“Alexei gave us the wrong names.” The Beast’s final bit of treason.

The last laugh is on Montes—or us, rather, since I’m involved in this feud as well. Alexei tricked the king into killing his honest advisors.

“Do you think they were aligned with Estes? With the Resistance?” I ask.

“It doesn’t matter.” The king’s quiet voice raises the hairs on my forearms. “They’ll all die, along with every single person they have ever loved.”

THE KING IS slipping into violence.

Whether it’s the personal cost this war is finally having on him, or that he just can’t bear to lose what he worked so ruthlessly hard for, he’s falling deeper into that abyss.

“Leave the innocents out of this, Montes.”

He turns his head to me slowly. “You are my equal in many ways,” he says quietly, “but I am the man who conquered the world, and you will not tell me how to carry out my will.”

What he is proposing is abominable. I know he’s done this before, leveraged loved ones to force a person’s cooperation—hell, he’s done it to me—but even bad men have a code, and targeting innocents goes against that code.

I push up from my chair. “Yeah? Well you better make damn sure you kill those innocents. Because the survivors, they’ll turn out just like me.”

I walk away from him, my boots clicking against the floor. As far as I’m concerned, this meeting is over.

“In that case,” he calls out to my back, “I have no need to worry at all.”

His meaning is clear: I, and anyone like me, are fickle with our vendettas.

He is so wrong.

Swiveling back to him, I pull out my gun, cock it, and fire. The bullet buries itself into his right shoulder. It all happens so fast he doesn’t have time to react until blood is blooming onto his expensive suit.

Shock and pain mingle in his eyes as he clutches the wound. Blood drips over and in between his fingers. “You shot me,” he gasps out.

Normally I’m not this stupid. To draw blood from the king but refuse to kill him—that sort of thing doesn’t go unpunished. With all that I’ve endured, I’ve just guaranteed myself more pain. But these days, pain is the only thing I really feel. Without it, I might as well not exist.

I holster my weapon. “Look into my eyes, Montes.”

He’s clenching his teeth, his breath coming in quick pants, but he makes eye contact.

“This monster, the one you created, the one you love so much, this is what I can do.”

I can hurt those I love.

Montes doesn’t need to know that my windpipes are tightening up at the sight of his agony. That even now I have to steel myself from running to his side and soothing the very hurt I caused.

But I don’t do that. I need him to know the extent of my depravity.

Soldiers burst into the room right before I say my final piece.

“You don’t want more of me around,” I say, “and you should never, ever forget exactly what I am.”

CHAPTER 31

Serenity

I’M ON HOUSE arrest until the king’s released from the Sleeper. That pretty much means I just have a shit ton of soldiers guarding me at all hours. And my gun’s been confiscated. Again.

Because there are no more advisors to help govern the world, I find myself running the globe by myself.

I want to laugh that I did what so few could: I shot the king and received a promotion for it.

That all ends the day Montes is removed from the Sleeper. It’s my turn to sit at the king’s side and wait for him to wake. Of course, guards flank me. They no longer trust me alone with the king, but since he’s given no orders to punish me for my crimes, they can’t stand against the queen until the king wakes.

They won’t let me touch him, but my fingers twitch with the need. I try to tell myself it’s just curiosity, that I want to feel the smooth expanse of skin where his bullet wound was. But if I’m being honest with myself, what I really want is to stroke his dark hair back from his face. I want to run my fingers over the stubble that’s grown on his cheeks and chin.

His eyelids twitch, then one of his fingers moves the barest bit. It takes another several minutes before his eyes flutter open. They immediately lock on mine.

Before he can help it, he smiles, and it’s free of any duplicity. He’s just happy to see me. His attention shifts from my face to the soldiers that flank me.

His eyebrows draw together.

I help him out. “I shot you. You’ve been recovering in the Sleeper.”

His expression grows distant as he searches for the memories.

Montes sits up. “Wife doesn’t bluff,” he mutters. He looks to me again, and I can see him trying to make sense of me. His gaze flicks to the guards. “Leave us.”

They hesitate.

“I gave you a direct order. Leave.”

Reluctantly, the guards do so.

“Am I no longer on house arrest?” I ask.

Montes’s eyes burn. “Oh, your punishment is far from over.”

The King

I STARE INTO my wife’s mesmerizing blue eyes. I’m still wrapping my mind around the fact that she looked me square in the eye and shot me. But I always knew what I was marrying. I’d seen the bodies in my palace back when she was just the daughter of an emissary.

I will admit that I had underestimated her. I didn’t believe she would hurt someone she loved.

“I know what you were trying to prove back in the map room,” I say. “I could’ve passed on the demonstration, but I understand.”