I grip the stem of my glass tightly and force myself to muse on his question. The man across from me is not a soldier. He has no true concept of torture and humiliation. But he is my husband, and he is the megalomaniac that has bent the world to his will.

I grab my glass and drink. With him, violence begets violence.

I tilt my head back and look at the stars that I can barely see through the domed ceiling above. I want to say I watch them because they are beautiful, but I can’t lie to myself about this. I’m avoiding the king’s reaction to what I’m about to ask.

I pull myself together. I’m not a wimp, and if I have the courage to ask the question, then I should also have the courage to face the king as I do so.

Leveling my gaze on him, I ask, “What do you feel for me?”

Surprise flickers through his features before he collects himself. Once he does, I wish I could draw the words back into my mouth.

Montes gives me a slow, smoldering smile, one that I feel low in my belly. He lifts his glass and takes a drink.

Neither of us has touched our food yet, and at that the moment, hunger is the furthest thing from my mind.

He sets his glass down, his gaze dropping to the base of my throat. “How old were you when you lost her?” He nods to my mother’s necklace.

I wrap my hand around it, and already I’m shaking my head. No, he doesn’t get to know about her. His war killed her, along with a million other mothers. She’s beyond his reach now, and I won’t give him what’s left of her.

The wine I swallow down barely makes it past the lump in my throat.

It’s my turn, and all the words I can think of have turned bitter on my tongue. “Tell me, what is the price of my life, Montes?”

Montes has been swirling his glass, but now he stops. “What are you really asking?”

“That,” I say. “I’m asking that. What is the price of my life?”

I’m setting myself up for failure, and I want him to fail me. I want him to disappoint me with his answer because I don’t hate him with all my heart, but I desperately wish I did.

He takes a sip of his drink.

That’s what I thought.

Maybe my life is worth one country to him. Maybe it’s worth less. Whatever the cost, he knows it would burn me worse than his silence.

I push back my chair and stand. “Some epic love you are,” I mutter. My words carry no vitriol. Perhaps that is what makes him flinch.

“You love me?” He says.

And he latches onto that. I shake my head. “I don’t blame you for it, you know. Thirty years is a long time to spend collecting countries like toys.” Long enough to lose your conscience.

He stands. “Serenity.”

I ignore him as I stride away, and there is something satisfying about unveiling the monster behind all the pretty prose.

“Serenity!”

I can hear his shoes click against the marble floor.

“You’re wrong,” he says when I don’t stop. “You want to know why I didn’t answer the question? Because I don’t know the answer, and that terrifies me. But I do know this: what we have is epic. Why do you think our enemies want to separate us so badly?”

Now I halt.

“We were enemies before this all began,” I say.

“I was never your enemy, Serenity. The world saw that when they watched the peace talks, and they saw it again when they watched our wedding. That is why the Resistance is trying to come between us.”

I swivel to face him. Even this far away, he swallows up space. If anyone were to be a world leader, it would be him. He’s mesmerizing, and not just for his looks. Maybe it’s all those hidden years of his that take up space in this room because they can’t be worn on his face. Whatever it is, it only makes him more of an enigma.

“You married me to secure your power,” I say.

He laughs at that and takes a step forward. “Is that what you’ve convinced yourself of? That my primary reason for marrying you was to secure my power?”

The hairs on my arm lift at what he isn’t saying.

“You and I both know I could’ve crushed the WUN under my boot if I so chose. They are more of a pain because I secured them peacefully.”

The scariest things are those that you don’t understand. That was what always frightened me about the king—I couldn’t fathom his motives. I thought I was beginning to understand him for a while there, but I wasn’t.

He saunters towards me slowly. “I’m afraid that when it comes to strategy, my queen, I’ve outmaneuvered you.”

Adrenaline courses through me as my body gets battle ready. “Why would you marry me if not for power?” There’s no more diving into a glass of wine for either of us.

I’m the ugly truth and he’s a pretty lie, and we are always, always circling each other. I think that he’s right. What passes between us is every bit as epic as I’d always feared.

He closes the last of the distance and reaches up to cup my jaw.

I tilt my head away from him. “Don’t.”

“Can’t I touch my wife?”

It’s so unlike him to ask.

There’s nothing left for me to hang onto when he’s like this. My hate’s too ephemeral, my heart too hopeful.

I close my eyes and nod.

A second later the smooth skin of his fingers brush my cheeks, my mouth. They leave, and then his lips are caressing mine.

He tastes like a taboo. He’s mine.