“Yes, I believe so,” I say, before Marco can finish his thought. We’d bought Serenity time, but not much.

“Have you considered keeping our queen in the Sleeper until a cure’s been discovered?”

I hiss in a breath. That’s months—maybe even years—away.

My gaze snaps to him. “Of course I have. That’s a last resort.”

I’ve spent all this time pouring money into destroying healthy bodies and perfecting a body that isn’t broken. Scant few of my efforts have focused on fixing sick ones.

“Hasn’t it gotten to that point?” Marco asks. “She’s dying. This could halt the damage.”

Something thick lodges itself in my throat. It comes down to the Sleeper or death, and either option still takes her away from me. It’s been hard enough waiting out her recovery during the last few weeks.

“Since when do you care?” I give Marco a sharp look.

“Since you started to.”

Just like that, his words deflate my rising anger. I rub a hand over my mouth. “She might spend years asleep in it before we have the technology to remove the cancer forever.” My voice comes out strong and smooth; I can’t let even Marco, my oldest, closest friend, see how vulnerable I feel.

“Your Majesty,” Marco pauses, picking his words carefully, “if you want her to live for as long as you will, this might be the only way. ”

Serenity

I watch the door for several minutes after the king leaves, making sure that he’s not going to double back to my room. When nothing happens, I fling the hospital sheets off of me, more than a little surprised that my body doesn’t scream at the movement. In fact, I feel fine—not at all like I’ve just woken from an operation.

I’m right in the middle of an Eastern Empire hospital, one of the most coveted and secretive places under the king’s control. It’s where cutting edge medical research takes place.

Now is my chance to find out what exactly that research is.

Before I leave my bed to go explore, I gather up my gown to take a look at the extent of my surgery. I don’t want to accidently reopen the wound and find myself a patient here for longer than absolutely necessary.

I lift the thin cotton fabric and reveal inch after inch of skin. I unveil my stomach, and a strange sort of disbelief twists inside my core. Just to be sure I’m seeing correctly, I run a hand over the smooth skin.

There are no surgical marks, no scars. Nothing. The only indication that something’s happened to me is that a dark freckle that should’ve lingered near my bellybutton has now vanished as though it never existed in the first place.

So what did they do?

I peer out the door of my room.

“What are you doing, my queen?”

I yelp at the sound of the voice. A guard stands off to the side of the door. Of course the king left a guard outside my room. Now I’m going to have to figure out how to shake him.

“I need to talk to a nurse,” I say, slipping out the door and walking past him. Now that I’m up and about, I can feel my exhaustion after all. I’m not quite as fine as I assumed I was.

“Wait—my queen!” the guard calls from behind me. “You should not be out of bed.”

I ignore him and continue towards the main desk on this floor concocting a quick plan to ditch my extra shadow.

The nurse manning the desk glances up when she hears my guard and me coming. Her face lights with surprise—I’m now that recognizable—before falling back into a careful mask.

“Do you need anything, my queen?” She doesn’t demand to know why I’m out of bed, nor does she rush to get me back in my room.

Whatever operation was performed on me, she seems to feel I’m in good enough health to walk around.

“Can I speak with you in private?”

The nurse nods, her brow wrinkling. My guard still stands behind me, and I shoot him a look.

“I’ve been commanded to not let you out of my sight if you leave your room,” he explains.

I turn back to the nurse and lean in close. “I need to use the bathroom and I’d like to not be shadowed like a prisoner.”

The nurse’s gaze moves from me to the guard.

“Is there anyway you can make sure he stays out here?” I whisper.

The nurse mulls this over, then finally nods. “I think that’ll be just fine,” she says, her voice low. “Need anything else?”

“Just directions to the bathroom.”

“Down the hall and to your left.” The nurse nods in the appropriate direction.

Perfect. I’ll be out of the guard and the nurse’s line of sight.

“Thanks,” I say, flashing her a genuine smile.

I push away from the counter. My guard is now looking at me suspiciously. I brush past him. When he begins to follow me, the nurse clears her throat. “Sir, sir—yes you,” I hear from behind me.

I don’t wait to listen to the rest. I move down the corridor and turn left, just so that it looks like I’m going to the bathroom. At the end of this hall is a stairwell, and right before it, a storage closet hangs slightly open. I stop by it and peek in. Medical supplies and a spare pair of scrubs rest on the shelves. I grab the scrubs and change into them quickly, just in case whoever left the door open is about to come back.

As I unfold the soft material, a keycard slips out. I pick it up and glance at the face of the male nurse whom these scrubs belong to. On it is a barcode, probably to allow him access into restricted areas.

The whole thing could not have gone better had I planned it.

I finish changing and palm the keycard. Slipping out of the closet, I enter the stairwell and take it down. It takes me ten minutes to locate where the research labs are, and I’m sure I only have minutes before the guard sounds the alarm that I’m missing.

I enter the lowest basement of the hospital. My first glimpses of this subterranean floor aren’t promising. Paint peels from the walls and the exposed metal pipes I see. It smells like mildew and rot down here—not exactly the ideal atmosphere for cutting edge medical research.

Despite my misgivings, I begin to scrutinize the hall. The floor is abandoned.

A shiver races down my back. An epidemic preceded the king’s war, culling the Eastern Hemisphere’s population to little over a third of what it once was. I’d never noticed what exactly that looked like until this moment, when I stood in one of their understaffed hospitals.