“Can’t I though?” I say, peering up at him. “You bleed the same as every other man.”

He slides a leg between mine. “This isn’t about my immortality. It never was. See,” he tips my chin up, “I don’t think you would kill me. I think you like me too much.”

“Ask me that again when I’m armed, Montes.”

“That won’t change anything, lonely girl.” He rubs my lower lip with his thumb. I swat his hand away, and he smiles.

“I’m all you have left,” he says. “Your family is gone. The last of your people gave you up.”

My hand strikes him before I even think twice about it. The slap snaps his head to the side. Already I can see the beginnings of my handprint forming.

It’s not enough.

“You are the reason my family is gone,” I say. “You are the reason I’m here. You forced everyone’s hand and I will never, ever let you forget it.”

He rubs his jaw and his cheek. “And you think that bothers me?”

His mouth lies, but his eyes don’t. I’m starting to think that some of the things he’s done do in fact weigh on his conscience.

The king leans in close. “If you wanted to scare me off, you went about it the wrong way.” His breath brushes against my cheek and chin. “I love your anger and your hate, and I have many regrets, but marrying you is not one of them.”

I’m glaring at him. I try to move, but his body pins mine to the wall. His lips skim my jaw, heading for my mouth. I turn my head away from him.

He places a kiss at the corner of my lips. “And if you think your reluctance will stop me, then you’ve read me wrong.”

I have read him wrong, but not in the way he thinks. My mind needs him to be wholly evil, and he’s not, and my spirit does not have the iron will that it should to keep him at bay. Even now, I react to his nearness. I want more of him, and that shames me. It is one thing to enjoy the mechanics of sex, another to enjoy this—our power plays, our magnetism.

He steps away. “I have something for you.”

I straighten. “I don’t want anything from you, Montes.”

“Not true. You want many things from me; my body, my power—”

“Your head.”

“Between your thighs,” he finishes.

A flush crawls up my neck. It would help not to get embarrassed about this.

“On a stake,” I amend.

He clucks his tongue. “I thought you said you didn’t want anything from me.”

I’m at a momentary loss for words, and that’s precisely when he strikes. He takes my hand and drags me out of the room.

I would fight him, but a million different memories crowd my mind. I haven’t had time to process the multitude of them, but now I do.

The hours leading up to my memory loss, the Resistance attacked the king’s coastal palace. We’d been cornered, I’d been close to escape, but I never made it out. Marco, the king’s right-hand man and my nemesis, and I had been left to face the enemies with the last of the king’s soldiers.

With my free hand I rub the skin over my heart. That’s when I lost my memory. The king hadn’t administered the serum, Marco had—right before he blew his brains out.

I suddenly have context to attach to all the memories I acquired from that point on. The Resistance took me to one of their outposts, held me as they would any important prisoner of war, and tried to leverage me to their advantage.

General Kline … he’d been a part of it. Now knowing what I do, I can’t decide how to feel about seeing him. He was my commander, and had my life not unfolded the way it had, he might’ve one day been my father-in-law. I respected him, and I was close to him. That makes the role he played during my capture that much worse. And yet, I’m not without blame either. I did something to his son, and he still managed to be civil with me.

Then there was that final day of my imprisonment. Had the king not firebombed the outpost, I would’ve died.

“How did you find me?” I ask Montes as he walks us down the hall. The guards posted along the corridor eye me warily as we pass. I have a reputation among their ranks. I remember slaughtering them after my father died.

Montes doesn’t turn around when he replies, “The Resistance isn’t the only one with spies.”

“You bombed the place,” I accuse.

All those bodies, all that carnage …

“And?”

“Were you trying to save me or kill me?” It’s real rich of me to be critiquing his efforts right after I admitted I wanted to execute him.

But I never pretended to be a saint.

Montes stops and swivels to face me. “You were five floors belowground, and when my contact came to retrieve you, you put a bullet in his thigh. By the time my back up came to free you, you were gone.

“Death, Serenity, is the last thing I want from you.”

Montes resumes walking, tugging me after him. He leads me to an office much grander than anything I ever saw in the bunker.

I enter the cavernous room. There’s a wall of books to my left and a giant oak desk towards the back of it.

“Why did you take me here?” I ask, stepping away from him.

Now that I’ve got my memories back, the last thing I want to do is continue to tour the king’s palace. Once you’ve seen one palace, you’ve seen them all.

Montes saunters in after me. “You’ll figure it out for yourself soon enough.”