Impossible.

Standing just inside the threshold of the room is the very man I shot through the heart.

The love of my fucked-up life.

Montes Lazuli, the truly undying king.

The King

She’s war and peace and love and hate. She’s my death and my salvation, and right now, standing amongst all these massacred bodies, she’s staring at me like I’m the mythic one.

“Montes?” Her voice shakes. Uncertainty is an endearing emotion on my wife.

“You’re shit at keeping secrets, my queen,” I say.

Finally I can speak on this subject.

And finally I can breathe easy, knowing Serenity’s alright.

Bloody, but alright.

Her mouth is slightly parted, and her brows are furrowed. I know my queen well enough to know she’s trying to piece together what she feels is an impossible series of events.

One of the representatives nearest her moves, and she shoots him without question.

Deadly, savage woman.

I make my way towards her, shooting anyone I don’t recognize. Already my men have taken out most of the enemy soldiers and representatives in here.

Now I just need to get to my wife. My scheming, violent wife who concocted this elaborate, foolhardy plan so that war could end and I could live.

Even after everything I put her through, she did this for me. It is without a doubt the single greatest show of love I’ve ever received.

Which makes me all the more frantic to keep her safe.

I feel Marco at my back, covering for me.

The three leaders left standing now balk at the two of us.

Marco never was the West’s mole, he was a double agent working for me.

Serenity sees Marco as well, and she appears equally confused. But quickly her gaze returns to me, her eyes dropping to my heart.

In my peripherals, I see the last of the West’s representatives and their royal guard go down. I breathe a little easier as I step up to Serenity.

“How?” she asks.

I whisper in her ear, “I surround myself with loyal men.”

Loyal men, and loyal women.

Serenity

All of my elaborate plans, all of my late nights, all of the details I worked hours on ironing out. Montes had known, and he’d kept it from me.

I want to be angry, but my heart’s not letting me have my moment of indignation. It’s far too happy that the king is alive. Alive and … not all that upset himself, considering that I shot him.

“How long have you known?” I ask. There had been nights where he gazed at me with such sad eyes, and I could’ve sworn he’d seen right through me.

He stays quiet.

“How long?” I repeat.

“Serenity, you are not that good at being subtle.”

Goddamnit, had he known the whole time?

Around us, the gunfire has ceased, and the only ones left standing are the king’s men.

“And you just let me go along with my plan?”

Montes’s eyes are stormy. “It was … difficult. All the details were so very reckless. And I wasn’t looking forward to getting shot. But yes.”

My eyes dip to his heart. Tentatively, I place a hand on his chest. I feel the organ thump beneath my palm. “Your gunshot wound?” An injury like that should’ve left him in the Sleeper for a week.

He covers my hand with his own. “I wore a bullet proof vest.”

I tilt my head up to him. “But there was blood.”

“It isn’t hard to rig a blood bag to my outfit. You yourself managed to get ahold of an entire body.”

The wrong body.

His body. The second impossible detail about this situation. “The bloodwork, the dental records—they said it was you.”

“It was me.”

I furrow my brows.

“I didn’t just clone you and Marco.”

The full force of what he’s saying hits me. That single Sleeper I wasn’t authorized to view. It had housed his double.

“You killed your clone?”

Smoke curls around Montes. He looks for all the world like some terrible deity come to feast on the violence. Only, he’s here to save me, to avenge me.

He gives me an indulgent look. “You’ve killed dozens and dozens of men and you’re worried that I killed my twin? My queen, you are a strange creature. But to answer your question, the body was braindead to begin with. I didn’t want to chance another version of me ever getting loose.”

That was something we could agree upon.

He continues. “I’d planned on faking my death for some time—”

BOOM!

I’m nearly thrown off my feet as the explosion rocks the ground, the sound of it deafening. Montes grabs my arm, bracing me.

The roof above us groans sickeningly, and more glass shards rain down on us.

I glance at the king.

“Is Heinrich still planning on bombing—?”

Montes nods sharply. “We need to go.”

Chapter 57

Serenity

The two of us dash out to the front of the building, the hot breath of air from the blasts whipping my hair about. From here we have a panoramic view of the walled city.

There are fires everywhere, and people are running, panicking.

More bombs go off, one right after another. I see chunks of the seaside buildings blown out from the side of the mountain. A few of them are blasted so far out I see them hit the water.

As I watch, one of the walls circling the city goes down with a thunderous boom. A plume of dirt and debris billow up into the air.