That makes this all worse. Because it seems like only hours ago the king told me he loved me. The moment that love became inconvenient for him, that fucker let me waste away. My breathing is coming faster and faster.

My monster, my husband, my captor. Soon he will be my victim.

I always considered Montes the thing of my nightmares. Now I’ll be his.

Yes, I think as I step up to the vehicle’s rear doors, I will enjoy killing him.

Chapter 4

Serenity

“Come out with your hands up!”

Even the orders of the future remain the same. Has nothing changed at all?

Pressing my back against one of the vehicle’s doors, I use my hand to throw open the other. Instead of the gunfire I expect, a dozen different soldiers yell orders to exit the car. Those orders die away when they catch sight of the bodies.

Finally, fearfully, one calls out, “Serenity?”

I close my eyes. “I’m here,” I say.

“Is there anyone with you?”

“No one living.”

There’s a pause as the king’s men process that. Whatever they were told about me, I’m guessing that it hasn’t prepared them for who I really am.

“You can come out, Your Majesty. We won’t shoot.”

I open my eyes and push away from the wall and into the open doorway. Sunlight touches my skin for the first time in a very long time. I soak it in. The day is full of firsts.

I step down from the car and onto the dirt road.

A hush falls over my audience as they catch sight of me. Then slowly, one by one, they kneel.

I stop and take them in. I had prepared for their horror, dressed in blood as I am, not their veneration.

There are dozens of soldiers circled around the car I exited. Behind their ranks, several armored vehicles are parked, lights flashing. Above us, a chopper circles.

It’s all the same. The machinery might look slightly different, but it doesn’t appear to have advanced in all this time. Prosperity breeds progress, and this, this isn’t progress.

I fear for the world I have woken to.

Beyond the cars, scraggly rolling hills stretch out as far as the eye can see. I can feel the solitude of this place. The whistle of the wind seems to exacerbate it.

I haven’t dropped my gun, but the soldiers don’t seem to mind. As soon as they rise, I catch sight of their expressions.

I’m a ghost. A myth. That’s the only explanation for the spooked ardor in their eyes.

All the while, rivulets of blood snake down my calves. They’re right to be spooked of me.

I scour their ranks, looking for Montes. My eyes pass over dozens of men and a few women. I look them over once, twice. I didn’t realize I held onto some sick hope until I feel it vanish.

The king isn’t among these soldiers.

Even in the middle of my bloodlust, my heart aches. Last time I was captured, he was there to retrieve me.

A hundred years to change into whatever he wanted to become. A hundred years to fall out of love. A hundred years to forget about the broken, deadly girl he forced into marriage.

The king that rules these people isn’t the same king I knew. All my anger and pain are wasted on a man who, in all probability, no longer cares for me. The world’s still at war, after all. If I can really end it, the king should have taken me out of the Sleeper long ago.

Reflexively, my hand tightens on my gun.

Behind me is open road, in front of me is vengeance. My twisted heart is breaking, but I’m tempted to leave my heartbreak and revenge to the past and walk away from it all.

I take a step back. The soldiers tense.

“Your Majesty,” one of them says, “we’re the king’s royal guard. You can trust us.”

Normally, when people tell you that you can trust them, it means exactly the opposite.

I look around; the soldiers encircle me completely. If I ran, how far would I get before they caught me? How many more men would I have to kill? I don’t want to spill more blood. And even if I did, I couldn’t possibly take them all out before the king’s guard immobilized me. I’d lose whatever precious power I had to wield.

I’m still not free.

“I need your word,” I say to the man who spoke.

He pauses. “Anything, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t let the king put me back in the Sleeper.” My voice breaks as I speak. “Kill me first.”

“I’ll vow to you anything but that.”

“Then I can’t go with you,” I say.

“Your Majesty,” he says, all but pleading with me, “what you’re asking of me is treason. The king would—”

I press the barrel of the gun to my temple. The soldiers tense once more.

“I need your word,” I say. “I need everyone’s word, or I will pull the trigger,” I say.

I hear murmuring from all around me. It takes a minute to make out what they’re saying, but eventually I do.

“Freedom or death.”

Even out here in the midday heat, my skin prickles.

What have you made of me, Montes?

As my gaze sweeps over all of them, I begin to see them nod. Then, one by one, they take a knee and put their fists over their hearts.

“You have my word,” the first soldier says.

“And mine,” someone says from behind me.

“And mine.”

“And mine.”

This lonely space fills with the sound of dozens of oaths.

Slowly, I lower my gun. They don’t know me, but now they show me allegiance.