Free The Queen of All That Lives (The Fallen World Book 3) by Laura Thalassa Page B

to pound it just beneath his decorated breast pocket. Then a woman stands and does the same thing. Then several officers.
    One by one, like a wave, they stand and thump their fists over their hearts until the entire room is echoing with the sound.
    I feel the devil’s breath against my ear. “There is no higher compliment, my queen, than for the officers to give you their honor.”
    That’s what this is?
    “What have you done?” I say, staring out at the sea of medaled men and women. I’ve already agreed to this, to be what the world needs me to be, but I’m still horrified by all that comes with it.
    I’m nothing more than a story to these men and women, a face to their beliefs. And they are all but ready to set down their lives for me.
    Those terrible eyes of his capture mine, but he doesn’t respond.
    It’s hard to believe everything that led me here wasn’t orchestrated by his hand. That my escape and the fallout from it wasn’t planned. Montes seems more omnipotent than ever, and the superstitious part of me wants to believe that he can see some endgame the rest of us can’t.
    But he can’t control me, I know that. His reluctance to wake me up has everything to do with that. And I won’t bow to him, no matter how drastically he’s changed his ways. A long time ago I forgot I slept in bed with the enemy. I paid a hundred years as penance.
    I won’t make the same mistake twice.

Chapter 12
    Serenity
    “So let me get this straight, the Western United Nations is still called the Western United Nations, and it’s run by a group of representatives, just as it always has been.”
    The officers around me are nodding.
    After the meeting in the map room adjourned, Montes and I moved to a smaller conference room with a handful of the officers. All of them are helping me catch up on what I’ve missed.
    It’s an impossible task; it took me years to understand the intricacies of my time’s politics when I was studying as an emissary. It will take me years more to understand all that’s happened between then and now.
    “Some of these representatives are Montes’s old advisors.” This comes from the stern-looking officer that was the first to show affiliation to me in the map room. Heinrich Weber is his name, Montes’s grand marshal of arms.
    I’m surprised by how quickly he’s taken a shining to me, considering how much of a threat I am to the king.
    Or maybe he just doesn’t yet know my true relationship with Montes.
    “I believe you’ve personally met them,” Heinrich adds.
    A chill races up my spine.
    Wait, those old advisors?
    Some of them are still alive?
    I shoot a glance at Montes, who sits in the chair next to mine. He lounges back in his seat, his thumb running absently over his lower lip, those sinister eyes of his narrowed like he’s trying to figure me out. It was never me that was the enigma.
    “So there’s more than just one of you now?” I ask.
    More men that can’t be killed, each one more rotten than the last. Of course it’s the worst ones that have managed to cheat death.
    The corner of Montes’s mouth lifts up. “My queen, there has only ever been one of me.”
    “Thank God for that.”
    The officers in the room stiffen slightly. It’s not like before, when Montes’s subjects scuttled about, perpetually in fear of his wrath. However, the king still appears to command their respect, and I’m not very respectful.
    Now the other corner of Montes’s lips lifts as well. He always did enjoy my insults. And just as always, he seems more captivated by me than the matters at hand.
    To be fair, everything I’ve been learning he’s known about for decades. If roles were reversed, I can’t say I wouldn’t be sickly fascinated with him as well.
    I return my attention to some of the papers spread out on the table and the men and women seated around me. “Just what kind of people are these representatives as a whole?”
    “The worst kind,” Montes says.
    I raise my eyebrow and