My eyes lose focus as I retrace my final memories. The king and I had been working together to stop his traitorous advisors.
I remember him saying he loved me.
The revelation hits me all over again. It never should’ve happened, but in my world, a world filled with bloodly, broken bodies, love had grown in the most desolate of places.
I force myself to move past this memory, to the next one. Waking up, the blood-speckled sheets. I worried that the king had seen the evidence of my sickness. I reassured myself that he hadn’t.
I searched for him, but I couldn’t find him. I was sent to a room on the east wing and told he’d be there. But he wasn’t.
It was a trap.
It was a trap.
I go cold all over.
The king had me cornered. I jumped three stories into the waiting arms of his guards.
And then …
“This isn’t forever,” the king says.
The last thing I see is the king’s face, and the last thing I hear is his voice. He leans over me, and I feel a hand stroke my face. “We’ll only be apart for a short while. Once we cure your sickness, you’ll be mine again.”
I choke on a wrathful cry. He betrayed me. Drugged me, forced me to endure the Sleeper until he could cure me of my cancer.
I’d imagined months, years maybe, but decades?
I feel my nostrils flare as a tear drips down my cheek.
Not just decades.
A century, if what these men say is true. Locked away so that he wouldn’t have to lose me.
It feels like someone has stacked stones on my chest. I can’t seem to catch my breath.
Monsters will be monsters. Why I thought mine was any different, I cannot say.
Perhaps because I am a foolish girl.
I can feel it, my anger, like a storm brewing on the horizon. Right now, my shock and pain are all I can focus on. But my fury is coming, and when it hits, no one is going to be adequately prepared for it.
My eyes return to the soldiers. They all wear looks of pity. They can keep their pity; I don’t want it.
I’m no longer skeptical.
“Exactly how long have I been gone I?” I ask Jace.
His eyes are sad when he says, “From our best estimates, one hundred and four years.”
I am 124 years old.
I stare at Jace, my nostrils flaring as I breathe through my nose.
One hundred and twenty-four years old.
My brain won’t process that. It can’t. No one lives that long.
The soldiers are quiet, and I hate that I have an audience. I’m so close to falling apart; I don’t want these strangers to see me when that happens.
I turn my hands over in my lap. My skin has retained the smoothness of youth. I run my fingers over my flesh.
Over a century old. I wonder where the years are hidden. They must’ve left some mark. All things leave marks.
All things, save for the king’s inventions. Those remove things—wounds, memories, … age.
An entire century went by, and I saw none of it. The king had kept me in a coffin, not dead but not alive.
I recognize the moment the truth settles on my shoulders.
Loss so big my body can’t hold it is expanding, expanding. It tries to crawl up my throat.
Had I thought before I was the loneliest girl in the world? If what these men are telling me is true, and I’m beginning to believe it is, I have nothing left.
Nothing.
The world has passed me by, and the people and time I belong to are now long gone. I haven’t seen anything beyond the metal walls of this car, but would I recognize the world outside? The people? A hundred years before I was put in the Sleeper, the world was a far different place from the one I lived in. I have every reason to believe that same logic applies to the future—present.
I rub my forehead agitatedly. Everything and everyone I’ve ever known is gone. Everyone except for the man I love, the man who did this to me.
My surroundings blur as my eyes water. But I will not shed another tear for that abomination. Not now, in front of these men, and not when I’m alone.
He deserves nothing but my wrath.
And what has he been doing this whole time while I rotted away?
I already know the answer.
He’s been killing, screwing, ruling.
Betrayal is giving way to rage. Everything I have ever cherished the king has taken from me, either directly or indirectly. My family, my land, my freedom, my life. And I gave him everything. My body, my heart, my soul.
I’m taking them back. I hope he’s enjoyed my stone cold heart for the century he’s owned it. Next time I see him, I’m going to carve it right out of his chest.
I level my gaze on Jace. “You said you wanted me to end your war?”
He must see the mayhem in my eyes, because he hesitates. Then, slowly, he nods.
There is nowhere Montes can hide where I won’t find him. And when I do find him—
“I’ll end it.”
The King
I sit down heavily on the edge of my bed and loosen my tie. The flight was long, the day even longer, but I can’t go to bed. Not yet.
I shrug off my jacket and roll up my sleeves.
Someone knocks on my door.
“Tomorrow,” I call. The world is going to have just as many problems then as it does now.
When the footsteps retreat, I move to the back of the room, right to the garish painting of Cupid and Psyche. I grab the edge of the frame and pull it away from the wall. It swings back with ease, and behind it is a door, barred to all, save for me.
I press my thumb into the scanner embedded next to it.