“I love you.”

Now I rotate to face him.

I regret it immediately.

Montes’s eyes go soft.

Will I ever get used to that face wearing that expression when he looks at me? Your nightmares aren’t supposed to make you feel cherished.

His eyes rise above me to the room beyond. “This is the evidence of my love. I know you find it terrible, possibly even unethical, but I never saw it that way.”

What’s worse than not understanding the king is understanding him. Every time I do, I forgive him a little more.

His eyes return to me. “We’ve been here long enough. Come, my vicious little wife, there’s much to do.”

And together we return to the land of the living.

Chapter 20

Serenity

The next morning I’m set up in an office, three of the king’s officers surrounding me.

Montes left me at the room’s entrance, giving the door a parting glance. “The people you need to speak to are inside,” he said mysteriously. And then, without elaborating, he stalked away.

I stared at his retreating form, wondering if somehow this was a trick.

But now that I sit with the closest thing the king has to advisors on the dainty couches in the room, I get the impression that the only trick being played is on my archaic notions of the king.

Because by all appearances, he’s fully equipped me to see my war strategy through.

The three individuals that sit around me must’ve been soldiers at one point. That’s the only thing that can account for the hard twinkle in their eyes and the strong set of their shoulders. And now they wait for me to make demands of them.

I sit forward on the couch, arms braced against my legs, hands clasped between them. “I need to devise a plan to meet with our enemies, our allies, and anyone else in between who you consider important enough to speak with.” I say, getting right to business.

Across from me, one of the officers pulls a file from the briefcase she carries and drops it onto the coffee table resting between us. “We’ve already put together a list of leaders you’ll want to speak with,” she says, tapping on the folder. “We’ve also included a tentative schedule of meetings that can be immediately arranged with your approval.

“We can fly in some of these individuals as early as the end of the week, but there will be quite a few that you’ll have to visit yourself.”

I pick the folder up and begin thumbing through it. It’s dizzying, the amount of information inside. Schedules, names, titles. Most of them mean nothing to me. I’ve had a hundred years to lose all frame of reference.

I set the file down at my side. In most ways, I am utterly inadequate for this position. I have a century’s worth of complicated political history I need to catch up on, a century’s worth of knowledge that my allies and my enemies already know about. Ignorance is a great tool to be exploited.

My jaw hardens. I’ve already been exploited quite enough for one lifetime.

So I begin to look for one of the few names I do know. When I’ve skimmed through the entire file and don’t see it, I set the folder aside.

“What about the First Free Men?”

“What about them?” one of the male officers asks.

I meet his eyes. “Why are they not listed among the groups I’m to speak with?”

“With all due respect Your Majesty, this was the group that broke into this very palace and stole you. The king has issued a KOS—kill on sight—order for their leader.”

Montes hasn’t lost every last bit of his depravity after all.

I lean forward. “The First Free Men were powerful enough to find the resting place of a woman who was believed to be dead. And they were powerful enough to smuggle her out of the king’s palace.”

The three officers are quiet, and I’m sure they know what my intentions are.

“Set up a video call with their leader. I want to speak with him or her as soon as possible.”

“Your Majesty, Styx Garcia is in hiding,” the female officer says. “There’s no guarantee we will be able to get communication through to him. And even if we do, there’s no guarantee that he will agree to the call.”

I am the hundred year old queen he almost captured, the woman that slaughtered six of his men.

I look her square in the eye. “He’ll take the call.”

It takes five hours for Styx to agree to the call.

At 2:00 a.m. this evening—morning, technically—I’ll be on the phone with the man who failed to abduct me.

I considered telling the king about it as soon as the call was confirmed. Montes is perhaps the most ruthless strategist that I know, and I can’t help but want to pick his brain for advice.

The petty part of me also wants him to know I’ve openly defied his orders by arranging this.

But, in the end, I decided against it.

Someone else will likely tell him, and soon, but it won’t be me.

I lay in bed for a long time, my eyes peeled open. Montes’s arm is wrapped around my midsection, my backside pressed tightly to his front. He holds me like nothing short of another apocalypse will tear us apart. It’s both comforting and confusing. I don’t know how to deal with all these conflicted emotions I feel.

I wait until his arm slips from around my waist and he flips over before I slip out of bed.

I dress quietly, and then, ever so softly, I head out of the room. Even doing this is a risk. Montes used to have a habit of waking up in the middle of the night. He might still.