This time, like the last, there is someone here to catch me. Several someones. I land hard in their arms. I grip their starched uniforms as I try to right myself.

Brushing my hair from my eyes, I glance up. More soldiers peer from the room I exited. Distantly I can hear shouting, and people are running towards me.

A half dozen hands hold me in place; more join in as I struggle.

I bite my lip hard enough for it to bleed. The odds are now stacked far against me. I’m not getting out of whatever twisted plan the king has in store. There isn’t a car waiting, nor are there Resistance fighters to protect me.

The normally stoic soldiers are yelling, trying to contain my struggles. Eventually they do, leaving me gasping out of anger and incredulity.

Servants are watching, the ladies of the court are watching, the men who might be politicians or just more elite individuals are watching. I have captured all their attention. And they look horrified. The queen who jumped three stories only to fall into the arms of her husband’s waiting army.

I have a clear line of sight to the palace’s rear doors. It only takes a minute for them to open and the king to come storming out.

This man who I have come to know intimately looks larger than life as he strides towards me, a doctor in a white lab coat at his heels.

He’s really going to do it.

I renew my struggles. A handful of wild, animalistic cries slip from my lips as I vainly try to get away. The entire time my eyes stay locked on the king’s.

His rove over my body. I can only imagine what he must see—the tangled locks of my hair, the whites of my eyes, the angry set of my jaw.

I grit my teeth as he steps up to me. This is it.

“What were you thinking, Serenity?” The vein at his temple pounds, and God does he sound angry. Angry and desperate.

“Montes, don’t. Please.” I have desperation in my voice to match the king’s.

He tips my chin up. “I love you, Serenity. I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m doing it to save you.”

After all this time, he still doesn’t understand. “This was never about me,” I say as he steps back so the man in the lab coat can get closer. “You’re not saving me, you’re saving your own chicken-shit heart—”

The man in the lab coat presses a damp cloth against my nose and mouth, and a sweet, chemical smell wafts from it. I buck against my captors and try to shake the hand. It grips my face harder.

I know whatever they’ve doused the material with is a sedative. As soon as I lose consciousness, I don’t know when—or if—I’ll wake up.

I try to hold my breath, but it’s a lost cause. I last for maybe a minute and a half before I’m forced to breathe in a deep lungful. I breathe in another. And another.

The soldiers are lowering me to the ground, and someone’s brushing my hair back. I follow that arm to its owner. My husband truly appears upset.

Is there no room for my own suffering in that heart of his?

The drug’s beginning to affect me. My focus drifts, and when I move, the colors of my surroundings blur for a second too long. But I haven’t passed out yet.

A surge of anger has me redoubling my efforts against the hands that hold me down, but I’m too weak and too outnumbered to make much headway.

Still, I don’t stop fighting.

“Serenity,” Montes says, continuing to pet my hair. “I would never hurt you. It’s going to be okay.”

Those five lying words. I’ve said them to soldiers as their lifeblood drained from their veins and their souls slipped from their eyes. It’s a statement you say to someone who’s lost hope, a lie you voice to make yourself feel better. But the person who is forced to hear it? They alone know the truth.

Sometimes, there is no hope to be had.

An angry tear trickles out. I can’t tell if my rage comes from this strange betrayal or from what will happen to me once I’m unaware.

Montes’s eyes focus on the tear, and the bastard strokes it away with his thumb. “Don’t cry, nire bihotza,” he says, his voice hoarse—as though this is tough for him. It makes me want to scream.

He has absolutely no idea what pain and loss feel like. The narcissist in me hopes that the king cares for me enough to regret this mistake for a very long time.

But I’m not counting on it.

“This isn’t forever,” the king says.

My eyes try to focus on him, but the sharpness of my reality is slipping away. I don’t know how much time has passed—minutes maybe—but I can tell the drug is working. Darkness is licking the edges of my vision.

The last thing I see is the king’s face, and the last thing I hear is his voice. He leans over me, and I feel a hand stroke my face. “We’ll only be apart for a short while. Once we cure your sickness, you’ll be mine again.”

EPILOGUE

The King

1 week later

I TELL THE world she’s dead.

My enemies don’t believe me, but it doesn’t matter. She’s locked away in the Sleeper far below the surface of the earth, the machine healing her advanced sickness one malignant tumor at a time.

My fierce, violent queen.

I ache for her. This is different from the other times she’d been hospitalized. Now I know she’s not coming out until we cure her cancer. That could be years, decades even. That entire time I have to endure it with one side of my bed cold. I have to carry this nation solely on my shoulders after catching a glimpse of what it would be like to have a true partnership with the woman I love.

I gaze into the window of the Sleeper and press my hand against the glass. She looks too serene. I’m used to my queen’s frowns, her glares, her narrowed eyes. The way she studies things with cool detachment, the way those old soul eyes of hers assess the world.

This woman does not look like my wife.

I don’t think I can bear staring at her face much longer. It’s cruel to want something and know you can’t have it.

Serenity believed that I never felt the wounds of my war. That I was above it. If only she knew how goddamn bad my heart hurts. Sometimes I can’t catch my breath under the weight of all this grief. I lost my closest advisors, my oldest friend, my child, and the love of my very long life all within months of one another.

The world doesn’t realize just how fragile their immortal king is at the moment.

But my enemies do. Of course they do.

6 months later