My entire body tightens. I want to devour the words that will fall from his lips, but I have to rein my own emotions in. Whatever he says now is likely some official explanation rather than the actual truth.

My husband is not exactly known for truth telling.

“I was afraid of what would happen to her and the world if she was brought to life. Martyrs don’t last long in war.”

It takes hearing Montes’s explanation to realize I wanted something else, something that burned hot. A reason worthy of a century of sleep.

Not this anesthetized explanation.

“I’m sorry I lied to you all in the process.” The king looks back down at me, and now I really don’t want his eyes taking in whatever reaction I’m wearing. “She’s my wife. I don’t want anything to happen to her. I thought that keeping her asleep and safe under my protection would be enough. But the enemy came in here, they stole her from me, and they were going to use her in the way the West uses all their subjects.”

Montes’s jaw tightens. Now there are words to get behind. Now there is the king. Not the king I knew—that one was a man wearing a title.

This is a title wearing a man, power and purpose given flesh.

I can’t help but stare in silence. When did the West become the great evil, and this man a fighter for freedom? When did leaving me to sleep become a mercy rather than a death sentence?

And how, exactly, does the West use their subjects?

I find I really don’t want to know that answer.

Montes steps away from me. “They came for my wife, trespassed inside my house, and tried to use her against us,” he says, pointing a finger to the ground. He pauses for effect. “They will try again. And again. And again. They will try to capture her until they succeed or we stop them.”

He orates to the officers like they are clay to mold into whatever shape he desires. And he’s good. Really good. His adoration seems genuine, his pain seems genuine, his anger seems genuine.

But is it?

“They give us only one option: we must stop them. And we will.” Montes casts his gaze about the room. “This time when we make war with the enemy, we do it for good.”

One of the officers stands, and he seems like the meanest of the bunch from the sharp set of his features. His eyes move from Montes to me. “What does Your Majesty, Serenity Lazuli say to this?”

Suddenly, dozens of eyes are on me.

And I realize I’m not just a woman wearing a title, either. Not to these people. I’m their hope given form.

I walk forward, passing the king, my boots echoing as they click against the floor. I cast a wondrous glance around the room. I throw a look over my shoulder.

The hairs on my arm rise as our gazes lock. Montes, in his infinite darkness, has done the most twisted thing of all: he’s fashioned his evil into something good men can get behind.

I face forward once more. “I won’t pretend to understand these times or your ways,” I say. “But a hundred and fifty years is too long to be at war. I am prepared to do whatever is needed, whatever it is you ask of me, to end it, once and for all.”

The officer who spoke stares at me for a long time. Then he brings his fist over his heart, and he thumps it against his chest. The action is savage. He pulls his fist away, then does it again. And then a third time.

A chair scrapes back and the man next to him stands. He too places a fist over his heart and begins to pound it just beneath his decorated breast pocket. Then a woman stands and does the same thing. Then several officers.

One by one, like a wave, they stand and thump their fists over their hearts until the entire room is echoing with the sound.

I feel the devil’s breath against my ear. “There is no higher compliment, my queen, than for the officers to give you their honor.”

That’s what this is?

“What have you done?” I say, staring out at the sea of medaled men and women. I’ve already agreed to this, to be what the world needs me to be, but I’m still horrified by all that comes with it.

I’m nothing more than a story to these men and women, a face to their beliefs. And they are all but ready to set down their lives for me.

Those terrible eyes of his capture mine, but he doesn’t respond.

It’s hard to believe everything that led me here wasn’t orchestrated by his hand. That my escape and the fallout from it wasn’t planned. Montes seems more omnipotent than ever, and the superstitious part of me wants to believe that he can see some endgame the rest of us can’t.

But he can’t control me, I know that. His reluctance to wake me up has everything to do with that. And I won’t bow to him, no matter how drastically he’s changed his ways. A long time ago I forgot I slept in bed with the enemy. I paid a hundred years as penance.

I won’t make the same mistake twice.

Chapter 12

Serenity

“So let me get this straight, the Western United Nations is still called the Western United Nations, and it’s run by a group of representatives, just as it always has been.”

The officers around me are nodding.

After the meeting in the map room adjourned, Montes and I moved to a smaller conference room with a handful of the officers. All of them are helping me catch up on what I’ve missed.

It’s an impossible task; it took me years to understand the intricacies of my time’s politics when I was studying as an emissary. It will take me years more to understand all that’s happened between then and now.