The Queen of Traitors (The Fallen World Book 2) Read online

  “This is Beatrice, Anouk, Isabel, Katarina, …” Helen introduces. I forget each name the moment my eyes move on to the next. Some are old; most are young.

  They can’t all be the advisors’ wives. The way some of them are looking at me … if I had to guess, I’d say that the king’s mixed business and pleasure plenty of times in the past.

  Jealousy lances through me before I can stop it. To think that any of them might’ve also experienced the king as I have …

  The thought is followed by a good dose of self-loathing. For me to be jealous of the affections of the king—it’s unconscionable.

  I square my jaw, forcing my emotions down. I swear the group notices my anger. They shift a little restlessly. I’m a predator among prey.

  Someone breaks the silence that follows the introductions.

  “Beautiful dress, and—” she gasps, “are those heels from Vesuvio’s summer collection?”

  I glance down at my toes. Vesuvio?

  “They are!” she exclaims. “I adore his entire summer collection. I would kill for a pair.”

  My jaw tightens. “Would you?” I say, looking back up.

  The woman falls silent, and the rest of the group tensely watches the exchange, some clutching their jewel-encrusted necklaces. They must sense how offensive I find it to even jest about killing over pretty shoes.

  Finally, someone breaks the silence and asks the woman next to me about some recent trip she took. As the group gets swept up in the newest conversation, I withdraw further inside myself.

  These women are nothing like the ones I’m used to. They care about the length of their skirts and the color of their face paint and the weave of their clothes. They have no idea what goes on outside these walls.

  The women I lived with sharpened knives and oiled guns. I saw one fight through a bullet wound to the stomach, even though it eventually killed her. Another performed CPR on an unresponsive boy lying in the streets we patrolled while we were being attacked by local gangs. They were some of the hardest women I ever met, but they would die for you.

  And they’d never give a shit what you wore.

  Remembering is all it takes.

  I leave right in the middle of the conversation. At my back I hear a chorus of soft-spoken protests. I ignore them. Some people you can’t change, and the effort of trying would be wasted.

  My eyes sweep the room as I walk. The genders are divided. Men to one side of the room, ladies to the other. The women gossip and preen like all those exotic birds that died off first when war struck. They’re just like them—pretty and soft and so unenduring. The men swirl amber liquid, their faces ruddy. They look so damn proud of themselves. I want to shout at them that anyone can destroy a city.

  And, amongst them all, there’s Montes. I never glance his way, but I feel his eyes on me the entire way out.

  As soon as I leave the room, the king’s guards fall into step behind me. I come close to threatening them, but even if I promised them death, they still wouldn’t leave me. Say what you will about Montes, he has some loyal guards.

  I storm through the palace, heading for the gardens. I feel a great deal of disgust. This is what the new world order does while its citizens starve. I can’t be a part of it.

  Once I push open the palace doors and the cool evening air hits my skin, I give into the impulse riding me since I entered that dinner party. I kick my shoes off and wipe my lipstick away with the back of my hand. I pull out the few pins in my hair and shake my locks loose. I pass through the gardens and bypass the giant hedge maze.

  I break the delicate clasp of first my bracelet and then my necklace, and let them fall to the ground. Only then do I feel like myself again. I’m still in my dress, and my hands itch to tear into the fabric, but I hold myself back.

  I walk across the palace grounds until the back fence comes into view. I head straight for it, my mind replaying the last time I ran towards one of the king’s fences. Odd how something as bland as a wall can conjure such memories.

  My chest tightens. All my friends are ghosts, and all my memories are dust in the wind. Out here, beneath the stars, I can’t help but remember that I am hopelessly, achingly alone.

  I stare up at the wrought iron fence. It took losing all that I held dear for me to learn a valuable lesson: only when everything is gone are you truly free.

  Chapter 13

  The King

  Serenity carved a path of destruction in her wake. She’s the untamable wilderness. Of course she can’t palette civilized company.

  The women are speaking frantically to one another, their eyes darting in my direction. They’re worried about my anger, but I don’t blame them for being sheep and my wife a wolf.

  I’m done sharing my queen anyway. I don’t want these politicians or their wives to have any part of her, and I don’t want her to give herself away to anyone but me. So after some parting exchanges, I head after her, moving towards the back of the property where my soldiers indicate she went.

  Serenity leaves me a trail of expensive breadcrumbs to follow. A satin shoe here, a diamond bracelet there. I follow them to the edge of the palace grounds. She’s several feet away from the wrought iron fence that circles the grounds, and she’s staring up at it like she’s considering the best way to scale it.

  “And here I was hoping that you might consider shedding your dress along with the jewelry.”

  She doesn’t flinch at my voice, nor does she turn around.

  “How do you live with yourself?” she asks, touching one of the wrought iron bars.

  For one instant I fear that if I ever let her go, she’d disappear into the land, never to return. God, she’d want that. And I probably just caught her as she was tasting the possibility on her tongue.

  I’ve been vacillating between anger and arousal since she stormed out of the palace. I settle on anger.

  “You make a fool out of me and now you insult me?”

  Finally she turns. Her wild eyes search mine, and it doesn’t matter that she’s broken in all the right places and whole in all the wrong ones. Or that out here with her bare feet and windblown hair, I catch a hint of the woman she should’ve been. That soul of hers, tempered by the hottest of forges, has been and will always be mine.

  And it is probably the evilest thought I’ve ever had, but I’d ruin the world all over again just to be brought back to this very moment.

  “You set yourself up for failure the second you decided to pursue me,” she says. “I’m never going to be one of them.” She gestures to the palace.

  “No, you’re not.” And I’m glad for it.

  “Then why bother making me try?”

  “Serenity,” I chastise. “I’d think you more than anyone would know the answer to that.”

  Her dress flaps in the breeze as she waits for me to explain myself.

  “Ruling,” I say, “isn’t always about getting to be who you want to be. It’s about sacrifices.”

  “And what sacrifices have you made? Bombing innocents? Taking a hostage wife?”

  Usually I like the chase, but not like this, not when she’s deriding me while eyeing my perimeter walls like she’s considering escape.

  “I am still your king, and you will not speak to me that way.” My voice resonates in the evening air.

  “Then kill me already, or let me go.” She has the audacity to look exasperated.

  Don’t yell at her.

  Don’t threaten her.

  Don’t rip off her dress and fuck her.

  I should just walk away. I have before when I wanted to shake her. She doesn’t realize she’s not the only one being tormented here. Instead I take her hand.

  She tries to jerk away, but when I don’t release her, she relaxes.

  She steps in closer, and I
only realize what she’s about to do the moment before her fist slams into my face. Those scarred knuckles of hers that I admired only days ago now smash into my skin and teeth.

  I stumble back at the impact, and she uses the distraction to throw me against the fence. Her hand goes to my neck.

  “I am not something you can control, Montes,” she says, and the way the shadows play on her face make her appear downright sinister. “I’ll do many things for you—”

  I raise an eyebrow, though I doubt she can see it out here.

  “—but don’t try to make me become one of you.”

  Had I thought I was angry or aroused before? It doesn’t hold a candle to the way my blood now heats at her presumptions. She thinks she has me in more ways than one.

  I swipe her feet out from under her. I may not have the combat experience she does, but I’ve had plenty of military training. A moment later, it’s me that has her pinned. My legs straddle her torso, and I capture her hands in one of my own, pulling them high over her head.

  She glares at me as I press my other hand gently to her throat, noticing the way her hair spills across the lawn. For a woman who has little time for appearances, she takes awfully good care of those golden locks.

  “My queen,” I say, “you’re seriously misguided if you think you have any agency outside of what I give you. I will allow you some measure of control over our empire, and in return you will attend every dinner party I host. I’ll chain you to my side if I have to.”

  She’s moving beneath me, trying to pry my hold from her. It’s only serving to display every pleasing angle of hers.

  “Now,” I say, “about those many things you’ll do for me …”

  “Give me a knife and I’ll show you.”

  I let out a husky laugh and move one of my legs to the inside of her thighs. “Still uncomfortable with sex, I see. I’m taking that as a challenge.”

  I remove my hand from her throat to grasp her freed leg. Her skirts pool around her waist. She looks indecent, and on Serenity, indecent is a good look.

  She’s no longer trying to free herself from my grip, and her chest’s rising and falling faster and faster. From what I can make out of her expression, I’m thinking she has no idea what to make of intimacy in all its forms.

  A spark of protectiveness flares in me. Despite everything this world’s thrown at her, Serenity still maintains a shred of innocence when it comes to things between a man and a woman. That’s going to disappear eventually—marriage will force her hand—but I’m not too keen on rushing her in this.

  I’m a wicked man. I’ve never made bones about that. So I don’t readily recognize myself when I get off of Serenity and extend a hand towards her. I’m not sure I like this side of me, either.

  Slowly she sits up. I can feel her gaze on me. We’ve been here before. She doesn’t take my hand, but she does stand.

  She turns her head to the blazing lights of the palace. “We should probably go back.”

  I stick my hands in my pockets and study her. This is her peace offering. She’ll go back inside what she sees as a bastion of depravity.

  “Alright,” I say.

  And together we return to the castle.

  Serenity

  Something’s happening between me and the king. It’s been happening for a while, but it’s not slowing down.

  I stretch my legs out in the tub. I can still feel the phantom fingers of the king as they moved up my calf last night. The sensation reminded me of another time he ran his hands up my legs, only then I’d been trying to seduce him. Both times, he’d backed off.

  Both times, I’d felt conflicted by his reluctance.

  I hear the rustle of sheets in the adjoining bedroom, pulling me back to the present.

  The king’s awake.

  Heat courses through me, and I hate myself a little that he can make me feel this way at all. And that while I might be in the bath, my mind is with the king.

  It takes him all of thirty seconds to make his way to the door.

  I startle as it opens, water splashing against the walls of the tub. I cover myself with my arms.

  “What are you doing in here?” I demand.

  I hadn’t locked the door because I had thought Montes would give me privacy here of all places.

  I obviously thought wrong.

  He’s naked and sleep-ruffled, and in this moment, I can’t possibly reconcile him with the evil dictator I’ve hated so passionately.

  “There’s my wife.” Even his voice is rough and uncultivated in the morning. It’s just one more small intimacy that I get with the king.

  His molten eyes move from me to the water. “Now I know who’s been using up the palace’s water supply.”

  “Are you going to let me take my bath?”

  “That’s not a bath,” he says, “that’s a puddle.” He bends down, uncaring that I’m clearly uncomfortable, and sticks his hand in the water. “And it’s tepid.” Montes turns on the hot water spigot.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed.

  “Taking a bath,” he says, stepping in. “My wife thinks it’s good to conserve water. I’m supporting the cause.” By joining me. This man is slippery.

  “You can uncover yourself,” he adds. “Your nudity doesn’t offend me.”

  My gaze slits.

  He settles against the opposite side of the tub, stretching his legs out until they brush mine, and he drapes his arms along the rim. It’s a good thing the basin is large enough to comfortably fit two people. Even so, he’s still crowding me.

  Is this what married couples do? Step on each other’s toes until the notion of privacy is entirely done away with? I can’t escape this man.

  I uncover myself and lean back against the tub, all too aware of our nakedness.

  Montes settles that heavy gaze of his on me, and he wears his acquisitive look. This isn’t just a bath if he has it his way.

  He picks up my foot and begins to rub it.

  “Montes—” I try to jerk my foot from his grip.

  “I’m helping you relax, nire bihotza.”

  “I will kick you.”

  He sets my foot back down and returns to staring at me.

  “I have a question for you,” I say.

  He raises his eyebrows. “She has an interest in her husband? Who would’ve thought?”

  “‘She’ is sitting across from you and ‘she’ would appreciate it if you stopped referring to her in the third person.”

  His mouth curves into a smirk. “No death threats for me this morning? I’m disappointed.”

  “If you don’t stop referring to me in the third person, I’ll drown you in this puddle—as you so eloquently put it.”

  “There’s my girl.”

  “I’m not your girl.”

  He leans back in the tub. “Don’t you have a question for me?”

  I work my jaw, annoyed he’s caught me in a web of my own making. “Why are there no women in your government?”

  “There are.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You mean my inner circle of advisors and officers? There were once women. They ended up being too soft for the job.”

  “That’s your reasoning? Fuck you, Montes, and all your sexist ideals.”

  “They’re not ideals. The women couldn’t stomach it.”

  And the one woman that—according to him—apparently can has stomach cancer. I’m not going to peer at that one too closely.

  “Had you ever considered the fact that maybe what you saw as weakness was instead compassion?”

  “What, are you a champion now for women’s rights?” he says. “Odd since you seem to clash with most of them.”

  In fact, I got along q
uite well with the women I lived with. It’s just the ones here that I can’t stand.

  “I clash with most people. That has nothing to do with it.”

  He pushes away from his end of the bathtub and moves towards mine. He’s eating up the final space between us, and there’s nowhere for me to go.

  Montes looms over me, his glistening torso close enough to touch. That dark hair of his hangs near his eyes as he looks down at me. Just when I think he’s going to make a move, he reaches up and shuts off the water.

  It goes to show you how captivated by this man I am that I don’t notice until now that the water level is past my shoulder.

  Montes is hovering over me, his knees on either side of mine. The crook of his index finger dampens my chin as he tilts my face up. “We can hire more women. Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

  “No—”

  He cuts me off with a kiss, his hand moving from my chin to my cheek. His other one finds my hip and grips it tightly.

  It hits me then. He wants me, badly; he’s practically quaking with the need. I can taste it in his kiss, I can feel it in the pressure of his grip.

  The entire time since my memories returned, Montes hasn’t pushed sex on me. He takes many things, but not this. It’s the barest glimmer of a conscience.

  And here I was disappointed in him for it. I need to shed this shyness.

  So I give in.

  I let myself slide my fingers through his mussed hair and kiss away the droplets of water that drip onto our lips. Our mouths open and I taste this taboo that’s forced his way into my world.

  He’s poison and radiation and he’s seeping into my bloodstream, tainting me from the inside out. I’ll never be free of him.

  And God, he tastes just like me.

  Montes moves between my legs and I help him angle my pelvis up to meet his. If he hadn’t known before that I was willing, now he does.

  The last of his restraint falls away.