What I hate most about his words is that he very well could be right. I’m not nearly as underhanded as he is. I can’t mask my emotions, not the way some people can.

“I’m not the only one who agreed to a deal without stipulations,” I say.

Mirth reenters his eyes. “It is my deepest wish that you will use me as I will use you.”

An unbidden shiver runs down my spine at the king’s plans for me—for us.

“Be careful what you wish for, Montes.”

Because I will use him. Oh, how I will.

Chapter 14

Serenity

“I have something to show you,” the king says that evening.

I’m not a particularly big fan of Montes’s surprises.

He leads me through the palace, and I catch another glimpse of his covered pictures. Our footsteps echo, along with those of our guards. What sort of madness must’ve overtaken the king for him to sequester himself in this lonely place?

We enter what looks like a small library. Montes presses a button embedded in the wall to our right. At the far end of the room, a screen descends from the ceiling. My eyes flick to him, but he gives me no clue as to what’s going on in his twisted mind.

Montes begins to roll up his shirtsleeves with those deft fingers of his. I feel my heart break a little more, watching the careless action. He still does it.

His eyes lift to mine, and whatever he sees makes him pause. His gaze moves to his hands, then up again.

“Nire bihotza …”

Whatever he’s about to say, I don’t let him finish. I stride over to the screen, trying hard to ignore his presence.

It’s impossible. It always has been. But it’s worse now that the gulf between us is larger than it ever has been.

“You will want to sit for this,” he says from behind me.

There’s a couch at my back, but I make no move towards it.

“I’m fine.”

I hear him cross the room. I badly want to swivel around and watch him, both because I don’t trust him and because my eyes can’t help but be pulled to every pleasing feature of his. But I keep my gaze steady on the screen.

A moment later, it flickers to life. It looks like a computer’s home screen, though it’s slightly different than what I’m used to. Montes flips through menu after menu until a photo fills the display.

The image has me sucking in a breath.

General Kline’s hardened face stares back at me.

Only, it’s old.

And now I do turn to face Montes. I can feel my eyes filling, filling. I don’t want to cry.

“How?” The word is barely even a whisper.

“You’ll see.” He looks pointedly at the couch. “You really should sit.”

He presses something, and I catch movement in the corner of my eye.

It’s not a photo, I realize, dragging my attention away from the king and back to the screen as the image of the general comes to life.

It’s a video.

All the air releases from my lungs.

The sight of it, and the realization that the general lived and died all while I slept, is enough to shake my resolve. Without thinking, I sink back into the couch.

I’m not sure I want to see this. Not sure I can bear it.

Behind me I hear the king’s footfalls retreating, then the door opens and closes, and I’m alone with a ghost.

“Serenity—” The general rubs his face on the other side of the screen.

He’s far away enough from the camera that I can see his leg jiggling. Decades may separate us in time, but I can tell I am not the only one nervous about this video.

He sighs, staring down at his thick, calloused hands. They’ve seen action. I can tell by how rough they are. Even as old as the general appears to be, he clearly hasn’t stopped fighting, hasn’t stopped living.

Good for him. I hope he fought death to the bitter end.

“I don’t know where to start,” he says, frowning. “This situation is all sorts of fucked-up. I don’t know when—or if—you’ll ever see this. I hope to God the bastard unplugs that damn machine and lets you live or die the way nature intended.”

I smile sadly at that. And then his words register.

How did the general know I was in the Sleeper?

Why does Montes have this footage?

They’re enemies. Bitter enemies.

“I am going to tell you a story, Serenity, and you’re not going to like it.” He sighs again, running his thumb over his knuckles. “Two years after you were last seen, I found out that you weren’t dead. The official story had always been that you died of cancer.”

The general clenches his jaw. “No one believed it, most assumed the king had killed you himself, though there were those who believed that it was a suicide or that you met a violent end at the hands of an enemy.

“There always had been conspiracy theories that you lived, but I never believed them. Not until he showed me …” General Kline’s voice is gravelly with age, but it’s lost none of its strength, not even when he’s grasping for words.

“I don’t know how much you knew before you were … put under. Right around that time, the Southern WUN rebelled, and the Resistance was a part of that rebellion.”

I watch him in wonder. Nothing about this video makes much sense to me. Why he made it, why he’s telling me this.

“I didn’t make the call to rebel with the South Western territories, but I lived long enough to regret it anyway. The men who’ve secured control make Montes look like a decent guy, and you know how fucking hard that is to accomplish.”