But now I know that won’t happen. Not now that I’ve seen the sharks he works alongside. Not now that I’ve grown to care for him.

“Ready?” he asks, extending his arm towards me.

I ignore his arm and reach for the door. Where I’m from, after all, chivalry is long dead.

“Happy to see that I put you in good spirits this morning,” Montes says as he follows me out.

He doesn’t know the half of it. My heart’s still beating too fast, and every time I close my eyes I see the way he looked at me as he moved inside me. Like more than just sex passed between us. I hate that he’s convinced me that there’s another side to him. I hate that I want to drop back and take his hand, or hold his face in place while I memorize those irises that scared me for so long.

My own urges make me feel dirty. It’s one thing to be taken by a monster, and quite another to be taken with him.

“You vastly overestimate your skills, Montes,” I say. “I’m beginning to understand why you settled on world domination before marriage.”

“My queen did enjoy herself,” Montes says. He sounds so smug. “Perhaps a little too much?”

I run my tongue over my teeth. It would do me no good to respond to him. But it burns to not rise to his bait.

The palace is already bustling with people. Save for the guards, all the men are in suits, and the few women I do see wear heels and skirts. I’m the only one wearing anything sensible. It’s just another reminder that these people were once my enemy, and they were so untouchable that safety never dictated what they wore. They never had to worry about fleeing the palace at a moment’s notice.

This den of iniquity is now my home, and at the moment I’d love nothing more than to burn it to the ground, just to let these people feel a shadow of what I have my entire life.

Ahead of us, the servant carrying tea is the only one, as far as I can tell, who’s wearing shoes she can run in. Not even the others that mill the halls wear the same sensible black shoes she does.

Perhaps it’s that small detail that has me giving her a second look. A linen cloth is thrown over her forearm, and the base of the silver teapot she carries rests on it.

She’s only feet away from me, her eyes downcast. She’s not looking where she’s going, and even as I try to sidestep her, she manages to bump into me.

I feel the pressure of the knife sliding into me well before I feel the pain. That’s all it takes for my training to kick in.

Working on reflex alone, I grab the woman’s wrist and yank it behind her back. She cries out as I sweep her feet out from under her and follow her to the ground.

Jesus. Now I feel the pain. It only makes me more aggressive. I grind my knee into her back and pull her wrists more tightly together. My blood slips down the hilt of the dagger protruding from me and drips onto her.

“Nice try,” I whisper in her ear.

“Guards!” Montes yells.

The people in the hallway stand frozen as guards run to our side, a few gasp as they catch sight of me. Here in their world, nothing bad happens.

The guards gently push me away as they take over restraining the woman.

I rise to my feet slowly, careful not to cut more of myself. Montes helps me up the rest of the way.

“We need a medic!” he shouts.

He’s staring at the line of blood blooming across my abdomen, his face shell-shocked.

Two attempts on my life within a single week. Someone wants me dead. “You really should give me back my gun.”

IT’S ONLY ONCE I’m standing that I realize the woman inflicted more than just a flesh wound. My hands move to my stomach as I sway.

“Serenity?” Montes’s eyes are wider than usual. He turns to the guards not dispensing with the hit woman. “We need a doctor! Now!”

I place a hand on him to steady myself and stare down at the woman who’s now being jerked to her feet by several of his men. That was bold of her, trying to kill me in the king’s headquarters. She had to know she’d get caught. That she would be killed.

Montes holds my sides like he wants to draw me into him, but he’s afraid of jostling me. His eyes follow mine to my attacker.

“Make her talk by whatever means necessary,” he says. “Then make an example of her.”

The woman hasn’t said a word this entire time, and really what is there to say? She catches my eye as the guards drag her away. There’s nothing there. No remorse, no anger, no fear. That’s something else I’ve learned from war. Sometimes, violence isn’t personal. Sometimes it’s cold and passionless. And sometimes, you’ll never know a person’s motives.

As she’s taken away, several sets of feet sprint down the hall. A handful of medics move towards us, pushing a stretcher between them.

Now I’m half considering removing this knife from my belly and attacking my attacker for making me face more doctors.

Once the medical crew reaches us, they make quick work of laying me onto the stretcher. I reach for Montes’s hand and grip it in my own bloody one.

“Stay with me,” I whisper.

His nostrils flare as he breathes through his nose. That perfect suit of his is now rumpled. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I’ve heard that love was messy, but ours is downright bloody. It turns men into monsters, and monsters into men.

I don’t care that soldiers, medics, staff, and politicians are watching. I bring his bloody hand to my lips and kiss his knuckles. And the entire time they wheel me away, I hold my monster tightly to me.

The King

THEY PUT HER in the Sleeper again.

She fought it. Again.

Her pain almost broke me.

Again.

I’ve never bloodied my own hands, but I’m honestly giving it thought at the moment. Someone’s targeting my wife, someone wants her dead.

The Resistance had been the likeliest suspect. Serenity herself warned me that they had eyes everywhere. But Serenity’s attacker never fully broke under interrogation, which in and of itself means that she wasn’t just some crazed vigilante. What she did say was that someone paid her off. That’s not how the Resistance does their dirty work.

But if not them, then who?

I sit outside Serenity’s Sleeper, my elbows braced on my thighs and my hands shoved through my hair. I’ve taken to coming here between my meetings. This time, the doctor joins me.

“You had some information for me?” I say to Dr. Goldstein, staring at the Sleeper as it hums away.