Once the aircraft is ready to board, two men help me carry Montes onto the plane. His skin is paler than I’ve ever seen it, and his body is dead weight.

“El rey está muerto.” The man speaking has two fingers pressed to the pulse point beneath the king’s jaw.

“No.” I push aside his hand and place my own where his was. I wait for his pulse. It never comes.

I stare down at the king’s face. His head’s rolled back, like he’s fixated on the ceiling, but his eyes are closed and his mouth is slightly parted. Already the planes of his face are losing shape.

I cradle the side of his head. I don’t realize I’m crying until the first tear trickles into my mouth.

People are wrong to say that the dead look peaceful. They just look dead.

“No,” I repeat.

This man isn’t beyond saving. Not now that I’ve fallen for him, not now that I carry his child.

The men look at me strangely, but they nonetheless help haul the king into the plane. Montes told me that the Sleeper would be onboard, but I’ve never seen it before.

“The Sleeper—we need to get him into the Sleeper.”

Someone knows what I’m talking about because I begin to hear shouts of “Compartimiento de carga! La carga! El durmiente! Más rápido.”

We begin to move again, this time towards the plane’s cargo bay. Inside, I can already hear the hum of the machine as it idles. It’s bolted to the floor. My heart palpitates a little faster just locking eyes on it.

The king told me once that so long as the brain was intact, the Sleeper could bring the dead back to life. So it doesn’t make sense, this irrational dread I feel when I see it. Perhaps it’s that such technology seems just as unnatural as Montes. But right now I’m happy to set aside my superstitions if it means resurrecting a dead king.

We get him situated inside and I close the lid. I don’t know what to do next, but the machine has a “Power” button. On a whim, I press it.

The humming sound turns into a whirr as the Sleeper wakes up.

I watch the small readout as it begins to assess the king’s vitals—his now nonexistent ones. Then it begins scanning his body.

“Come,” one of the men says.

“Not yet.” I want to make sure that the machine is doing what I need it to. I know that means more time on the ground, more time for a potential counterattack should Estes’s allies decide to rise up. I don’t care.

It only takes a minute for the machine to get a respirator and something called a cardiopulmonary bypass device hooked up to the king. Five minutes after that, the machine begins cleaning the wound.

A gentle hand touches my upper arm. “Good?” one of the men asks.

I nod, backing away. Leaving is the last thing I want to do, but I need to arrange safe passage with the men here. If the machine can save Montes, it will.

If it can’t, then the world will know the undying king can, in fact, die.

CHAPTER 25

Serenity

I STARE OUT the plane’s window, my hands resting on my gun and my chin resting atop my hands.

I have all the time in the world and nothing but my thoughts to occupy me. There’s plenty to think about, and I don’t want to dwell on any of it.

So instead I gaze out at the lonely sky and try to feel nothing. It doesn’t work. Last I saw, Montes was dead, and even with the Sleeper’s best efforts, he may stay that way. If he doesn’t live, I’ll be queen.

The world won’t bow to me, the young woman who betrayed her land when she married the king. I might inherit Montes’s empire, but I haven’t earned the right to rule it. War could very well break out again. And I’d be the first to die.

That’s no longer an option. Not now that I’m pregnant. I exhale a long breath. I will have to be more ruthless than I’ve ever been if I want to survive. And I’ll have to be willing to get back inside that dreaded machine if I want to live long enough to have this child.

My thoughts turn to General Kline. I couldn’t say what I feel in this moment. Gratitude? Grief? Melancholy for the life I once lived? He banished me to this fate the day he made a deal with the king, but I might have died today if not for him.

My thoughts circle back to the king. I’m used to greenies underwhelming me. Montes did the opposite. Before today I couldn’t imagine him on the battlefield. I’m used to seeing him in pressed linens and suits, and while he has muscle to spare, I’ve never seen him exert true force.

Today he did, and he was relentless. He saved my life at least once, but in all likelihood, he spared me from death several times. Had he not so readily killed, we would never have left South America. Of that I’m certain.

The king who killed millions from his ivory tower now left it to kill several himself. That last bit of Montes’s innocence was snuffed out today. If he wakes from the Sleeper, what man will rise? Will he be worse? Better? Wholly unchanged?

I find I really don’t care. I just want him back.

It seems like a lifetime later that the overhead speaker clicks on. “We’re beginning our descent into Geneva. We should touch down in another twenty minutes.”

Geneva, the last place I want to be. Only a handful of months ago I’d fled that city, boarded a plane and crossed the Atlantic to flee the king. Back then I’d mourned the death of my father. Now here I am returning to the very place I’d once loathed, and I’m trying to bring the dead king who’d once tormented my people back to life.