We’re both quiet for a moment while I ponder his words. The night air stirs my hair. Mine and the king’s.

He leans in close to my ear. “It’s because I caught her,” he whispers.

My eyes return to the constellation.

“Make a wish,” I whisper.

He stares at me for several seconds, then softly says, “I don’t need to anymore.”

Montes is no good man, and I am no good woman. We grapple day in and day out with our demons. Long ago, I married a monster, and the king’s war made one out of me. And all our terrible edges fit together, and together we’ve become something else, something better.

The world is at peace, and for once, so am I.

After all this time, I finally found serenity.

Epilogue

5 years later

The King

I flip over and stare down at my queen. Often I wake early—a habit I’ve developed over the decades. I used to spend those early hours working, squeezing another hour in if I could. It used to fuel me when I needed a distraction from my lonely life.

Now I tend to use the time to marvel over the fact that this is my life. After all the turmoil, all the violence and poor decisions, somehow the wrongs were made right.

Serenity made them right.

I run a hand over the swollen slope of her stomach. This is something else to marvel over.

Only a few more weeks. It’s just simply not possible to be this excited.

Or this petrified. Or this protective.

I’ll be a father for the first time at the ripe age of 174. I can barely fathom it.

“Mmmm.” Serenity stretches beneath my touch.

“Nire bihotza, today’s a big day for you,” I whisper.

Her eyes snap open. “Shit.”

She sits up, her gaze moving to the windows. The sun is just rising. “What time is it? Did the alarm not go off?”

“Ssssh. It’s still early. Go back to sleep.” She hasn’t gotten enough of it. I don’t believe being eight months pregnant is particularly comfortable.

Instead of going back to sleep, her hand lazily combs through my hair. Then it freezes. She leans forward and peers at my hair more closely.

“You have a gray hair,” she says this wondrously.

My grip on her tightens just a fraction as I nod. I’d noticed it a week ago. This is also something that petrifies me.

I know Serenity’s wanted me to stop taking my pills for a while now. At first I couldn’t—old habits die hard and all that. And then one day I woke up and realized that I wanted to get old with this woman. I wanted our skin to sag together and our faces to wear wrinkles together the same way Serenity currently wears her scars.

So I stopped.

“I’m surprised I haven’t gotten any sooner,” I say, “considering who I’m married to.”

She swats me. “You should just be thankful I’ve stopped sleeping with my gun.”

I roll over her. “Oh, I am.”

And then I decide she doesn’t need sleep nearly as much as she needs me.

Serenity

Today I wear my hated crown.

One final time.

Five hundred men and women gather in the room before me and the king, regional leaders from all over the world.

It took Montes nearly a hundred and fifty years to conquer the world. It took me only five to give back.

“Today marks a turning point,” I say to the group spread out before me in the auditorium.

From this day forward, our world won’t be ruled by monarchs. The road ends here. With us.

I remove the crown from my head. Next to me, Montes mirrors my movements. I would’ve thought he’d fight this more, but the man is weary of ruling. At last.

I don’t spare the headpiece more than a passing glance.

“Today we hand the world over to you.”

There will be a single government made up of regional leaders appointed from each territory. All will work and vote together on issues that afflict the world.

Like every government that came before it, this one won’t be perfect—it could even be a disaster. Only time will tell.

I look over at Montes. My beautiful monster.

I wasn’t looking for redemption in this man—or from him, for that matter. But that’s what I got.

I return my attention to the hundreds gathered in this room.

There’s a place for me here, in this future I never expected to be a part of. I no longer straddle two hemispheres and two time periods. Instead, I am the woman that loves both the West and the East, the woman that will always fight for the blighted and broken, the impoverished and the oppressed. I’m the woman that came from the past to help the future.

I’m no longer the loneliest girl the world, the woman who fits in nowhere.

Now I’m the woman who fits in everywhere, and I’m the woman that believes in freedom and justice, and above all—

Hope.