He stares at me for a long second then inclines his head. “Understood.”

“Good.” I release the knife and return to my soup.

Conversation, which had quieted for a moment, picks back up.

My left hand rests on the table, and I feel the king cover it with his own. He leans in close. “I’d been almost positive I’d have to dig a knife out of Gorev’s skull,” he says quietly, eyeing the Beast, who is now in a conversation with the person to his left.

“This isn’t funny.”

The king’s hand tightens around mine. “No, it isn’t. Save the killing for when the cameras aren’t around.”

I give him an exasperated look, but I relent. The Beast is safe.

For now.

I WAKE UP in the middle of the night to terrible, throbbing pain. At first it simply stirred me from sleep. I’d roll, reposition myself, and go back to bed.

But now my eyes snap open as the pain rips through my abdomen like a knife wound to the gut. My skin is slick with sweat, and the sheets stick to it.

My hand drops my lower stomach, where it hurts the worst. Several seconds later another wave hits. I let out a groan and fist the comforter as it cramps up my muscles.

“Serenity?” Montes’s voice is thick with sleep.

When he tries to pull me to him, I let out a gasp.

“What’s wrong?” Now he sounds wide awake. He clicks on the bedside lamp and turns back to me.

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

A healthy body shouldn’t be doing this. Montes and his doctors have been swearing up and down that I’m alright, but right now I don’t feel alright. I feel wrong.

Very, very wrong.

My pelvis cramps so sharply that I release a strangled sound. I’m being wounded from the inside out.

One of Montes’s arms slides behind my back. The other touches my cheek and tilts my head to face him. “Do you need a doctor?”

I shake my head, then nod. I don’t know. I grip Montes’s upper arm as the cramps intensify.

Oh God, dear God, I think I know what’s happening.

I squeeze his arm. “Montes,” I say. “Our child …” This is the first time I’ve openly acknowledged the baby as ours.

His expression doesn’t exactly change, but I see it—fear.

I choke on a silent cry as the pain somehow gets worse. Warm, wet fluid seeps out between my thighs. I can’t look away from him as it’s happening.

Montes’s eyes search mine, and there’s such desolation in them.

He begins to pull away.

I latch onto his upper arm. “Don’t leave me.”

“Serenity, I need to call a doctor.” He’s pleading.

A tear slips out before I can help it. “I think it’s already too late,” I whisper.

CHAPTER 27

Serenity

SOME DAYS I want to live, and other days, like today, I want to die.

I shouldn’t feel this sadness, this overwhelming grief. I hadn’t even thought I wanted a child. Especially not this one. Only once it was too late do I find out I did. Now I can actually admit that I might’ve even been excited.

But just like everything else in my life, all roads lead back to death.

I lean against the pillows propped up behind me like I’m some kind of invalid. The sheets have already been changed, the bloodstains removed like they never existed. I’ve now lost two family members within these walls.

This place is cursed.

“… These things just sometimes happen,” the doctor is saying to Montes.

The king paces, one of his hands squeezing his lower jaw almost painfully. Other than that single tear I shed, neither of us has cried. We bottle up our emotions because to dwell on them might just destroy us, and the king and I, we won’t let anything consume what’s left of us.

I stare at the far wall, study the gilded edges of the molding. The impersonal art painted by an expert hand that hangs just below it.

“Serenity … Serenity.”

I blink and refocus my attention on the king.

He takes my hand. I don’t realize that I’ve been fisting it until he smooths the fingers out. Each nail has left bloody, crescent-shaped wounds in the pads of my palm. “You’re going to need to get into the Sleeper so that everything’s been properly flushed out—”

“I’m not getting in your fucking machine ever again.”

That’s probably a lie. I’m speaking from my heart right now. The weight of this terrible existence is pressing down on me, and I can barely breathe through it.

I don’t want more of this.

Montes’s hand squeezes mine. “I’m not giving you a choice.” He sounds as close to losing it as I’ve ever heard him. “Either you get into the Sleeper on your own free will, or it happens by force.”

I narrow my eyes at him. He’s not the only one close to the edge. But anger lifts the fog I’ve been under for the last couple hours.

What’s happened to me today can’t happen again. I won’t let it.

Montes will force me into the Sleeper, that I don’t doubt. But if I go willingly …

I run my tongue over my teeth. “I’ll do it—on one condition.”

Montes and the doctor wait for me to finish.

“I don’t want to get pregnant again.”

The King

THEY GIVE HER a birth control shot. It won’t last forever like she wants it to, but it will keep her sterile for a while. Long enough for both of us to grieve and move on.

My hand covers my mouth as they sedate her and place her in the Sleeper.

Now I’ve lost two people in mere hours. Serenity will be fine in a few days, once her body has purged the last of the fetus and the Sleeper has expunged the most recent flare-ups of her cancer.

But I won’t.

I leave the medical wing because I can’t bear to look down on her sleeping face and envy her fate.

I head to the palace’s training facilities, which I share here in Geneva with my soldiers and guards. When I enter the weight room, several of my men are already there lifting. They stand and salute as soon as they recognize me.

“Out,” I say. It’s all I can manage.

I wait until I can’t even hear the echo of their boots.

I don’t wrap my hands or change before I begin laying into the punching bag. It feels cathartic, releasing emotion this way.