back to our room because fuck him. Instead I spend the next several hours figuring out the basic layout of the palace. When I was with Montes I didn’t want a tour of the place, and I still don’t, but there is use in knowing how a machine like the palace works.

This one is U-shaped with east and west wings. Montes already showed me most of the central building and the west wing. Those appear largely to serve formal functions.

The east wing, on the other hand, contains the king’s official business. I pass several doors fitted with placards of the king’s highest-ranking advisors. Another conference room, and a room that bears a sickening resemblance to the map rooms of the king’s other palaces. I leave before I can look at any of the crossed out faces too closely. The last thing I want to see is my father’s face among them.

I head back outside. A maze of hedges rise up on either side of a central pathway. Beyond them are a series of structures.

I squint up at the sky. Pinks and golds have replaced the earlier blue. I won’t have time to explore all of this place, not before the king drags me off to dinner. And I’m sure he will indeed drag me to it if I resist. Montes doesn’t make idle threats. Like me, he stands by his words, no matter how perverse they are.

I take in the many buildings that sit off in the distance. Towards the far corner of the palace grounds, I notice a series of long, squat structures. The soldiers’ barracks, if I had to guess. I have enough time to visit them, I think, before the king calls on me. So I head there next, ignoring the two guards that follow several feet behind me.

When I arrive, I can tell I guessed right. Several soldiers loiter between buildings, some laughing with each other. Of course, that all ends when they see me. Quickly, they stand at attention, bowing as I make my way through the barracks. I sense a good dose of that earlier wariness here. It’s just a feeling—perhaps the soldiers’ eyes are a tad too hard, their spines a bit too straight—but I know that I’m not entirely welcome. It doesn’t stop me, however, from moving through the buildings.

Mess hall, sleeping quarters, and to my utter delight, several training rooms. This, I belatedly realize, is what drew me out here. Amongst all the soft, painted faces, I feel hopelessly different. But this place that lacks adornment and smells like sweat, this I understand.

I run my hand over a metal dumbbell stacked against the wall, the grips worn down with use. I decide then and there that I won’t become what I detest. I’ll come here to train, and I’ll earn the guards’ respect or I won’t, but I will not lose the soldier in me.

From behind me, one of the guards now approaches. “Your Majesty, the king’s called for dinner.”

Chapter 9

Serenity

When I meet
Montes back inside the palace, he doesn’t lead me to the dining room like I thought he might. Instead we head outside once more and cross the garden. The sun’s already set and the sky is deep blue. I feel summer in the breeze, and it stirs such intense longing in me. The last time I felt like this, I still had my mother.

As we move beyond the hedges, it becomes clear the king is leading me to another one of the buildings sitting at the far end of the grounds. It’s made of copper, marble, and most of all, glass. Hundreds of panes make up the dome alone. I’ve never seen a structure like this.

Montes holds my hand against the crook of his arm. I think he knows that if he lets go, I’ll pull away immediately. But the gesture’s strangely intimate

“Are you still angry?” he asks.

“When it comes to you, I’m always angry.”

“Mmm, you must not have recalled all your memories yet. For instance, the last time I laid between those pretty thighs of yours, you were far from angry.”

A blush spreads up my neck at the memory I do, in fact, recall. “Do you always get enjoyment being lewd?”

“My queen,
that
is not lewd. Lewd would be telling you how your tight little pu—”

“
Montes
.” My cheeks are flaming now, and I can’t tell if I’m more embarrassed by his words or the fact that I still react like this. Both he and I are aware it’s a weakness of mine.

He glances down at me, his eyes luminous as they catch the light of a nearby lamp. “That’s not lewd, Serenity. That is just what it means to be your husband. And yes, I get enjoyment from making you blush. It’s so very … unlike you.”

He squeezes my hand. And as I feel his fingers envelop mine, I’m reminded again that with him, intimacy isn’t just a handful of memories. It’s something that’ll happen again, and sooner rather than later, if the intense look in his eyes is any indication.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

He must see all my nerves, all my anxieties, but I won’t hand them to him on a platter by voicing the words.

I don’t tear my eyes from his when I say, “I’m thinking that you’d give the devil a run for his money. In fact, he’s probably worried that you’ll set your sights on his territory next.”

The corner of Monte’s mouth lifts. “A good idea, Serenity. Perhaps I could consult you on hell’s layout? I hear you’re familiar with it.”

God, I hate this man.

I turn my attention away from him, back to the structure he’s leading me towards. We enter the building, and I realize exactly what it is.

A greenhouse.

My lingering irritation evaporates as my eyes sweep across the interior. I’ve never seen so many different plants so close together. Their leaves are waxy and their colors—I didn’t realize so many different shades of green existed. But it’s not just green. Pinks and yellows, reds and oranges, whites and purples and every color in between, each plant stranger and lovelier than the last.

Without thinking I begin moving through the clusters of them, inadvertently tugging the king along with me. I can feel his gaze on my face, drinking up my reaction. I pull away from him to pet a leaf.

It’s a captive here, living in its own gilded cage.

Just like me.

Releasing it, I lift my gaze and take in the rest of the greenhouse. The glass panes are misted over, and the humidity is curling my hair. Hundreds of plants line the building. The size and beauty of this place is staggering.

After living in a gloomy, subterranean bunker for the last five years, the idea of a room filled with light and plants is almost incomprehensible.

So, naturally, the king has one of these places on his property.

“And my queen’s frowning again.”

“This is just another room with a ridiculous purpose.”

He actually looks pleased, and I can’t fathom why.

He takes my hand and leads me down an aisle. Then he begins pointing. “
Papaver somniferum
—the opium poppy. Extracts of the plant can be used as high grade pain relievers, amongst other things.
Camellia sinensis
—the dried leaves of that one make tea.
Coffea arabica
—the plant that’s saved you from killing everyone before eight a.m.”

“Not everyone. Just you,” I correct.

He smirks and points to another plant. “
Cannabis sativa
—helps with appetite, sleep, anxiety, lowers nausea. A wonder drug, really.

“Many of these plants are already being used medicinally,” he continues, “and outside of my greenhouses, they are hard to find. Many more of them are being researched and genetically modified, again for science.”

And now I understand the king’s smug expression. I assumed he didn’t care about saving the world his war had broken. I hadn’t imagined that maybe some of the laboratory testing he’d been working on was to benefit the people he’d so abused.

He steers me down the aisle we’re on and we enter another room of the greenhouse. High above us I see the stars through the domed glass roof I’d caught a glimpse of outside.

The plants here cling to the edges of the room. In the middle of it all is a table set for two that’s illuminated by candlelight.

I clutch the chain of my mother’s necklace. I’ve never been romanced, outside of one other candlelit dinner also hosted by the king. And that last time, to my great embarrassment, it worked.

It probably will again.

Montes herds me forward, his dark eyes twinkling. It’s even harder to not be drawn in by him when the room’s dim glow draws attention to all the pleasing angles of his face.

He likes this, I realize. Indulging me in his lavish lifestyle. He hasn’t yet figured out that it’s a double-edged sword. I am a child of war and famine. I don’t know how to indulge, and I don’t want it.

He must see me backpedaling because he increases the pressure he places on my lower back. Reluctantly I let him steer me to the table. I approach it the way I would anything else that’s too good to be true.

The plates and cutlery rest atop indigo and gold linens embroidered with the king’s initials. I glance down at my rings. The colors match.

“Blue and gold—they’re your colors,” I say. I’m only now putting together the symbolism that’s been woven into the king’s rule.

“And yours as well, my queen that loves the stars and the deep night,” he says, shrugging off his jacket and taking a seat across from me.

Just like earlier today, he undoes his cufflinks and rolls his shirt up past his elbows. And now I’m back to staring at his forearms.

This is carefully crafted seduction, and I’m defenseless against it.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, forcing my gaze up. His face isn’t a better option.

I can’t bear this. I was raised on duty and honor, and I can’t find any in my situation. I’m trapped in a role where I’m everyone’s traitor—even my own.

He gives me a penetrating look. “Everything.”

“You know that’s impossible.”

“Is this another one your facts?” Montes asks, leaning forward.

Before I can answer, I hear the door to the greenhouse open. A long beat of silence stretches on while two servants enter, one bearing a bottle of wine, the other a tray with two plates on it.

“Here, I’ll take that from you,” the king says, grabbing the neck of the wine bottle from the server while the other one sets the plates in front of us.

Once the food has been laid out, both servers bow and exit the room.

Montes pours us each a glass of wine from the uncorked bottle he holds. “Let’s play a little game,” he says, handing my glass to me. “I’ll ask you a question and you’ll either tell me the answer, or you’ll drink.”

I narrow my eyes at him but take my drink from his outstretched hand. The last time I played this game, I slept through the next day’s negotiations, and when I woke, I was sicker than a dog. A downside. I also kept the king from sleeping with me. An upside.

“I’ll play, but only if you answer my questions as well.”

His mouth curves up. “Of course. That’s only fair.”

As if he knows a thing about fairness.

He leans back in his seat, the flame of the candles dancing in his eyes. I might as well be seated with the devil; Montes is handsome enough and wicked enough for the job.

“You told me once that hate isn’t the only thing you feel for me,” he says. “What else is it that you feel?”

He starts with that?
That
?

I take a drink of my wine. Montes smiles, and I realize too late that my reaction was an answer in and of itself.

“Were you planning on killing my father and me before we arrived in Geneva?” I ask.

If he gets to ask hard questions, then so do I.

Montes’s sighs. “This is supposed to be fun.”

“It’s not my fault you’re a bastard,” I say. “Now answer my question.”

The vein in his temple begins to pound. “Tread lightly, my queen,” he says softly.

We stare each other down, and I think we both realize we’ve met our match.

Finally, he says, “Death is always on the table when it comes to my negotiations. You know that.”

He
had
planned to kill us.

“Did you order my father killed?”

“Ah-ah,” he says, his voice jovial, but his eyes are hard. “Already forgetting the rules.”

I glower at him.

“Why did you marry me?” he asks.

I go still. “It was me or my country.”

“That was the only reason?”

“It’s my turn.” My voice is icy. I’m seconds away from overturning the table—or lunging across it and attacking the king.

“Did you order my father killed?” I repeat.

“No, Serenity, I didn’t.”

I swirl my wine glass, agitated. What had I hoped for him to say—that he had?

“Was saving your country the only reason you married me?” he asks.

Did he really expect any answer but yes?

“I vomited when I learned I’d have to marry you,” I say. “Do you really want to rehash this all out?”

“No. What did the Resistance do to you while they held you prisoner?”

He tricked me out of a turn.

I grip the stem of my glass tightly and force myself to muse on his question. The man across from me is not a soldier. He has no true concept of torture and humiliation. But he is my husband, and he is the megalomaniac that has bent the world to his will.

I grab my glass and drink. With him, violence begets violence.

I tilt my head back and look at the stars that I can barely see through the domed ceiling above. I want to say I watch them because they are beautiful, but I can’t lie to myself about this. I’m avoiding the king’s reaction to what I’m about to ask.

I pull myself together. I’m not a wimp, and if I have the courage to ask the question, then I should also have the courage to face the king as I do so.

Leveling my gaze on him, I ask, “What do you feel for me?”

Surprise flickers through his features before he collects himself. Once he does, I wish I could draw the words back into my mouth.

Montes gives me a slow, smoldering smile, one that I feel low in my belly. He lifts his glass and takes a drink.

Neither of us has touched our food yet, and at that the moment, hunger is the furthest thing from my mind.

He sets his glass down, his gaze dropping to the base of my throat. “How old were you when you lost her?” He nods to my mother’s necklace.

I wrap my hand around it, and already I’m shaking my head. No, he doesn’t get to know about her. His war killed her, along with a million other mothers. She’s beyond his reach now, and I won’t give him what’s left of her.

The wine I swallow down barely makes it past the lump in my throat.

It’s my turn, and all the words I can think of have turned bitter on my tongue. “Tell me, what is the price of my life, Montes?”

Montes has been swirling his glass, but now he stops. “What are you really asking?”

“That,” I say. “I’m asking that. What is the price of my life?”

I’m setting myself up for failure, and I want him to fail me. I want him to disappoint me with his answer because I don’t hate him with all my heart, but I desperately wish I did.

He takes a sip of his drink.

That’s what I thought.

Maybe my life is worth one country to him. Maybe it’s worth less. Whatever the cost, he knows it would burn me worse than his silence.

I push back my chair and stand. “Some epic love you are,” I mutter. My words carry no vitriol. Perhaps that is what makes him flinch.

“You love me?” He says.

And he latches onto that. I shake my head. “I don’t blame you for it, you know. Thirty years is a long time to spend collecting countries like toys.” Long enough to lose your conscience.

He stands. “Serenity.”

I ignore him as I stride away, and there is something satisfying about unveiling the monster behind all the pretty prose.

“
Serenity
!”

I can hear his shoes click against the marble floor.

“You’re wrong,” he says when I don’t stop. “You want to know why I didn’t answer the question? Because I don’t know the answer, and that terrifies me. But I do know this: what we have is epic. Why do you think our enemies want to separate us so badly?”

Now I halt.

“We were enemies before this all began,” I say.

“I was never your enemy, Serenity. The world saw that when they watched the peace talks, and they saw it again when they watched our wedding. That is why the Resistance is trying to come between us.”

I swivel to face him. Even this far away, he swallows up space. If anyone were to be a world leader, it would be him. He’s mesmerizing, and not just for his looks. Maybe it’s all those hidden years of his that take up space in this room because they can’t be worn on his face. Whatever it is, it only makes him more of an enigma.

“You married me to secure your power,” I say.

He laughs at that and takes a step forward. “Is that what you’ve convinced yourself of? That my primary reason for marrying you was to secure my power?”

The hairs on my arm lift at what he isn’t saying.

“You and I both know I could’ve crushed the WUN under my boot if I so chose. They are more of a pain because I secured them peacefully.”

The scariest things are those that you don’t understand. That was what always frightened me about the king—I couldn’t fathom his motives. I thought I was beginning to understand him for a while there, but I wasn’t.

He saunters towards me slowly. “I’m afraid that when it comes to strategy, my queen, I’ve outmaneuvered you.”

Adrenaline courses through me as my body gets battle ready. “Why would you marry me if not for power?” There’s no more diving into a glass of wine for either of us.

I’m the ugly truth and he’s a pretty lie, and we are always, always circling each other. I think that he’s right. What passes between us is every bit as epic as I’d always feared.

He closes the last of the distance and reaches up to cup my jaw.

I tilt my head away from him. “Don’t.”