I may have decided I can’t kill Montes, and I may have decided to help fix all those things the king and his war have broken, but I’m not ready to be civil with him. Not yet.

He just stares at me for a long time, not saying anything. His face has already begun to swell, and that leaves me cold.

Fuck love.

I turn on my heel and head back to the desk I was working at. I’ve been jotting down notes on what I must learn to help the people I now live amongst.

I hear the sound of his footfalls behind me.

“Are you here to torment me?” I say over my shoulder.

“How did you know?” he says. “That’s precisely what I had in mind.”

“You haven’t lost your silver tongue,” I note.

“Serenity.”

I glance up from my writing, and my gaze meets the king’s. Had I noticed how tormented his eyes were? How weary they appeared? But even as I watch, that weariness dissipates. In its place I see a familiar spark in them.

“What you have done is unforgivable,” I say.

He moves leisurely towards me, every step deliberate. It feels like the whole world extends outward from him, like the very universe shaped itself around this man. The king’s always been larger than life, but now, if anything, he seems grander and more unnatural than he ever was.

He shakes his head. “No, Serenity. When it comes to us, nothing is beyond forgiveness.”

I feel my nostrils flare. “You think this is still a game. The world, your power, my life.”

He shakes his head again. “No.” He keeps those tormented eyes of his trained on me. “I really don’t.” His voice carries weight. His years, I decide, are sometimes worn in his words.

“Are you planning on putting me back in there?” After the words leave my lips, I swear I don’t breathe. It matters very much how he answers this.

Montes steps in close. “No,” he says, searching my face.

I shouldn’t believe him, he’s deceptive to his core, but I feel the truth of his words.

He reaches up, as if to touch my face.

“Don’t, Montes, unless you want to lose that hand.”

His entire face comes alive at my words. “You haven’t changed at all.” He says this wondrously.

He always did like the broken things inside me.

His hand is still poised.

“Don’t,” I repeat, raising my eyebrows to emphasize my point.

“Can’t I touch my wife?”

He said those words once before, and this time around they level my heart. Even after all these years, he remembers them.

“What are you doing, Montes?” I ask.

Is it not enough for him to destroy my life?

“Winning you back,” he says.

And then, despite all my warnings, he lays his hand against my cheek.

The King

She slaps my hand away. “I am not some prize to be won.”

God, her anger. It makes the blood roar through my veins.

I am alive. Alive in a way I haven’t been in decades.

To think I lived without this for so long. Unfathomable.

I see hate burning in her eyes. Time has distorted most of my memories of her, but I’m almost positive I’ve never seen this particular brand of it. This fierce thing I’ve bound to my side is dying from the inside out.

That I can’t take.

I don’t give her time to protest before I place both hands on either side of her face.

Now that this fateful day has come, and I have to deal with the fallout of my choices, I find I’m eager for it. Desperate, even.

Serenity tries to pull away, but I won’t release her.

I shake my head. “Fight all you want, my queen, you’re not going to escape me.”

“Fuck you, Montes. Let me go.”

She’s about to get violent. Even if I hadn’t remembered other interactions that spiraled out of control like this, I would be able to sense it.

This terrible angel of mine. I welcome her vengeance.

I squeeze her face, just enough to get her attention. “Serenity, listen—”

She renews her struggles against me. “No,” she says. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear about your suffering.”

I nod. “I know,” I say quietly. “But you will.”

I can tell that this pisses her off, but when I fail to let her go, she stops fighting against me. I think, deep down, she wants to hear me out.

“There is nothing—nothing—I have ever treasured more than you. I let myself forget.” I can feel my eyes begin to water, and any other time—any other time—I would fight back the reaction. But I won’t with Serenity. Let her see her frightening king strip away his barriers for her.

“But you need to know that no one ever made me happy the way you did, and no one ever made me feel the burdens of my war the way losing you did.”

Humans should not be able to feel what I have for this woman. Flesh isn’t strong enough to house this much sadness. If I wasn’t so afraid of death and the reckoning that waits for me on the other side, I’d have exited this world long ago.

She’s blinking rapidly. Despite the firm set of her jaw, my bloodthirsty wife is just about as exposed as I’ve ever seen her.

Breathing quickly through her nose, she wraps her hands around my wrists and removes mine from her face.

“I listened,” she says, “but now you need to listen to me: you never gave me a choice in any of this.