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

  My skin crawls, and I stop my hand from groping towards my holster.

  “I saw the peace talks,” he continues, “apologies for not joining. I hadn’t realized until then just how much you’ve grown up, Serenity,” he says, his accent barely there.

  He rests a hand on my shoulder and turns to the king. “I’ve known your wife since she was a child.”

  That is stretching the truth quite a bit. He’s known my father since I was a child; he’s only known me since I began to train for my role as emissary.

  I flash Luca a dark look. “Yes, we’re practically family.”

  You sellout.

  My father had all sorts of advice for dealing with political figures you didn’t like. I was never very good at following any of it, and now, married to my archenemy and facing down another, I’m having a hard time controlling my emotions.

  Montes studies Estes, his mask firmly in place. “I hadn’t realized how close you and my wife were.”

  Tread carefully.

  Montes’s subtle threat sends a thrill through me. I find I don’t mind them when they’re lobbed at other bad men.

  Estes turns to me, a smile plastered on his face. I can see just a touch of panic in the corners of his eyes. We’re all having two conversations at the moment—one spoken, the other implied. He’s only now realizing how treacherous knowing the traitor queen can be.

  “Yes,” he pats Montes’s shoulder; the fatherly gesture is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that he has to reach up to do so, “well, congratulations on stealing Serenity’s heart.”

  “He didn’t steal my heart, Luca,” I interject. “He just stole me.”

  That temporarily silences the corrupt politician.

  “She’s kidding,” Montes says, giving me a look.

  I raise an eyebrow. He knows I’m not going to muzzle my mouth.

  Estes barks out a laugh. The whole thing is wooden and awkward, because the three of us know just how wicked both men are, and it’s not something you’re supposed to bring up.

  So naturally, I’m going to bring it up.

  “All those conversations, Serenity,” Estes continues, “and I had no idea how quick tongued you were.”

  “She can do many things with that tongue of hers,” Montes says.

  That’s it.

  I’m reaching for my gun when the king grabs my wrist.

  “Let me the fuck go,” I hiss.

  “She hasn’t had her coffee yet,” Montes explains calmly.

  I’m seeing red.

  “Apologies, you both must be hungry.” Luca waves down a waiter.

  “Whatever you give me is ending up on your shirt,” I say while Estes is distracted.

  Montes leans into my ear. “You keep this up and we won’t make it through the first hour of meetings before I have you pressed up against one of these walls.”

  I think he’s threatening me until I see the heat in his eyes. It’s still a warning, but this one’s of a wholly different nature.

  His arousal only pisses me off more, as does my response to it. He told me once that I’d be good at angry sex. I think he’s right.

  “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it?” I say.

  “Of course.” His face is only inches from mine. “But you already knew that.”

  I straighten and speak low enough so that only he hears. “One day you’re going to underestimate the wrong person, and then your pretty empire is going to come crashing down.”

  “I’m still debating shooting you,” I say an hour later.

  “I know,” Montes says next to me. “My pants have been tight all morning because of it.”

  “You are a sick, sick man.”

  We’re back to greeting people, just like we had at our wedding. The line of men and women eager to meet the king winds through the room and out one of the exits. This is not how I imagined changing the world—giving the privileged my time in a few empty lines of greetings.

  “Perhaps I should just pull down your pants,” I say after the next round of guests leave our side.

  That gets Montes’s attention.

  “That way it’ll be easier to bend you over and let everyone here kiss your ass.”

  King Lazuli stares at me for several seconds, then he lets loose a deep laugh, the sound carrying throughout the room.

  He reels me in for a kiss. “Life is infinitely more interesting with you in it.”

  It takes another hour to meet with everyone, and then we’re being shuffled down the hall to a conference room.

  The entire time at least two cameras stay trained on us. They hover like flies, orbiting us, drawing in as close as they dare, then backing off before I get a chance to break their lenses. I’ve come close.

  “They’re fascinated with you,” the king says as we walk. His silken voice raises my gooseflesh. “They’ve always been.”

  I give a cameraman a hard look, and he quickly retreats.

  Montes is right, but he’s also wrong. They’re not fascinated with me so much as they are our relationship. I’m the blood-soaked soldier that defended the WUN, and he’s the bloodthirsty king that captured my land. We’re enemies that became lovers. Two terrible people that rule the world together.

  Montes’s hand skims down my back, and it’s a far more intimate gesture than it has any right to be. He’s undressing me with his fingers and his eyes, and even after all we’ve seen and done together, I still feel like a bug caught in a spider’s web.

  Estes is already in the conference room when we enter, along with a handful of other faces I recognize from my time spent as an emissary. Several of them my father communicated with directly or indirectly. Back then they’d worked for the WUN—when they weren’t challenging and usurping each other’s territories. Now, only months after the war ended, they’re here fawning over the king.

  For once I would like to meet with leaders who weren’t completely unfit for the job.

  They eye me as I enter the room. Like Estes, they’re trying to figure out whether knowing me benefits them or not.

  I decide to help them out.

  I stop at the table and take them in. “Corruption looks good on you all.”

  I render the room speechless—for a moment. Then, all at once, half a dozen people are speaking in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

  Ah, southern WUN. They were always very vocal when they disagreed. It’s nice to see they’re consistent about at least something.

  Montes cuts through the noise. “We’re not here to talk about prior alliances. The war has ended. South America now needs some stability; let’s focus our attentions on that.”

  Only the king has the balls to make me look like a bad guy and him the martyr.

  I take a seat at the table, hyperaware of the tension I’ve stirred up.

  Their anger revitalizes me. People are easier to read when they take their masks off.

  The chair next to me scrapes back, and the king sits heavily down. He picks up the papers his aides have set in front of his seat and spends a good minute flipping through them while everyone else waits.

  Finally he sets them back down. “Thank you all for being here. I figure we might as well just dive right in: what are the main issues standing in the way of a unified South America?”

  And thus begins the first hour of meetings.

  “You have managed, yet again, to get an entire room of people to hate you in record time,” the king says as he closes our front door behind us. We’re back from the conference after four nearly unbearable hours. The only people the South American representatives hate worse than me are each other. Everyone wants a piece of the pie that Montes is giving to Estes.

  That was the main theme of the meetings—who was going to get what. Th
e only time anyone brought up the region’s general health and welfare was when they wanted to use it as a talking point for why they deserved something or why someone else didn’t.

  I almost pistol-whipped the lot of them.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, I have to see them again this evening at another one of those needless dinner parties.

  I pass through the foyer, kicking off my shoes. This damn dress is a cage. It’s too tight around my stomach and thighs, and if someone attacked, I couldn’t run in it. I need it off.

  “It’s probably the first genuine emotion they’ve displayed since we arrived,” I say, groping for my zipper.

  Montes comes up behind me and drags the zipper down. Material peels away from my skin, and now those hands of his are coaxing the rest of the fabric off me.

  “Perhaps if they weren’t turncoats,” I continue, “I’d be a little nicer—”

  Montes pushes me up against the wall. He captures my hands in his own, “You know what I think upsets you?” he asks, his nose skimming my jaw as he breathes me in. “I think you see yourself in them, and you hate it.” He pitches his voice low, and it drips with all sorts of dark intentions.

  They and I are nothing alike. But Montes’s words dig under my skin. Am I not for all outer appearances a traitor just like them? Perhaps, like me, they were cornered into this. And perhaps, like me, they too have lost themselves somewhere along the way.

  The king captures my lips, his hand sliding up my thigh. I feel the remnants of my lipstick smear as our mouths move against each other.

  He doesn’t bother undressing. He simply unbuckles his belt, unzips his pants, and pushes aside my lingerie.

  With one hard thrust, he’s inside of me.

  I gasp at the sensation. It’s just on this side of pain, and that’s when I love sex best. I could never indulge in something wholly sweet with the king. Not without at least a little grappling.

  He lets my wrists go to grip my hips, kissing my neck as he does so. I feel his hot breath fan down the column of my throat. His pace increases, and each rock of his hips causes my back to pound against the wall.

  I cradle him in my arms and arch my neck back. What I can’t possibly understand is why anyone wastes time with war when they could be doing this instead.

  Montes pulls us away from the wall. We don’t break apart as he carries me to our room. We fall in a tangle of limbs on the mattress. The pins holding my hair in place are coming loose, and as I tug on the king’s dark locks, his fancy gel disintegrates beneath my fingertips. Civilization is giving way to our primal savagery.

  He thrusts into me, and dear God, I’m willing to admit that right about now, I love the king. It’s fucked up, and if ever there was proof of my twisted nature, this would be it.

  I don’t give a damn.

  I slide my feet along the back of the king’s legs.

  “Tell me you love me,” the king says next to my ear.

  His thoughts are clearly moving in the same direction as mine.

  I grip his hair tighter and tilt his ear to my mouth. “No.”

  He moves harder against me, the friction causing a moan to slip out. I’m far beyond caring that the king’s torn down most of my walls and my modesty along with them.

  “Say it,” he breathes.

  I don’t.

  As a result, he stops.

  We’re both panting like animals, and when he stares down at me, I see sweat beaded along his brow.

  “Say it,” he repeats.

  Staring at him, our bodies joined and our limbs entangled, I almost do.

  He moves against me, just a little. Enough to remind me that he controls the strings.

  I shake my head. “I’m not giving that to you.”

  He flashes me his wickedest grin. “Has my queen forgotten who she’s married?” he whispers, his nose dipping down to nuzzle my hair.

  He cups a breast through the fabric of my dress. “I’ll get you to say those words just as I have everything else.”

  I’m too far gone to give into his witty rapport. “Just shut up and fuck me.”

  And he does, but not before he says his final piece. “I will, Serenity. And when I do, you’ll mean them, too.”

  Chapter 18

  Serenity

  An affectionate king. It should be impossible, but it isn’t.

  He hasn’t stopped touching me in some way since we were intimate. And now that we’re at Estes’s estate for a dinner party, he’s being affectionate in public.

  To be honest, I’m not entirely opposed to it. The ballbuster in me wants to slap his hands away, but each touch regrettably also draws up memories of heavy breathing and slick skin, and when I meet his eyes, they’re heated, as though he’s ready to repeat the afternoon’s activities at any given minute.

  Like the one I wore earlier, this dress is far too constricting. That’s the only reason why I can’t catch my breath.

  My eyes move around Este’s extravagant home, and they latch on to each piece of wealth the man’s accumulated. To think this was all acquired while his people starved—while we starved.

  I see the guards posted at the four corners of the room. There are more outside, and even more stationed in the watchtowers that border the entrance to the estate. Everything here has been acquired through bloodshed and lies.

  This will all come to an end. I vow it then and there.

  A waiter passes by carrying a tray of various drinks. I snatch one of the champagne flutes. Just as my fingers wrap around the stem, Montes intercepts it.

  I give him a disbelieving look.

  “You really shouldn’t be drinking this with your cancer,” he says.

  He can’t be serious.

  “Give the alcohol back to me,” I demand.

  “No.”

  “I thought it didn’t matter to you whether I drank or not.”

  “I lied,” he says. “It does. Now,” Montes looks around, “Let’s find you some sparkling cider.”

  I breathe through my nose. “Give me the fucking drink.” The promise of alcohol was all that was keeping me from open mutiny.

  He smiles at me and downs it.

  People are watching, cameras are rolling. Our explosive interactions are on display. I can’t just brawl it out like I might’ve back in the bunker. Here it’s all about posturing.

  I breathe in and out of my nose, and settle on glaring at him. “I hope you don’t expect me to be nice tonight.”

  “You? Nice? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Bastard.

  I leave him as soon as the first group of politicians approaches. My violent tendencies are bubbling to the surface, and if I don’t take them out on Montes, I’ll surely take them out on the fuckers in this room.

  I feel the king’s eyes burning into my back as I walk away from him. He doesn’t like parting from me. I’d written this particular detail off as an aspect of his controlling nature—and it is—but it’s gotten worse as the attempts on my life have increased.

  The most powerful man in the world has a single weakness, and that’s me. And I’m not above using it against him.

  “La reina del mundo. It’s an impressive title.” Luca Estes steps up to my side, a glass of amber liquid in his hand.

  “Mmm,” I manage, watching the room as the evening toils on. A warm breeze blows in from the open windows at my back.

  At the moment, I’m mourning the fact that I left Montes to fend for myself among these people. Had I swallowed a bit of my pride, I might not have to bear Luca’s company alone. Estes is one of those men that doesn’t have a good side. He’s corrupt, violent, greedy, lecherous. The only question is which side of him I’ll see tonight.

  “From what I hear, your father was against the match.”r />
  Apparently he’s chosen asshole. At least he’s no longer trying to be nice.

  “My father’s dead.” I take a sip of my drink. I need something stronger than the glass of water in my hand.

  “Yes, my condolences,” he says, leaning in. I can smell the strong spirits on his breath.

  “Fuck your condolences, Estes.” I don’t bother looking at him. “I know you didn’t like him.”

  “I like him better than your new husband.”

  Now I glance over at South America’s premier dictator. “That’s because my father couldn’t control you.” Montes can.

  He grunts in agreement and takes a swallow of his drink. When he glances over at me again he levels his gaze at my cleavage.

  “Last time I saw you, you wore a shapeless uniform. This is a much better look on you.”

  Now he’s being a lecherous asshole.

  “You and I both know the last time you saw me, it was the leaked footage of my return to the WUN. I believe I was wearing a dress then.”

  “There was a dress under all that blood? Forgive me for not noticing.”

  I don’t say anything.

  The king throws a glance in our direction, which Estes notices. “He keeps you on a pretty short leash, doesn’t he? If I didn’t know better I’d say that he was obsessed.” He swirls his drink, the ice cubes clinking against the glass. “Tell me, does the infatuation go both ways?” He looks over at me. “I suppose it wouldn’t, considering what he did to your family—and your country.”

  Even before Estes approached me, I knew what kind of man he was. So his words shouldn’t get a rise out of me, but they do. It’s taking every last ounce of restraint not to smash my glass across his face.

  “I’ve been wondering what sort of bed play comes out of that union …” he muses.

  Enough.

  “In case you needed the reminder, I am ‘la reina del mundo’, and I won’t hesitate to use my position to remove you from power if I feel the desire. I am not half as decent as my father, so keep your sick perversions to yourself, Luca, and don’t fucking cross me.”