His vein throbs.

Hit the nail right on the head with that one.

“Where is she now?” I ask.

The king’s face closes down.

Dead.

I can read that much off of him. For however long she lived, she no longer does.

Goosebumps break out along my skin. It’s equally disturbing to think that my clone both lived and died while I slept. And for all the king’s unnatural technology, he wasn’t able to save her.

“What did you do to her?” I say.

This psycho.

He grimaces. “I didn’t do anything to her, Serenity. Or can you not tell that from the photos?”

I close my eyes because I can’t bear to gaze into his dark, anguished ones. I don’t want to know if he loved her. Not on top of all the deception and pain he’s given me.

“Why not just wake me up?” I ask. My heart is primed for breaking. I really know nothing but destructive love. So he can tell me whatever pretty words he thinks are going to soothe me, but I doubt there will be any to make this better.

He gives my neck a light squeeze. “Nire bihotza, look at me.”

I open my eyes, not because I’m interested in following his demands, but because I’ve never hid from unpleasant truths, and I don’t plan on starting now.

“Haven’t we already established that I was a fool to not wake you up?”

“We can always establish that more,” I say.

Montes cracks a smile, but it quickly disappears. “There was a while where I felt like I’d gone insane from loneliness. The Sleeper was still repairing your body at the time, though I will admit that by then I was afraid of seeing you again. But I was even more afraid of the possibility that you would never get out of the Sleeper, never be healed. So I cloned the two people I missed most.”

“You depraved son of a bitch.”

Montes played God, deciding who got to live and who didn’t.

He frowns, his features hardening at my words, but he doesn’t try to defend himself further.

“What happened to her?” I ask.

It’s taking a lot not to lash out like a wild animal. My basest nature wants to. But at this point, throwing a fit like a child won’t change the past.

I take a deep breath.

“She was killed,” Montes says releasing me reluctantly.

“How?”

“She was captured much the same way you were. The West was planning on using her as their puppet.

“She was not like you—not at all.” He says this last part quietly.

“We recaptured her.” He looks away and rubs his eyes. “But the plane was shot down.”

There’s real emotion there. Real anguish.

He takes a deep breath. “They thought I’d cloned her to end the war.” Montes shakes his head. “It’s a good theory, but I had the real thing the entire time.”

I search his face. “You cared for her.” Just saying those words is a bullet to the gut.

His expression doesn’t alter, but it does intensify. “I couldn’t stand looking at her.”

He reaches out and tries to touch my cheek. I step away before he can. His fingers curl into a fist.

“There was only ever one of you,” he says. “I didn’t want anything else—not in any sense. Once I realized that, I stayed as far away from her as I could. She suffered because of it. But I tried to care for her.”

Some bitter combo of disgust and relief flow through me. I find I don’t want to be replaceable, and it’s a dagger through the heart to know that he must’ve created her with that in mind. And then there’s the unbidden pain that comes when I think of this woman he created after me, created and then abandoned. All she got for it was death.

He must see me withdrawing because he seems desperate to close the space between us.

I back up, shaking my head. “You ruin everything, Montes. Everything.”

I turn my back to him and walk away.

I can’t be sure, but I swear I hear him whisper, “That’s all I know how to do.”

Chapter 28

Serenity

London’s gone, as is Paris, Cairo, Delhi, Beijing. On and on the list goes.

Today, in the hours before we leave, they show me the footage of it. What little there is left.

I stand in the middle of the Great Room, dozens of men and women as my witness. They didn’t need to be here; it’s all old news to them. But I think they want to remember, or to try to see it all with new eyes.

I watch the bomb that rips apart the Eiffel Tower. The steel beams that had held for over two centuries now buckle and collapse.

The footage cuts away, only to be replaced by the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. Or at least, it was.

I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see man’s greatest achievements blown away in an instant because someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to destroy the world.

I force my feet to stay rooted to the floor. I owe it to both the people of the East and the West to watch.

“Do you see that glint?” One of the officers has a laser pointer that he aims around a section of the frame taken up by sky.

The bright concentrated section of light flashes in the middle of it. The camera catches similar flare-ups of light glimmering along the windows of the Burj Khalifa. But this one … This one has no business being in the middle of open sky.

“This was one of the first instances where the West used retroreflective material to camouflage their weaponry,” the officer says.