Estes is already in the conference room when we enter, along with a handful of other faces I recognize from my time spent as an emissary. Several of them my father communicated with directly or indirectly. Back then they’d worked for the WUN—when they weren’t challenging and usurping each other’s territories. Now, only months after the war ended, they’re here fawning over the king.

For once I would like to meet with leaders who weren’t completely unfit for the job.

They eye me as I enter the room. Like Estes, they’re trying to figure out whether knowing me benefits them or not.

I decide to help them out.

I stop at the table and take them in. “Corruption looks good on you all.”

I render the room speechless—for a moment. Then, all at once, half a dozen people are speaking in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

Ah, southern WUN. They were always very vocal when they disagreed. It’s nice to see they’re consistent about at least something.

Montes cuts through the noise. “We’re not here to talk about prior alliances. The war has ended. South America now needs some stability; let’s focus our attentions on that.”

Only the king has the balls to make me look like a bad guy and him the martyr.

I take a seat at the table, hyperaware of the tension I’ve stirred up.

Their anger revitalizes me. People are easier to read when they take their masks off.

The chair next to me scrapes back, and the king sits heavily down. He picks up the papers his aides have set in front of his seat and spends a good minute flipping through them while everyone else waits.

Finally he sets them back down. “Thank you all for being here. I figure we might as well just dive right in: what are the main issues standing in the way of a unified South America?”

And thus begins the first hour of meetings.

“YOU HAVE MANAGED, yet again, to get an entire room of people to hate you in record time,” the king says as he closes our front door behind us. We’re back from the conference after four nearly unbearable hours. The only people the South American representatives hate worse than me are each other. Everyone wants a piece of the pie that Montes is giving to Estes.

That was the main theme of the meetings—who was going to get what. The only time anyone brought up the region’s general health and welfare was when they wanted to use it as a talking point for why they deserved something or why someone else didn’t.

I almost pistol-whipped the lot of them.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I have to see them again this evening at another one of those needless dinner parties.

I pass through the foyer, kicking off my shoes. This damn dress is a cage. It’s too tight around my stomach and thighs, and if someone attacked, I couldn’t run in it. I need it off.

“It’s probably the first genuine emotion they’ve displayed since we arrived,” I say, groping for my zipper.

Montes comes up behind me and drags the zipper down. Material peels away from my skin, and now those hands of his are coaxing the rest of the fabric off me.

“Perhaps if they weren’t turncoats,” I continue, “I’d be a little nicer—”

Montes pushes me up against the wall. He captures my hands in his own, “You know what I think upsets you?” he asks, his nose skimming my jaw as he breathes me in. “I think you see yourself in them, and you hate it.” He pitches his voice low, and it drips with all sorts of dark intentions.

They and I are nothing alike. But Montes’s words dig under my skin. Am I not for all outer appearances a traitor just like them? Perhaps, like me, they were cornered into this. And perhaps, like me, they too have lost themselves somewhere along the way.

The king captures my lips, his hand sliding up my thigh. I feel the remnants of my lipstick smear as our mouths move against each other.

He doesn’t bother undressing. He simply unbuckles his belt, unzips his pants, and pushes aside my lingerie.

With one hard thrust, he’s inside of me.

I gasp at the sensation. It’s just on this side of pain, and that’s when I love sex best. I could never indulge in something wholly sweet with the king. Not without at least a little grappling.

He lets my wrists go to grip my hips, kissing my neck as he does so. I feel his hot breath fan down the column of my throat. His pace increases, and each rock of his hips causes my back to pound against the wall.

I cradle him in my arms and arch my neck back. What I can’t possibly understand is why anyone wastes time with war when they could be doing this instead.

Montes pulls us away from the wall. We don’t break apart as he carries me to our room. We fall in a tangle of limbs on the mattress. The pins holding my hair in place are coming loose, and as I tug on the king’s dark locks, his fancy gel disintegrates beneath my fingertips. Civilization is giving way to our primal savagery.

He thrusts into me, and dear God, I’m willing to admit that right about now, I love the king. It’s fucked up, and if ever there was proof of my twisted nature, this would be it.

I don’t give a damn.

I slide my feet along the back of the king’s legs.

“Tell me you love me,” the king says next to my ear.

His thoughts are clearly moving in the same direction as mine.

I grip his hair tighter and tilt his ear to my mouth. “No.”

He moves harder against me, the friction causing a moan to slip out. I’m far beyond caring that the king’s torn down most of my walls and my modesty along with them.

“Say it,” he breathes.

I don’t.

As a result, he stops.

We’re both panting like animals, and when he stares down at me, I see sweat beaded along his brow.

“Say it,” he repeats.

Staring at him, our bodies joined and our limbs entangled, I almost do.

He moves against me, just a little. Enough to remind me that he controls the strings.

I shake my head. “I’m not giving that to you.”

He flashes me his wickedest grin. “Has my queen forgotten who she’s married?” he whispers, his nose dipping down to nuzzle my hair.

He cups a breast through the fabric of my dress. “I’ll get you to say those words just as I have everything else.”

I’m too far gone to give into his witty rapport. “Just shut up and fuck me.”

And he does, but not before he says his final piece. “I will, Serenity. And when I do, you’ll mean them, too.”