Free The Queen of Traitors (The Fallen World Book 2) by Laura Thalassa Page B

are hard. “Already forgetting the rules.”
    I glower at him.
    “Why did you marry me?” he asks.
    I go still. “It was me or my country.”
    “That was the only reason?”
    “It’s my turn.” My voice is icy. I’m seconds away from overturning the table—or lunging across it and attacking the king.
    “Did you order my father killed?” I repeat.
    “No, Serenity, I didn’t.”
    I swirl my wine glass, agitated. What had I hoped for him to say—that he had?
    “Was saving your country the only reason you married me?” he asks.
    Did he really expect any answer but yes?
    “I vomited when I learned I’d have to marry you,” I say. “Do you really want to rehash this all out?”
    “No. What did the Resistance do to you while they held you prisoner?”
    He tricked me out of a turn.
    I grip the stem of my glass tightly and force myself to muse on his question. The man across from me is not a soldier. He has no true concept of torture and humiliation. But he is my husband, and he is the megalomaniac that has bent the world to his will.
    I grab my glass and drink. With him, violence begets violence.
    I tilt my head back and look at the stars that I can barely see through the domed ceiling above. I want to say I watch them because they are beautiful, but I can’t lie to myself about this. I’m avoiding the king’s reaction to what I’m about to ask.
    I pull myself together. I’m not a wimp, and if I have the courage to ask the question, then I should also have the courage to face the king as I do so.
    Leveling my gaze on him, I ask, “What do you feel for me?”
    Surprise flickers through his features before he collects himself. Once he does, I wish I could draw the words back into my mouth.
    Montes gives me a slow, smoldering smile, one that I feel low in my belly. He lifts his glass and takes a drink.
    Neither of us has touched our food yet, and at that the moment, hunger is the furthest thing from my mind.
    He sets his glass down, his gaze dropping to the base of my throat. “How old were you when you lost her?” He nods to my mother’s necklace.
    I wrap my hand around it, and already I’m shaking my head. No, he doesn’t get to know about her. His war killed her, along with a million other mothers. She’s beyond his reach now, and I won’t give him what’s left of her.
    The wine I swallow down barely makes it past the lump in my throat.
    It’s my turn, and all the words I can think of have turned bitter on my tongue. “Tell me, what is the price of my life, Montes?”
    Montes has been swirling his glass, but now he stops. “What are you really asking?”
    “That,” I say. “I’m asking that. What is the price of my life?”
    I’m setting myself up for failure, and I want him to fail me. I want him to disappoint me with his answer because I don’t hate him with all my heart, but I desperately wish I did.
    He takes a sip of his drink.
    That’s what I thought.
    Maybe my life is worth one country to him. Maybe it’s worth less. Whatever the cost, he knows it would burn me worse than his silence.
    I push back my chair and stand. “Some epic love you are,” I mutter. My words carry no vitriol. Perhaps that is what makes him flinch.
    “You love me?” He says.
    And he latches onto that. I shake my head. “I don’t blame you for it, you know. Thirty years is a long time to spend collecting countries like toys.” Long enough to lose your conscience.
    He stands. “Serenity.”
    I ignore him as I stride away, and there is something satisfying about unveiling the monster behind all the pretty prose.
    “ Serenity !”
    I can hear his shoes click against the marble floor.
    “You’re wrong,” he says when I don’t stop. “You want to know why I didn’t answer the question? Because I don’t know the answer, and that terrifies me. But I do know this: what we have is epic. Why do you think our enemies want to separate us so badly?”
    Now I halt.
    “We were enemies before this all began,”