I reach out and take his hand, drawing his attention to me. Very deliberately, I brush a kiss along his knuckles. “Yes,” I say softly.

He stares at our hands for several seconds, then his eyes flick up to me.

I don’t thank him for being reasonable, but I know he can see my gratitude.

He nods, but his expression turns grim. “Very well.”

He exits the car, holding the door open for me to follow. Almost immediately, a crew of men and women close in on us.

“Your Majesties,” one of them says, crowding me and Montes, “we’re so very happy to have you here. Please follow me. We have your wardrobes waiting for you in the dressing room.”

Wardrobes?

I raise an eyebrow at the king, but he’s too busy scowling at anyone that gets too close to me.

We’re lead to a makeshift room, which is really not much more than four temporary walls.

Inside it, a stylized black uniform and a tuxedo wait for us.

I remove my outfit from the wall. The uniform looks half paramilitary and half high-fashion. I can’t help but grimace when I notice the shoulder and upper arms of the fitted top glitter.

Whatever. At least it’s not a dress.

I change, making sure to strap my new gun to my outfit. My father’s gun is packed with my things, which are Lord knows where.

That unsettling feeling still lingers in the air. It stays with me even after the king and I are ushered from the room.

We stand together behind a red velvet curtain, the two of us waiting to be introduced to the world.

I glance over at him.

The devil never looked so good. He wears a suit, his hair swept back from his face. And his eyes—a person could lose their soul in their dark depths. He appears just as he did when he waited for me at the base of those steps in Geneva. The monster who’d come in and ruined my life. And now, a hundred years later, I stand at his side, determined to fix everything he’s broken.

“Thirty seconds,” someone calls out to us.

Montes turns to me. “Are you ready?” Today we’re walking out together and facing the crowd as a unified front.

I nod.

He doesn’t say anything, just takes me in, looking at me like I’m his own personal apparition before he bows his head and faces forward again.

The people around us begin counting down with their fingers, like this whole production must be executed down to the very second.

Their fingers run out, and then the king and I are walking onto the stage.

Large screens have been set up in between the buildings. I see our faces projected onto them as we step forward. For the first time, I realize that it’s not just the king who appears inhuman.

I do too.

The ferocity of the scar that runs down my cheek, the tightness of my jaw, the look in my eye—I’m no natural thing. Murder and violence have made me this way. Loss and war have made me this way.

I look like a savage.

A savage queen. One who doesn’t need a crown or even a weapon to appear powerful.

I see it now—this world’s faith in me. It’s not just that I am an anachronism; the harshness of my face speaks to these people who have only ever known war.

No wonder the West wants me gone.

A century has gone by, and yet even after all that time I am still something to fear.

Chapter 39

Serenity

Our enemies wait until the king and I are separated.

Until I’m vulnerable.

“I did not choose this fate willingly,” I say, right in the heat of my speech.

My eyes briefly flick to the wings of the stage, where Montes watches me. He said his piece and then left me win the crowd over.

“Just as many of you did not choose yours,” I continue. “But these lives are still ours, and they matter.”

The people need to know that whatever dream they held tightly onto, it can happen. Dead queens can be resurrected. Peace can follow war. Good can vanquish evil.

The back of my neck prickles, and my voice wavers.

Something … is amiss.

I swear I hear the quiet drone of an aircraft, but when I look up to the cloudless blue sky, it’s utterly empty.

“I don’t bleed for the West,” I resume speaking. “And I don’t bleed for the East. I have and always will bleed for freedom, and I will always fight those who seek to oppress you.”

The crowd roars.

High above us, something glints, catching the light of the noonday sun. It jogs my memory. Hadn’t I watched something like this back at the king’s palace?

My breath catches.

Oh God.

Now I remember.

Optical camouflage, the material that made the enemy all but invisible.

I turn to the officers. Their fingers are at their earpieces. My own hand goes to my gun reflexively.

Then I hear it. The horrible whistling sound of a bomb being dropped.

It’s already too late.

BOOM!

The first one explodes to my left, in the middle of our audience. Concrete and metal and flesh blast into the air in a hundred different directions as a rotted-out building is ripped apart. A hundred people die before my eyes, all in an instant. Just like my mother had years ago.

A second explosion follows the first, this to my right. The bomb unfurls like a strange and terrible flower, and the sound that accompanies it is so loud it seems to move through my bones. I can feel the hot breath of it already, though I’m far, far away.

As I watch, several armed soldiers begin rappelling from an aircraft that’s still all but invisible.