I slam my fists into leather until my knuckles split and my body’s covered in a sheen of sweat. Even then I don’t stop. My grief is turning on me. I never did well with feeling helpless.

I embrace the rage that’s willing to take its place. This is one of the fundamental ways I understand Serenity. Death makes us both vicious. It burns through us like fuel and we consume it before it can consume us.

Another hit. I pretend I’m hitting skin and bone and not unforgiving leather. The chains clang and the bag swings.

Such a little thing, this life we lost. Just a spark of a possibility, really. And that was snuffed out before it could grow into something more. I was warned. I didn’t listen. And why the hell would I? I played God for the past thirty years. It’s a rude awakening to realize I can really be powerless.

I slam my fist into the bag—left, right, jab, uppercut. The metal chain that it hangs from continues to shiver, the sound echoing in the empty space.

Eventually I stop and steady the swaying bag. I’m a bloody mess; it drips from my hands, and it’s smeared into my clothes and on the leather.

I catch my breath, watching droplets of blood and sweat spill from me onto the floor. And then I begin to laugh. Two of the world’s most terrible people lost a fetus—or is it an embryo? Whatever it is, it couldn’t have survived on its own. It didn’t have a gender—it might not have even had a heartbeat. It lived instead off of Serenity’s scarred one. And we mourn for it—us, the two people who have staggering death counts to our names. This grief is madness.

And yet I can’t shake it.

My laughter turns to ragged sobs. Not a single tear falls from my eyes, and yet my entire body weeps. I tried so hard and for so long to not feel this way. You can heal your body, but not your mind or your heart.

And how they bleed.

Serenity

SOMETHING’S WRONG. I know it’s wrong before I even fully wake. As I blink, I try to figure out why I feel so ill at ease.

The first thing I see is Montes. He grips my hand in his, and he’s kissing my knuckles one by one. He looks troubled.

I sit up and look around. I’m back in our room, in our bed, and—

The last lucid hours of my life come back to me. I now have a name for that wrongness; it’s called death.

The nausea comes on suddenly, and I run for the bathroom. Maybe it’s the grief or maybe it’s the physical aftereffects of a miscarriage, but everything hurts. My back hurts, my stomach hurts, most of all, my heart hurts. I heave and heave, but nothing comes. Even after the nausea passes, I don’t bother moving from where I kneel in front of the toilet.

I hear Montes make his way in. He places a hand on my back. “Nire bihotza, I need you to get up.”

I bow my head. Take a deep breath.

Keep moving. One of the many soldier creeds I learned in the military. So long as you focus on placing one foot in front of the other, your demons can’t catch up to you.

Reluctantly I stand and turn to Montes. My hair’s in my face. He brushes it away and cups my cheeks. Our eyes meet, and then he pulls me into a tight embrace.

The king hugs me like I might slip away if he doesn’t hold on tightly enough. He doesn’t say anything, and I appreciate it. When it comes to grief, words have no balm strong enough to soothe the soul.

His fingers run down my hair, and he buries his face in my neck. I breathe him in. How had I ever thought this man inhuman? He smells real enough, he feels real enough, he bleeds, he hurts.

I turn my head into him, my lips skimming his jawline. He pulls away and our eyes meet. I can feel his mortality beneath my fingertips, his anguish batters against mine. For perhaps the first time ever, I wish to consume him the way he consumes me.

His brows draw together as I lean in. And then I’m kissing him, marking him, making him mine. I grab the collar of his button-down and—rip. Seams split and buttons fly. The hard skin of his stomach is bared to me. I touch it, luxuriate in it.

My monster.

He nearly died. We all nearly died. I will hurt because of what we lost, but it could’ve been worse.

So much worse.

And now I want to savor what I didn’t lose.

His hands grip my upper arms. He’s staring at me like he doesn’t know me—but he desperately wishes to. I like the look. A lot.

Montes backs us up, helping me out of my clothes and his. He doesn’t dare speak. This side of me, the one that pursues him—he must think it’s some sort of apparition. Smart man is not going to ruin the moment if he can help it.

We fall together onto the bed. Neither of us bothers kicking off the top sheets before I slide down onto him.

I close my eyes and exhale as I relish the feel of him inside me. One of my hands finds his corded shoulder. I run my palm over the muscle. Real. Alive. Mine.

He holds my hips tightly to his own. We both need to move, but neither of us wants the feeling of being connected to slip away.

“Open your eyes, my queen.”

I do.

His dark, mesmerizing ones stare back at me.

No one ever warned me about feelings like this. That I could see something worth redeeming in the world’s evilest man, or that he could see something worth saving in the scarred, dying girl he holds in his arms.

I touch his cheek. My hand looks pale and delicate against his olive skin.

Had I once despised the way his presence could overwhelm me? Now the way he envelops me, fills me, devours me is what I love most about this life I lead. He is what’s real.

“Make me forget,” I say.

And he does.

CHAPTER 28

Serenity

LONG AFTER MONTES and I finish, I lay in bed awake.

Outside our windows, the night is dark. The city gives off no light, and for once it feels like the darkness is pressing in on me, rather than beckoning me away.

Next to me the king’s breaths are deep and even.

My throat works as I gaze at the ceiling.

Event one—the king’s palace comes under siege. I lose my memory in the process. Event two—I catch a strain of plague concocted in one of the king’s laboratories, a laboratory nations away. A strain of plague no one else catches. Event three—the stabbing. Again meant solely for me. Event four—an ambush meant to end my life and the king’s.

Four events spread over a couple months. All of them took place in areas the king deemed safe. All around people the king trusted.

There’s a traitor amongst us.