I hold the lighter over him. “Just how fast do you think you’ll go up in flame?”

The cocky man who entered his office is gone. Alexei keeps swallowing, and I think he’s desperately trying to hold back vomit.

“There’s alcohol on you,” he says. “If you drop that on me, I’ll make sure you catch fire as well.”

I flash him an indulgent smile. “You think I’m scared of death? Goldstein’s been informing you on my health. You know how advanced my cancer is,” I say. “The king can’t stop it. I might be squandering … oh, a few months if you do manage to kill me. But you know just as well as I do that with cancer, the final months are the worst.

“You, on the other hand,” I continue conversationally, “probably have decades left.” My gaze moves back to the flame. “I’ve heard death by fire is the worst way to go.”

I let him see my eyes. My empty, empty eyes. I am the result of a life of loss. This is what happens when you live through every fear you’ve ever owned.

“Please,” he says.

“Please what?”

“I don’t want to die.”

I stare down at him. My hand is practically shaking from the need to drop the lighter on his body and see him go up in flame. Vengeance is whispering in my ear, and it’s such a seductive lover.

“Who else?” I ask.

He’s looking at me with confusion.

“Who else is in on it?” I doubt his word is any good, but every once in a while someone squeals who’s actually telling the truth the first time around.

He opens his mouth, but before he has a chance to talk, we both hear footfalls approaching the door.

“This could end very badly for you depending on who enters,” I say.

Several seconds later the door bursts open. I shouldn’t be surprised when I see Montes, but I am. Sometimes I forget just how resourceful my husband is. And this time, he’s come alone.

His eyes take in the scene. He’s seen me kill, but this is the first time he’s ever seen me truly cruel.

“Do it,” he says.

My eyes move back to Alexei. He knows he’s a dead man.

“I’ll tell you everything, just please don’t kill me.”

And then he begins to list off names.

CHAPTER 30

Serenity

IT’S WORSE THAN we imagined.

The Beast and the royal physician aren’t the only traitors amongst us. There’s a whole ring of them, and most Montes meets with on a daily basis.

His advisors betrayed him.

He’d been right all along to begin that witch hunt amongst his councilors. At the time I’d been horrified at the thought of him killing one of them. I’d even saved one from death, an advisor whose guilt the Beast admitted to several hours ago.

I saved the man who helped plot my assassination. Who facilitated the death of my child.

I have to work to keep my features expressionless.

The advisors trickle in, all but Alexei. The king’s newest advisor will never again take his seat, or walk, or eat, or conspire.

He’s now nothing more than a lump of cooling flesh, and my only regret is that he didn’t die slow enough. Those women he raped and tortured, they deserved better justice than I gave them.

I pick out a bit of glass from underneath a fingernail. My eyes flick to the king’s remaining advisors. These fuckers, however, we haven’t dealt with. They sit down in their expensive suits and chat idly as they wait for the king.

Next to me, Montes lounges in his chair, watching them all, a small smile on his face. He’s utterly still—no bouncing legs, no drumming fingers. Whatever fuels my husband, he doesn’t waste it on tells. Not even that vein in his temple throbs at the moment.

Suddenly, Montes’s chair screeches as he slides it back. He stands, bracing his hands against the table.

The room falls silent.

“For the longest time I believed the Resistance was behind the attacks on Serenity’s life,” he begins. “But a king has many enemies.” His gaze moves over his advisors, and the men eye one another uneasily.

The door to the conference room opens, and the king’s soldiers storm inside. They head up either side of the conference table, boxing the advisors in.

It’s a nice show of force; the soldiers even have their guns out.

“Half of you have committed high treason. Traitors do not get the benefit of a fair trial. I am your judge, jury, and executioner.”

I glance over at Montes.

Executioner?

I’m about to stand when the officers aim their guns. It all happens so quickly. I only have a second to take in everyone’s shock before half a dozen guns go off at the same time.

I jerk back at the deafening sound. Blood sprays across the room and mists in the air.

Foreheads and eyes are missing from a handful of the world’s evilest men. The smell of meat and gun smoke fills the room as their bodies slump over. The rest of the councilors stare at their dead comrades with horror.

I draw in one shallow breath, then another.

Slowly I turn my head to Montes. He meets my gaze, and I see rather than hear him say, “I did what I had to do to keep you safe.” And then he leads me out of the room.

He’s holding my upper arm, and I realize it’s because I’m weaving. I’m so goddamn tired.

I shrug his hand off me and walk ahead of him.

He grabs my arm again. “I did that for you—and for our … child.” He can barely even say it, now that it’s gone. For once we actually created someone rather than destroyed them. In a sea of old experiences, this is a new, intimate one, and it binds us together in a way that nothing else can.

“I’m not mad,” I say, weary. “I wanted them to die. Horribly.” That’s the problem. “I don’t want to be that ruler, Montes. I don’t want to be what you’ve become.”

NOT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS later we get wind that the rest of Montes’s advisors—as well as several of his staff, including Dr. Goldstein—have fled the king’s palace. The next day, the king’s intel alert us to their whereabouts.

South America.

The land of Luca Estes and now over a dozen more traitors.

The king’s council has dissolved. I’ll never have to attend another ridiculous dinner party with his men because they’re either dead, or they’ve absconded to the wilds of the West.