We stop at the doors and wait for the guards to open them. “It’ll take an hour,” he says, “and then we’ll leave.”

The doors swing open. The moment the room comes into view, the guests fall silent even as they rise to their feet. I wonder what they see when they look at me and the king. Their nightmares swathed in silk and crowned in gold? Or are we more benign in their eyes than that? I know what I see. This place is the bastion of extravagance and corruption.

“May I now present you with Your Majesties the King and Queen Montes Lazuli, Sovereigns of the East and the West.”

Applause erupts and amidst the noise I hear shouts of “Long live the king! Long live the queen!”

Montes leads me down the stairs. As I pass by our guests, they bow.

The whole thing is more than a little unnerving.

The ballroom is now an expansive dining room. Everything that’s not gilded at least gleams. The clothing, the jewels, the candlelight, even the guests’ eyes and smiles.

There’s a table at the far end of the room and at its center are two empty seats. I just need to make it there and then converse with people I despise.

It’s times like these that I’m almost positive I somehow already died and this is my hell.

When we get to our designated table, the king pulls out my seat, just as he always insists on doing. I sit—and just about scream when I realize who is across from me.

I have died. This is hell.

“Congratulations, Your Majesty,” the Beast of the East says.

I don’t see him; I see a string of broken women.

This monster is going to die before the dinner is over.

I glare at the Beast—Alexei is far too innocent a name for this thing—until he looks away. Even that’s not good enough. I begin tracing the serrated edge of my steak knife with my finger.

I don’t care at this point that nearly a dozen cameras are capturing every second of this dinner. I’ll kill this monster where he sits, and then I will stand on his corpse and laugh.

Not five minutes after we’ve taken our seats, the waiters begin bringing out dinner. The sight and smell of all that red meat …

I think of the grenades tossed at Estes’s estate. The smell of charred humans that drifted in the air. The sight of those bodies ripped open, their innards exposed.

My nausea is climbing up my throat. I press the back of my hand to my mouth. I thought morning sickness behaved its damn self and stuck to mornings.

“Are you alright?” the Beast asks.

I ignore him while Montes drapes his arm over the back of my chair and rubs my neck. He leans in. “Do you want me to send back the food?” he asks quietly, reading my reaction.

I look over at him. Is he seriously considering wasting every single plate of food all because of me? It’s horrifying, this power I wield, this power the king seems happy to bestow upon me.

I rear back as I assess him.

The psycho is serious.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Very well.” Montes still flags down a waiter and discusses something with him. The waiter’s eyes focus on the Beast as he listens. Finally, he nods to Montes and leaves. A short while later a bowl of soup and a basket of bread are set in front of me.

I glance over at the king. He goes on talking to the men on his left, but the hand still resting on my neck gives a light squeeze.

He ordered me soup so I wouldn’t have to eat the meat. It’s just one more considerate thing the king’s done on my behalf.

I break the bread and dip it into the soup. This I can palate.

I’m halfway through it when the king’s lips brush against my ear. “Better?” he asks.

I turn into him, my lips brushing his. “Much.”

This might be the first time I’ve been genuinely affectionate with the king in public.

“Good,” he says, his voice roughening.

Someone begins clinking a knife against their glass.

When Montes smiles, I feel it low in my belly.

“Do you remember what that means?” he asks.

I do. They want us to kiss.

I lean in the remaining distance and press my lips against his. I can feel his surprise in the way he returns the kiss and the slow smile that gets incorporated into it. Our audience begins to clap, and though my skin prickles uncomfortably from the attention, I don’t pull away until the kiss is done.

We break apart slowly. Montes is gazing at me, his brows slightly pinched, his mouth curved with amusement. He leans in and steals another brief kiss. Then he lounges back in his chair and reaches for his wine glass. Lifting it, he surveys the room, but it’s me he looks at when he takes a lazy sip from it.

I grab my glass of water with a shaky hand. Either it’s all the eyes on us, or my own actions, but I’m not nearly as composed as the king.

“How does it feel to be the queen regent?” the Beast asks, drawing my attention to him. He cuts into his steak as he speaks. Blood seeps out of the nearly raw interior.

My eyes drift from his plate to my own. I take a sip of my soup and pretend he doesn’t exist.

Only he won’t let me.

“I mean,” he continues, “technically you were queen since you married our king, but today he handed over part of his empire to you.” He shakes his head. “I never thought I’d see the day he shared his power with anyone. You must be something.” His knife scrapes against the porcelain as he cuts into the meat again.

I can’t take it anymore. The smell of the meat, the sight of this abomination, the stifling civility of these people. We’re all barbarians here, and we know it.

I’m done pretending.

I lean forward. Somewhere along the way, I released the soup spoon and exchanged it for something a little sharper. I’m now gripping the steak knife in my hand and not wholly sure how it got there.

“I’m going to tell you this just once,” I say. “If you so much as look at me wrong, I will castrate you with the nearest object.” My voice is low and angry. “Then I will throw you into the worst prison I can think of. One of the ones where they’ll have fun with you—and I’ll make sure they do. And if I ever catch wind that you’ve raped”—I hear a gasp from one of our nearest guests, and feel Montes’s eyes immediately on me—“anyone else, I will do all that and worse.”

Other than looking a little pale, the Beast appears unruffled. Either he’s schooling his features well, or he can’t bother to be intimidated by me. It’s probably some mixture of both.