As soon as the king takes up the doorway, his eyebrows raise. I’m sitting on top of my bed in my hospital gown, my forearms slung over my knees. In one of my hands I’m playing with a scalpel that I lifted from the nurse that checked on me.

“Where’d you get that?”

I narrow my eyes at the king. “You don’t seriously expect me to answer that question, do you?”

He smirks, totally at ease with the fact that I’m playing with a scalpel in his presence.

Behind him I see Marco and some of the king’s bodyguards flank the doorway. “He,” I jut my chin at Marco, “better make himself scarce, or else this scalpel is going to find itself lodged into his chest.”

King Lazuli saunters into the room. “There is no need for threats, my queen.”

My eyes shoot daggers at Marco.

“Marco and his guards are going to wait outside while I spend time with my recovering wife.” The king’s mouth curves up at the last word.

Marco opens his mouth to speak. As soon as he does so, my hand tightens around the knife, and I rearrange my grip for throwing it. Marco’s eyes flick to my hand, and his mouth closes. Without a further word, he slips out of the room.

“You need to stop threatening my men,” the king says.

“Or else what?” I ask insolently. “You’ll divorce me?”

He sighs. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Make me regret my decision to marry you?”

“Absolutely.” Gone for the moment are my blossoming feelings for the king. Instead I can’t help but feel deeply disturbed once more by the king and his science.

The king leans in close—close enough for me to stab him if I desire it. He knows this too. I can see him daring me with his eyes.

“If I wanted to punish you for threatening my men, I’d find something infinitely more creative than divorce.”

I flip the scalpel around in my hand several times, a small smile forming on my lips. “You’re right. Divorce would hardly be punishment.”

Montes’s fingers touch my jaw, angling it to better face him. “Why are you so angry?”

“What have you done to me?”

The king’s brows lift. “This is about your surgery?”

“See, there’s where you’ve got it wrong,” I say. “Surgeries require this—” I raise the scalpel, “—and they leave scars. Most importantly of all, they don’t take two weeks.”

“My doctors have access to the latest technology. You were placed in a device called the Sleeper. It removed the cancer and regenerated healthy tissue.”

The king has equipment that can do that?

Before I can respond, the king wraps his hand around the base of the knife and tries to pull it from me.

“Hey—” I can tell I’m about to lose the scalpel, so I give it a good yank and slide it against the king’s skin.

The king curses as the knife cuts into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger and blood pools.

I let go of the scalpel just as the door to my room is thrown open. Marco comes in, gun drawn, a group of guards spreading out behind him.

I roll my eyes at Marco and very slowly relax my coiled muscles. Despite appearing indifferent, I’m not. I’m staring down the same gun barrel that my father had. The one that might’ve killed him.

“Your Majesty,” Marco says, taking in the scene, “is everything alright?” His eyes flick to the king’s bloody hand. “You’re bleeding.”

The king holds out the scalpel for Marco to take while studying me. “I’m fine,” he says as Marco takes the knife from him. “I just cut myself while I took the scalpel from the queen.” The king’s giving me a strange look. I get the impression he’s trying to figure me out.

“Your Majesty?” Marco says, not buying the story.

“That’s all Marco,” the king says.

“But sir, your hand …”

“Later Marco,” the king says, his eyes never straying from mine. “Leave us.”

Marco hesitates, piercing me with a look that says just what he’ll do to me if more harm befalls the king. I flash him my most nefarious grin as he backs out of the room.

“Must you terrify everyone you meet?” The king asks, grabbing some paper towels out of a dispenser to cauterize the flow of blood.

“Yes.”

The king comes back to me, and that strange look is back in his eyes. “Why did you cut me?”

My skin prickles, not because of his question, but because he’s not angry at all. He’s curious. It’s the wrong reaction, and it makes me worry that there indeed is something very, very wrong with the man I married.

“I wanted to see if you could bleed,” I say. My words sound cruel and calculating even to my own ears. There is also something very wrong with me.

“No, you didn’t,” the king says. “You’ve already seen me bleed.” He comes closer to my bed. “You want to know how I heal, don’t you?” he says, his eyes ever so inquisitive.

My heart thumps. “Yes,” I admit.

The king nods slowly. “You thought because I refused to tell you how I died before, I’d always refuse to tell you.”

“How you died before?” I go completely still. Already he’s admitted so much more than I expected.

“Perhaps ‘died’ is the wrong word.” He sits on my bed and cups the side of my face. In his eyes I see something I hoped not to. I don’t know what love is, and I doubt the king does either, but the expression he wears seems awfully near the mark.

“You really want to know?” he asks.

I nod.

He lets out a breath, then making a decision, he says, “All right. I’ll tell you the whole sordid story—it’s a long one.”

This moment strikes me as terribly anticlimactic. King Lazuli, the feared ruler of the entire globe, is about to tell me his biggest and most well kept secret. A secret men have killed and died for. A secret that used to bring goose bumps to my skin.

He presses his mouth to my ear, exhales, and breathes the first line. “But not here—”

The sound of shots ring out.

The king pulls back, and we stare at each other for a moment. Then we’re moving.

Ambushed. Someone knows we’re at this hospital, and we’re being ambushed.