I don’t bother asking how Montes secured Marco’s body. The king has his ways; if he wants something badly enough, he’ll get it. I’m firsthand proof of that.

“Would you do this to me?” I nod to the Sleeper. “Leave me in one of these things rather than letting me die?”

This is an important question because I am dying.

The king doesn’t say anything, just continues to gaze down at his fallen friend.

“Montes, would you do this to me?” I repeat.

His eyes flick to mine. And then very deliberately, he turns on his heel and walks away.

I STAND THERE for several seconds, processing that. I hear the far doors open and close. My husband left me with his silence. And in that silence, I have my answer.

Heaven help me, that was a yes.

He’d shove me into one of these coffins and prevent my body from dying.

Now I’m faced with the very real prospect that at some point in the near future, I’m going to need to take matters into my own hands. I rub my eyes. My heart’s heavy.

After every sacrifice I’ve made, must I make this one too? Is it wrong to not want immortality? That the price I’d have to pay would be too steep?

My hand drops. I stare down at Marco as unease settles low in my belly. Had he known the king would do this? Had he rejected the idea as well? Was that why he took the bullet instead of the serum?

I force myself away from the device. I didn’t come here to ponder Montes’s plans. I wanted answers.

I begin rifling through everything. No one comes back for me—not Montes, not the guards. I’m sure someone’s got eyes on me, but I don’t much care.

I move out of the lab and deeper inside the facility. Back here the doors have bronze name plates fastened to them. I stop when I come to Goldstein’s.

Using the thumb scanner, I enter his office.

Stacks of charts sit in piles around the doctor’s desk. But it’s the one sitting right in front of his computer that captures my attention.

It’s mine. I read my name clearly along the tab.

Serenity F. Lazuli

On the front, a note’s been paper clipped to it. I pick up the folder and begin to flip through it. The first page appears to be a form for a prescription. The only thing that’s written in at the bottom of it are two drugs I can barely pronounce.

Behind this page are the latest readouts from the Sleeper, mostly x-rays of my brain and body. The doctor’s gone through and circled certain sections. Malignant tumors, by the looks of them. Not that I know anything about this. I was trained to kill, not to heal.

As I flip through the x-rays, they appear time lapsed. Each gets smaller, but then, the dates get older. My eyebrows pinch together.

That can’t be right. I spent weeks upon fucking weeks in the Sleeper in an attempt to reduce these. The machine might not be able to cure cancer, but it can remove a tumor.

I recheck the dates. My eyes aren’t deceiving me; my cancer hasn’t been treated.

If anything, it’s been expedited.

CHAPTER 29

Serenity

A SHAKY HAND goes to my mouth. The warm breath of anger is pushing against my shock, and I welcome it. Dr. Goldstein tricked me and Montes.

An inside man.

I need to find the good doctor, but first I have to figure out the depth of the deception.

I fold the x-rays and scans in half and shove them into the back of my waistband. Carefully I put my file back on the desk where I found it.

My eyes move to the note paper-clipped to the front of the file.

I grab a pen and notepad from the doctor’s desk and scribble down the series of numbers written on the note, followed by the medication I read on the first page of my file. Once I finish, I rip the sheet of paper from the notepad and, clutching it in my hand, I leave the palace’s medical facility.

But I don’t go back to my room. Instead I head to the office I’ve been using here in Geneva.

I sit down at my desk and boot up my computer. Time to find out what else the good doctor’s been up to.

The King

SERENITY NEVER CAME back to find me. I’m pissed, both at her refusal to simply accept her situation and at my own burgeoning dependency on her.

Two hours after I left her, I leave my office. I thought that work—rather than lying in bed awake—would better take my mind off of her; I was wrong.

I’m going to find my wife, and then I’m going to make her understand that I am not a monster for wanting her to live.

I head for the medical facility, almost dreading the possibility that she’s still there.

She has to know that I won’t give her up to death. For Christ’s sakes, she should be more desperate to live than I am. Why would she want it to all end when she knows I have the power to keep her alive, and that, one day soon, I’ll have the power to cure her of her cancer?

Another thought chills my blood: what if she’s already tried to kill herself?

She’s the furthest thing from depressed, but if she got it in her head that she had to take her own life, she would. Without hesitation. It wouldn’t be suicide to her; it’d be a mercy killing.

Now I’m running, my footfalls echoing against the marble. I can hear my pulse between my ears.

When I burst into the medical facilities, the lights are still on.

“Serenity?” I call.

Silence.

My heart rate continues to ratchet up, and the cloying sensation of dread floods my veins. I find myself holding my breath briefly each time I enter a new room, fearing that this will be the one that contains her lifeless body.