I never imagined sending you in—it was always going to be Marco—but then you made a deal with the representatives and I couldn’t undo the situation—short of calling the whole thing off. Much as I wanted to do that, I had faith in you.”

My throat works. There aren’t any words that can convey everything I feel, so I wrap my hand around my monster’s neck and kiss him instead.

He believed in me enough to put both our lives on the line. Enough to ignore his controlling nature and his obsessive need to shelter me. I can think of no greater show of love from this man.

Once I’m patched up, the king and I gather at the city’s central square, the same place I stood at only weeks ago. Like then, cameras hone in on me. A microphone rests in front of us.

I know I am a sight—bloodied, dirty, tired. The king, for all his unearthliness, looks little better.

My eyes move over the city.

Much of it lays in ruins, the buildings smoldering, the wall encircling it little more than rubble.

I wish I could say that everyone who stared back at me was happy, that this felt like some great milestone for them, but the truth is that this city was home to many people, and now there’s nothing but destruction here.

There are many people beyond this city who won’t be pleased, and there will be many more who won’t know how to react.

But then there are the multitudes that will be freed from work camps and multitudes more living on the edge of survival who will now begin to receive aid. The neglected cities of the West might finally, finally know peace.

But beyond that, there is one thing that can bridge everyone that lives in this time.

I lean into the microphone. “Citizens of the world: the war is over.”

Chapter 58

Serenity

My gunshot wound takes an agonizing month to heal. It’s the first serious injury since I met the king that’s healed without the aid of the Sleeper.

I insisted on it. He acquiesced.

I think we’re finally getting somewhere.

He kisses it now, his lips running over the scar, his hands sliding up my sides.

The scar that cuts down my face I’d always thought of as a permanent tear for the lives this war took. I wear this latest one with pride, because it marks the day it ended. For good.

Even as the king and I sit out here in the sand yards away from one of his island homes, the surf crashing close to our toes, my mind is pulled to the future.

We only get one more day before we head off to the Western hemisphere and begin the toiling task of rebuilding this broken world.

I’m starting with medical relief and efforts to clean any remaining radiation from the earth and groundwater, the very things that a long time ago the king tried to deny my people. Then will come subsistence, much of it government-subsidized.

Montes is not too thrilled about this last one, but I still sleep with my gun, and he’s a smart enough man.

True infrastructure will eventually be put back in place. Continents, regions, cities—they all need local leadership. The end of the war marks the beginning of the arduous task of rebuilding the governments the world lost long ago.

The king smooths my brow, tiny granules of sand sprinkling down my forehead and nose as he does so.

“I can tell you’re going to be a bigger workaholic than I am,” he says.

His face is cast in shades of blue from the moon above. I cup it, letting my thumb stroke the rough skin of his cheek.

Montes’s gaze turns heated. “Say it.”

The heart is such a vulnerable thing. Encased beneath skin and muscle and bone, you think it wouldn’t be. But it is. Even ours.

I still have to grapple with the words; I drag them out kicking and screaming.

“I love you,” I say.

Montes closes his eyes.

“Again,” he says.

I’m not sure how many times he’s heard these words in his lifetime. I imagine whatever the number, it’s far smaller than the amount he needed to hear them.

We have plenty of time to rectify that.

“I love you,” I say.

Plenty of time, but not forever.

I won’t take the king’s pills, and I’ve asked him stop taking them as well. I don’t know if he has, but I haven’t seen the pill bottles around.

People aren’t meant to live as long as us. And people aren’t meant to experience the horrors we have.

Bloodshed, death, hate—I used to wake every morning to this. It’s actually quite odd not to. Perhaps that’s why I’ve thrown myself into my work, so that I don’t forget.

High overhead I catch a glimpse of the stars.

I’d always imagined the dead resided in the heavens, and here and now I feel both closer and farther from them than ever before.

My eyes search the night sky, looking for one constellation in particular. I smile when I find it.

The Pleiades, the wishing stars. I hear an echo of my mother’s voice even now, pointing them out to me.

The king rolls onto his side, placing a hand on my abdomen. He follows my gaze up to the star cluster.

“Have you ever heard the story of the lost Pleiad?” Montes’s fingers are gathering the material of my shirt, lifting it as he talks.

I narrow my gaze on him. “If you’re about to lie to me …”

Montes has developed a bad habit of teasing me. Apparently I’m gullible. Considering, however, I’m also violent, he never takes it too far.

He laughs. “Nire bihotza, I’m not. This is true. Apparently there are seven stars—Seven Sisters—but you can only see six of them in the night sky. The seventh is ‘lost’.”