“‘Give’?” He makes it sound as though I was nothing more than a commodity. Little more than what I am now—a means to an end for these people.
“It was the only way,” the general says. He’s pleading with me, and I can tell this long ago decision cost him. “The king was prepared to rip apart the WUN. You were the only bargaining chip we had, and God, he wanted you so badly. He was willing to give us everything we wanted.”
Bile rises up in my throat again, and I swallow it back down.
“Why did he want me?”
He bows his head, staring at his clasped hands. “You left … quite the impression when you and your father negotiated the terms of our nation’s surrender.”
“So you gave me to him … in return for peace?” I say, making sense of his words.
He rubs his eyes. “Yes, I did.”
Outrage flares up in me. I may not recall this decision, but I had to live through it at some point. This general offered me to our enemy. Never mind that it saved countless other lives. This was the same man I must’ve worked with—whose son I had some sort of relationship with—and yet he threw me to the wolves.
I stare at my ring as an even more terrifying idea takes form. “I don’t work for the king, do I?”
The general sighs and meets my eyes. “No, Serenity, you don’t work for the king. You’re married to him.”
CHAPTER 3
Serenity
GIVEN TO THE king like a war prize.
“Do I love him?”
The general squints at me. “He killed your parents, razed your hometown, and if that sickness is what I suspect it is,” he nods to the toilet, “then you have him to thank for it as well. No, I don’t think you love him, but I do believe he’s poisoned your mind.”
I frown. This story is getting more and more twisted and harder for me to believe. This king sounds like the devil. Yet here I am, prisoner to the very people whose side I once fought on. I have to be missing something. No matter how heartless I might be, one doesn’t go from hate to love or swap loyalties without a good cause.
“Why would I marry him?”
“You were forced to.”
To be married to my parents’ killer … a shudder works its way through me. I may be heartless, but even I don’t deserve that kind of fate.
“Who are these people?” I glance at the one-way mirror.
“They’re the last soldiers willing to fight the king. The world is now controlled entirely by him. The Resistance and other grassroots organizations are the only ones that stand in his way. Us and you.”
Someone knocks on the door, and the general stands.
He hesitates, then says, “Perhaps it would do to take you outside and show what your husband has done to our world.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I’ve never heard of a prisoner getting that type of privilege.” Not that I’ve heard much of anything since my memory was wiped. It’s a mystery how I know what a typical prisoner’s experience should be, and the source of the knowledge left no maker’s mark.
“You’re not a typical prisoner,” the general says. “For better or worse, you’re the queen of this entire rock.”
He pauses at the door. “No one here is going to torture you. Not if I can help it. But the reality of your situation is that your life is no longer in your control.”
“Was it ever?” I ask, searching his eyes.
I genuinely want to know. Did I choose to do wrong by these people, or was I forced into it? The distinction matters.
The general hesitates. “No,” he finally says, “it wasn’t.”
I FIND I miss the general once he leaves. I don’t want to miss him. I have no illusions that he likes me, and by the end of our discussion, I’m not so sure I like him all that much either.
However, he knows me, and he’s been civil enough, which is more than I can say about the rest of my captors.
I begin moving around the room.
Blanket, bed, wall, ceiling, floor. Rings, shirt, pants, shoes. The names of each item come without hesitation, but I have no memories to attach to each of them.
I move onto current events. Here I brush up against a barrier. Part of me wants to say that the world is suffering. Food’s scarce, land’s contaminated, war’s prevalent. I don’t know how much of this is me guessing from the snippets I’ve heard and how much is actual knowledge.
What year is it? I begin to pin dates to historic events. The 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s are all distinct enough from the present that I can write them off as the past. But the 2000s … my knowledge of this century is muddled, and when I think of 2100s and later, I can’t conjure anything. I actually huff out at a laugh. I’ve narrowed the year down—give or take a century or so.
I know what people look like, but I can’t picture up anyone I know besides Lieutenant Begbie and the general. My head begins to pound from the effort.
I don’t have a concussion after all, at least not one responsible for my staggering memory loss. The king did this.
The king, my husband. A man willing to tear apart the world to satisfy his own need for power, a man who forced me into marriage. This is not a man fit to rule over others. This is not a man fit for anything, really, except a swift, bloody death.
It’s not until much, much later that anyone returns. By then I’m dozing on the thin mattress. The door to my cell opens, and Lieutenant Begbie enters, followed by a soldier.